Alan Wake 2 is the last phase of full production

In the comment section of the new statement to investors, Virtala reveals that both Control 2 and Max Payne 1&2 Remake have moved to the proof-of-concept stage. In particular, the development team has worked on the world building and gameplay mechanics of Control 2, while the studio expects to grow the size of the team behind the Max Payne remake gradually towards the end of the year. It hopes that the remake will be at a “high quality to today’s consoles and PCs.”

Remedy will also continue development on Codename Condor, a co-operative multiplayer game set in the world of Control, as well as Codename Vanguard, a F2P co-operative game that has gained more momentum with new key hires. Codename Condor is a part of Remedy’s plans to “expand the Control brand.”

Meanwhile, in line with our prior report, Alan Wake 2 will be releasing this year. Remedy is focusing its efforts on its upcoming launch, with the game starting its “last major phase of full production.”

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Alan Wake Remastered Review – Word Crimes

Burnt out and suffering from a major case of writer’s block, mystery-novelist Alan Wake and his wife Alice take a vacation to the small, idyllic town of Bright Falls. The town is well-known for being a fabulous place for creative types. And there’s always the famous psychologist Dr. Hartman in town if perhaps that pesky block doesn’t clear up. Something’s not sitting right with Alan. Even on the ferry entering town he’s got a strange feeling about the place.

Things take a very dark turn when Alan picks up keys to their vacation cottage from a creepy old woman at the diner. Alice is unceremoniously ripped away from him by the sinister Dark Presence and pulled into the deep waters of Cauldron Lake. He dives in after her but at a cost. Alan comes to inside his car unsure of how he got there. With the help of a mysterious voice, manuscript pages he has no recollection of writing, and a handful of allies, Alan is on a quest to save Alice no matter the cost.

The episodic approach to telling Alan’s story makes playing through this tale akin to watching a great limited series experience. Alan Wake Remastered includes both DLC episodes in addition to the six core chapters. I personally find it immensely satisfying to hit that end of episode song and know that yes, I did just outrun a half dozen Taken in that last excursion with only a few rounds of revolver ammo and no illuminating weapons to speak of. That bit of a breather instills a sense of accomplishment and lets me mentally prepare for what’s next.

Fans of the suspense and horror genres will note a lot of nods to some classics. Twin Peaks is well represented here. Copious amounts of coffee, the diner, the town’s own version of the Log Lady. Pay attention to the TVs Alan comes across during his stay, and be sure to turn them on. Night Springs is this universe’s take on The Twilight Zone. Some say Bright Falls was the inspiration for the program. Either way, Alan has a connection to it. I don’t want to ruin all the fun for you. Just keep an eye open for fun Easter eggs when and where you can.

Long gone are the product placements that those of us who played Alan Wake the first time around recall. Instead of every battery pack promoting Energizer or those giant Verizon billboards, batteries are simply batteries and advertisements are local to the town. It’s a welcome change, as is the addition of the QR codes not included in the original Xbox 360 release. Scanning these codes takes you to private YouTube links, each one starring Alan and his typewriter. These replace older QR codes from the PC release which featured outbound links and some other references.

Alan Wake Remastered Review – Be Afraid of the Dark

The Dark Presence taunting Alan infects the locals. Wispy black smoke wafts from those touched by the darkness. These Taken are tough; in order to do any sort of damage to them Alan needs to use light. To this day, Alan Wake’s use of light as a weapon is my absolute favorite game mechanic. By targeting the Taken with Alan’s flashlight he can weaken them to the point where plugging a few shots into them will take them down. This is also true of possessed objects; put the spotlight on them and eventually said items will poof into the night. Flares and streetlights are great ways to keep Alan safe if he’s being attacked by a mob. Flares burn out after a while but should last long enough to take out one or two attackers. Streetlights tend to be checkpoints and restore Alan’s health.

If you’re looking for boomsticks, Alan will come across a few different types. Revolvers are fairly common as is ammunition for it. A couple shots from the pistol will KO the weaker Taken. The larger lumberjack types are best handled with shotguns or hunting rifles. Since this is a hunting town these show up from time to time. Flashbang grenades also make an appearance. They aren’t super abundant; if you’re dealing with waves of Taken, these could be the answer you’re looking for. But nothing beats the pure rush of adrenaline I get when a perfect shot from my flare gun lights up the night sky and nails one of those Taken dead-on, with collateral damage along the way.

