#and also play alan wake

[quinsixtridrupled-k]

damn, all it took was a live rendition at an award show of crazy rock song about telling about the life story of a writer, and how he got stuck in a house of leaves/twin peaks type thriller/horror story sung by him, a talk show host and a Finnish rock band inside an otherworldly dimension of darkness to get me to listen to the offerings of Poets of the Fall and realize their songs are bangers...

[ilkkawhat]

[sketchupnfries]

Quick Arthur break time sketch since I'm still in crunch time. Following crunch I'm gonna get back onto chipping away at my A Hunting We Will Go RDR2 AU. Doing small sketches like this have been a nice break tho

[grymkoena]

Dark water pressed itself into her.

[terr-hedgehog]

Might go back into my hockey phase, idk. Remedy put a playable hockey game and my soul is yours

[potofbees]

red lighting in alan wake 2

[cyberstockh0lm]

A lil small town diner

[artem1sc0re]

I was bored and I just really wanted to draw AWAN!mr scratch

With an extra addition:

[lostinthewoodsomewhere]

I think one of my favourite things about the 'North Star' Night Springs episode, is that the two parts of Jesse's character it showcases the most are:

Jesse loves her brother more than anything, and he is her main motivation.

Jesse quite literally trusts Polaris with her life, and will do anything she tells her to do.

Like, that's it, that's Jesse Faden!

I feel if you hadn't actually played Control yet, North Star is the perfect little introduction to Jesse. The whole episode is such a perfect, condensed little insight into her character, from how she acts with Tim, to the world around her, and I just love it and everything about her in this episode!!!

[idleraven]

This music video makes me think about what the Alan Wake TV series could be like - I just really hope they cast Ilkka & Matthew in it

[bombshellsandbluebells]

One thing I'm so relieved with in Alan Wake 2 is the handling of female characters - especially Alice. The women of Alan Wake 1 were fairly lackluster: we have Barbara Jagger, a concept of a girlfriend more than a character, Rose, a pretty one-note fangirl who also just gets taken over by the Dark Presence for most of it, Cynthia Weaver - by far the best of all of them and one of my favorites, and then Alice.

Alice is so bland in Alan Wake 1. She's the classic hero's tragic wife who gets taken/killed early on to prompt him to save her. We get very little of Alice outside of her relationship to Alan. She's a plot device more than a character.

But I found myself so much more invested in her in Alan Wake 2. We get to see her photography - something that had mostly been introduced as a way she creates covers for Alan's books in the first game and now gets to stand alone as something purely from Alice. We get to see her process her fears and her traumatic experience through her art. We see her using her art to fight back against the thing haunting her. We see her as an artist in her own right and not just the wife of one.

I love the decision to only ever show Alice in videos - she feels real that way, and the choice to have her staring at the camera telling the viewer directly what she's going through and how she feels really worked to actually connect me to her. She finally felt like more of a person than just a concept.

And on top of that, we got so many other fantastic women.

Rose got more personality and agency - still a fangirl through and through but there's more to her than that now. She's hilarious and weird and runs around fighting shadow monsters because she thinks a dead author speaks to her through the clouds - and she's GOOD at it, actually. She knows what she's doing and how to protect herself and does what she can to help Saga along the way.

Saga is fantastic. She's capable and determined and good at her job, but also weird. She's excited to get a cult case. She finds a weird doll in the woods in some kind of ritual set-up and thinks it would make a good gift for her daughter. She's been psychic probably her whole life and just wrote it off as intuition. She's tormented with doubts and insecurities but the people in her life reassure her that's she's doing her best and has done so much for them.

Kiran is the tough government agent trope but as a woman, and I mean that in a good way. She gets to be a strong leader, kind of mean and annoying to deal with at first, stubborn, and capable. She has the bitter ex-wife who couldn't deal with her work. She bonds with Casey over marriage problems and drinking. She gets to shine in The Lake House, and I love it. Her role in the story would have been so easy to write as a man and they didn't go that route.

Remedy Games overall do still tend to have more men than women, but it feels like they're making a genuine effort to include more diverse, interesting women with every new installment, giving us more options to play as them, and I really appreciate it.

[animentality]

I say Gortash isn't straight and I invite all the yapping hetland sheepdogs into my yard, apparently.

As if anyone in Baldur's Gate 3 is straight.

[ilkkawhat]

[honestlyvan]

I do kind of wonder if the implicit assumption that Door is mad at Alan for involving Saga should be re-examined a little bit.

The game is very careful to not frame any of Saga's relationships as paternalistic. Like, repeatedly, with emphasis, especially among the relationships with people who are close to her and have reasons to act protective over her. Having Door primarily be motivated by a sense of righteousness over someone messing with his protectorate goes against theme with her, and would single him out as the only male character whose help Saga does need.

Furthermore, we know Freya didn't seem to think that highly of Door, never telling Saga anything about him and being firm in not wanting to discuss the topic. Her considering Door a potential danger to Saga just like her powers and choosing to hide the truth to protect her wouldn't make sense if she, too, could use her seer powers to confirm that Door did have Saga's best interest at heart, and with Door existing outside of time, I don't think there's adequate signalling that this would be something he would have had a change of heart about.

Furthermore, while Door is very likeable and definitely not a villain or even an antagonist... he is very trickster-like, and seems very cavalier with how he chooses to interfere and when. From his interactions with the Old Gods, spending fourty years on kill-on-sight terms with them only to happily fanboy over having them on his show and collaborate with them to mess with Alan, to the way he almost deigned to let Alan create a hint for Saga about how to use her powers rather than letting Saga and Tim just work it out amongst themselves, he's playing the long game in every situation and seems to enjoy making the story take twists and turns because of his involvement.

So Door is in a weird superposition of meddlesome/hands-off largely because I almost got a sense that with Saga, he's keeping his distance on purpose. Keeping himself concealed and out of the conversation, despite much of her story being discovering her origins and discovering her own supernatural influence. Outside of letting Alan create a single manuscript page about him, he doesn't even hint at his own existence while Saga is in the Dark Place, theoretically right there for him to reach out to.

And if Door does ultimately think that surely any daughter of his can handle herself, there is one another innocent that has been involved in this all by Wake I could see him getting worked up over instead.

[velvetjune]

I’m aware that the point of being an actor is acting, but it’s amazing how well Ilkka Villi plays different roles in Alan Wake. Alan, Scratch, and Zane are all distinct and memorable, while still having enough connection and similar mannerisms to show that they’re each others’ doubles. and that’s not even going into the other iterations, like Alan in the writers room, Zane playing Alan in Yötön Yö, or Mr. Scratch in American Nightmare. Even when Alan and Zane are side by side I’m so immersed by the acting story that I’m. how are you played separately by the same person. the voice acting over Alan helps, but then it’s also. Holy shit this dubbing over is good.

[loversandantiheroes]

Not to put too fine of a point on it, but if you're any sort of creative artist that struggles with mental health and the way it affects your ability to create the way you want to (and perhaps feel you need to), please play Alan Wake 2.

Sam Lake gets it.