Unfortunately, there is one major issue I ran into later in the game. On my way to the top of the dam, there’s a segment with a giant spotlight which you need to use to help cull some of the Taken. I’d hit a checkpoint here and decided to go back and resume from here when I could come back to the game. When I booted up from here I was greeted with missing… everything. The only assets that loaded were some distant mountains. OK, I said to myself, I just need to move the camera and that’ll fix it. But it didn’t. Now the game was cutting in and out and it was impossible to do anything since Alan, the floodlight, and the Taken would sporadically all vanish. My next thought was to switch PS5s; perhaps the second system wouldn’t have the same problem, but it did. I’m now thinking I need to wait for a patch in order to continue.

Up until that bizarre glitch, enjoying Alan Wake Remastered was like the best kind of deja vu. Muscle memory steered me toward the hidden caches, triggered reminders to backtrack just a little here and there or look around that corner for collectibles. Alan’s somewhat stiff voice, the ancient rockers, Barry—all of these things, campy as they were, welcomed me home. Those cold waters of Cauldron Lake sure are impossible to escape.

Alan Wake Remastered review code provided by publisher. Version 1.000.003 reviewed on PlayStation 5. For more information, please see our Review Policy.

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Condor is set to expand on the world that was introduced in Control, and acts as another piece of the Remedy Connected Universe that the developer has been setting up. The franchise’s Game Director Mikael Kasurinen describes the world as “a place for multitudes of stories, events, and characters” and “a place where unexpected, strange, and extraordinary things occur”. Not much else is known about the premise of the game apart from the concept art shown above. The title will be developed on Remedy’s Northlight engine and will be aiming for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. The initial development budget has been set at €25 million.

The game is the creation of Remedy’s new multiplayer-focused team known as Vanguard. Their main aim is “to challenge conventions and to prototype and ship new types of ongoing live multiplayer game experiences”. Kasurinen is aware that fans have their reservations over the team trying something different from their more traditional single-player experiences:

We get that there is going to be skepticism about multiplayer. But I believe we can create shared experiences without compromising the unique DNA of who we are, or the stories we want to tell. Yes, we need to re-think our angles, our techniques, our mindset, but we see it as an exciting challenge: What would a Remedy multiplayer game look like?

Remedy currently has five games in development. As well as Condor, a single-player campaign for Crossfire X/HD has been confirmed. There is also the studio’s “next big title”, and this could possibly be the “bigger-budget Control-game” that was also revealed today. More information on this title will be revealed in the future. The collection is completed by two unannounced console and PC titles in collaboration with Epic Games. Rumors also recently came up that Remedy was working with Sony on a PlayStation-exclusive title, but those have yet to be confirmed.

[Source: Remedy Games (1, 2)]

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PlayStation Studios Global External Producer Claire Bromley has been sharing a number of staffing announcements from Remedy employees recently, including posts from COO Christopher Schmitz, communications director Thomas Puha, and audio designer Sam Hughes. While it’s not unusual for Bromley to share third-party employment opportunities, the sheer quantity coming from Remedy is enough to raise an eyebrow. The other developers she shares with similar frequency are internal PlayStation Studios. A Reddit post also notes that Bromley did the same thing for Sumo prior to Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Housemarque leading up to Returnal, both PlayStation exclusive titles.

Of course it would still be a stretch to link that to a PlayStation exclusive Remedy title, even as far as rumor standards go. The next piece of the puzzle comes from known industry insider Shpeshal Ed, who has previously leaked things like Final Fantasy VII Remake coming to the March 2021 PlayStation Plus lineup.

As far as I’m aware. This rumour is realhttps://t.co/K8a5rvZ75N pic.twitter.com/VZjXwEy9Zi

— Shpeshal Ed (@Shpeshal_Ed) April 5, 2021

Shpeshal Ed includes a screenshot of a conversation from Discord with an anonymous source confirming that it is a Sony game, and says in a follow up tweet that he believes the title will be 100% exclusive to PlayStation.

We already know that Remedy is working on five games. One is the multiplayer free-to-play Vanguard. One is the Xbox exclusive CrossfireX. Two more are going to be published by Epic Games under their new partnership with Remedy. That leaves one unknown. There are heavy rumors of an Alan Wake 2 in development, though that could be one of the Epic published games, part of the “Remedy Connected Universe” that was established by Control and its expansions.

If the rumor does pan out, it’s unlikely that a PlayStation-exclusive title from Remedy would be part of the Remedy Connected Universe, so don’t expect Alan Wake 2 to suddenly be a PlayStation exclusive. It’s possible that Sony could have tapped the studio to work on a PlayStation franchise (much like Sumo handling development of Sackboy), or it could just as likely be a wholly original project in partnership with Sony. As usual with rumors, however, take this one with a grain of salt. Until we hear more officially from Remedy or PlayStation, we’re not entirely convinced just yet.

[Source: GamingBolt, Reddit; Via: PSU]

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The developer’s revenue between January 1 and December 31, 2020 increased by 30% last year to reach a total of €41.1 million. Their operating profits through 2020 were more than double that of the previous year, hitting €13.2 million last year compared to €6.5 million in 2019. This was all managed without releasing a single new title, although they did release Control on several new platforms as well as the game’s two expansions.

Originally released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and the Epic Games Store in August 2019, the title was then made available on Steam, Nintendo Switch and Amazon Luna at different times throughout 2020. There were also two story-driven DLC expansions, The Foundation in March and AWE in August, the latter of which was a crossover with one of their other renowned franchises, Alan Wake. These were bundled into an Ultimate Edition package that released in September. The game’s success was also increased by its addition to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service. Towards the end of the year, Remedy announced the game had reached two million units sold. The Ultimate Edition was later released digitally on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, although their February 2021 release will not be included in those financial figures.

The title’s success hasn’t come without controversy, though. While Ultimate Edition owners on PS4 and Xbox One could get a free upgrade to the game on PS5 and XSX/S, those who purchased earlier editions of the game were unable to do so. The issue was then compounded when Deluxe Edition owners were accidentally upgraded to the Ultimate Edition before the mistake was realized and their access was revoked. The Ultimate Edition on PS5/XSX still hasn’t been released as a physical edition either, now due in March after suffering a delay from its initial November release date. Remedy has since gone some way to soothe feeling, at least for PlayStation owners, seeing as Control: Ultimate Edition is currently free for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 players through PlayStation Plus.

Remedy is making plans to move on, though. In the financial report, CEO Tero Virtala confirmed the “development team is gradually shifting to work on a new Remedy game, titled Vanguard“. The free-to-play multiplayer live-service co-op game is in the early stages of development by a smaller internal team, although Virtala did say it built on the “world-building and narrative strengths of Remedy”. They’ve also teamed up with Epic Games on two projects for consoles and PC. The first tile, a AAA game, will not begin full scale prosuction until the spring. The second title, which is smaller in scale, is in full production already. As soon as we know more on any of these titles, we’ll be sure to let you know.

[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]

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In a brief Twitter post this morning, Remedy shared the news with fans. See the tweet in question linked below:

An update from the development team: Control Ultimate Edition will arrive on next generation platforms early 2021.

We want the final quality of the game to be awesome, and so we need a bit more time to work on it. Thank you for your understanding and patience!

— Remedy Entertainment (@remedygames) November 6, 2020

With Control Ultimate Edition, customers will receive the base game, all updates, and the two story expansions–The Foundation and AWE. Unfortunately, the discourse surrounding what’s otherwise an incredible bundle has been mired in controversy. While countless relatively recent releases will grant current-gen owners with access to free next-gen upgrades, Control doesn’t sit in a similar boat. The only way to get a free next-gen upgrade for the supernatural adventure is to own the Ultimate Edition on PS4/Xbox One. Therefore, fans who picked up a copy at launch in 2019 won’t get to take advantage of the upgrade path.

According to 505 Games, such an upgrade is impossible due to technical-related woes. This has since been disproven by owners of the Deluxe Edition on PS4. Still, 505 Games remains firm in its release plans.

Control Ultimate Edition is available to purchase now on the PS4, PC via Steam, and Xbox One platforms. The title is slated to hit next-gen hardware on an unspecified date in the early part of 2021.

[Source: Remedy Entertainment on Twitter]

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Spoiler Warning: This review does contain some spoilers for Control: AWE in order to talk about its connective tissue to Alan Wake and what players who didn’t play Alan Wake will get out of it.

As is par for the course with Control, AWE begins with Jesse Faden hearing a mysterious voice (Alan Wake) calling to her, telling her to get into the elevator and explore the closed off Investigations sector. Unlike The Foundation DLC, which explored the caves beneath the Oldest House, as well as some strange planes of existence, the Investigations sector is just another wing of the Federal Bureau of Control. It’s more of the brutal concrete walls and sterile hallways, offices, and containment areas. It’s an aesthetic I love, and one of Control’s defining features, to be certain, but if you’re expecting to be surprised by the environments here, think again.

The biggest change is to the overall mood of Control, which takes on a real Alan Wake pseudo-horror vibe. The Investigations Sector is dark, and bad things (or one bad thing, rather) lurks in the darkness. Many of the puzzles here involve turning on lights and avoiding the darkness, lest a horrifying stretched out creature of a man drains the very life-force from you. AWE plays with these ideas briefly, but it’s a short DLC, easily ending in under two hours, so some of its mechanics don’t really feel that they get as fully fleshed out as they could be. But the real draw here, and obviously what Remedy is leaning on with this expansion, is the story connection to Alan Wake. However, AWE is more setup and less “Remedy’s Avengers.” It’s the interactive equivalent of Remedy’s blog post confirming a Remedy Connected Universe.

If you’re one of those who missed Alan Wake the first time around? There are plenty of explainers in AWE to help get you up to speed relatively well, but many of the references certainly aren’t going to land in the same way as for those who actually experienced it firsthand. You don’t need to have played Alan Wake to understand everything, but AWE feels like it is leaning on the lore connections between the two games for its “wow” moments.

Control AWE Review – Questions and Mysteries

Some of the most intriguing story elements come from documents and collectibles scattered around. Again, this was one of the strengths of the main game as well, making the player connect with Jesse as an outsider to everything that’s going on. There’s a fair amount of detective work needed to piece everything together, and even then, it often leads to more questions and mysteries. In one series of documents, it turns out Alan Wake wrote a spec script for Night Springs, the in-universe take on The Twilight Zone. With Wake’s writing able to come true, these script pages seem to imply that he’s the one who caused Director Trench to open the portal, unleash the Hiss, and the cause the events that led to Control’s main campaign.

Sadly, none of this is really touched on all that much in AWE’s direct story. Instead we get what amounts to a side mission to clear a horrifying and murderous creature from the Investigations Sector, a creature who turns out to be Alan Wake’s Dr. Emil Hartman. And that’s pretty much the gist of it. This isn’t about rescuing Wake. It’s just more Control, more clearing of evil entities from the Oldest House. And more fighting Hiss, with a single new weapon and one new enemy type who’s not all that distinguishable from the Hiss you’ve already been fighting. The sector-wide boss encounters with Hartman are a pretty good driving force though, and really double down on the horror mood AWE is going for.

The side missions in AWE are also some of the weakest in Control so far. While I was extremely excited by the prospect of learning about more Altered World Events and interacting with Altered Items, the few you’ll find here are less than memorable events that result in rather boring missions. In one, you’ll forward a spam chain letter that came from an Altered mailbox. Another has you cleansing a train car of the memory of its train crash. And perhaps the most potentially interesting one, but still ranked low on my list of best Control missions, a scavenger hunt on behalf of an alien entity locked in a containment cell who has jumbled the meaning of the entire English language. AWE is simply lacking its own Ashtray Maze or Swift Platform moment (though there is a cheeky reference to Swift Platform that made me chuckle).

Remedy did manage to work some alternate game modes and replayability into two arcade cabinets titled SHUM and SHUM II, Altered Items that “transport the user into a ‘video game-like state.'” It’s a clever in-universe way to add a couple of hoard modes to Control, but it’s really telling when AWE’s most exciting sequence is going back to play the Ashtray Maze again. To be fair, the Ashtray Maze is fucking awesome and hard to top anyway, but nothing else in AWE even comes close.

Control AWE Review – Stay Tuned

For players indifferent to the Alan Wake connection, those who may have missed the decade old game due to time or platform restrictions, there’s some interesting added lore here, but AWE is a rather by-the-numbers addition to Control that doesn’t really do much to elevate its main narrative, setting, or gameplay. It’s brief moments of light are let down without doing more to flesh out its unique ideas—the light and dark mechanics, interesting Altered Items, and its extensions to the story.

For the Alan Wake fans, the connection here isn’t as deep as it could have been. There’s a lot of lore and context added, viewing the events of Alan Wake through the lens of Control and the FBC, but AWE still feels like an Easter egg to some extent. A giant Easter egg sitting right out on the open, perhaps, but still just a bunch of connective tissue rather than plot beats that move the narrative of either Control or Alan Wake forward. Wake is still “missing.” Jesse just cleared out another area in the FBC. The biggest plot point comes from a scene at the end, after Jesse eliminates Hartman and reopens the Investigations Sector; There’s another AWE happening in Alan Wake’s Bright Falls, but the alert is dated “a couple years in the future.” Remedy has already confirmed they are working on the next game in the Remedy Connected Universe, and this is basically just a teaser for a Jesse Faden/Alan Wake team-up eventually. Just not now.

Control: AWE is good in that it’s more Control. But it feels like it was leaning a little bit too hard on being a teaser for its Alan Wake connections and the Remedy Connected Universe, which hurt its ability to be a really fun and engaging expansion for the Control side of things. For as brief as the expansion is, much of the runtime feels like it’s just spinning its wheels and never really going anywhere. I’m always happy to step into the shoes of Director Jesse Faden again, but AWE never gains its own identity as anything more than an interactive MCU-style post-credits scene; a lot of set up that we’ll need to wait years to see payoff. But hey, now you can replay the Ashtray Maze while you wait.

Control AWE review code was provided by publisher as part of the Control Ultimate Edition. Reviewed on PS4. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

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This second and final DLC for one of 2019’s best games sends Jesse to the previously sealed-off Investigation Sector, closed due to its pesky habit of ripping holes in space and time (naturally). Then comes the connection to Alan Wake, fiction writer extraordinaire and man sealed away in a dark dimension for over a decade. This connection was teased in the main game, but it now coming full circle. It appears Wake has finally overcome his writer’s block and is looking for a way out, which is causing hell to break loose in the FBC.

“Alan Wake is writing again, and you’ll be finding pages of his writing,” Remedy creative director Sam Lake said mid-stream. “The story he’s creating is affecting reality here. You can experience the full pages through the hotline menu in the game.” In addition to new hotline material, except a new enemy type, more side-quests with everyone’s favorite janitor, Ahti, and a light mechanic that will remind you that the folks who made Alan Wake also made Control.

And, most of all: All you Alan Wake fans out there can finally get some closure on his story and find out the gritty details from ten years ago. Control: AWE releases on August 27, coinciding with the release of that Control Ultimate Edition that has everyone all angry about the next-gen upgrade limited only to that edition.

You can pick up Control right now on Amazon, as well as the Season Pass which will get you immediate access to the first expansion, The Foundation, as well as AWE later this month.

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IGN quizzed Puha about Control‘s future at D.I.C.E. 2020 (where the game won four awards), to which he said:

A lot of [our recent work] was about getting Remedy into a position where we can create Control, and we can hopefully keep making more Control. So yeah, absolutely – and especially with all the love we’re getting. There are so many things we know we can we can do and explore, so I’d say this is just the start.

With the success of Control, a lot of interesting opportunities have opened up and there’s no shortage of ideas at Remedy either. It’s been a very, very interesting past six months, the future’s really exciting. Now, all this great momentum that Control’s generated is [making us say] let’s not waste that!

Executive producer Juha Vainio added that no one in Control‘s development team expressed a desire to leave following the game’s launch. “There are people who actually want in,” he said. “So we have a positive problem.”

In its recent financial report, Remedy said that Control is “a major achievement that proves the capabilities of our team and technology.” Despite not having a big marketing budget, sales “settled on a good level” and Control‘s success has opened the doors for “future partner discussions” for other Remedy projects.

Remedy has four projects in the works, one of which is an unannounced game.

[Source: IGN]

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