Alan Wake

PC version

In February 2010 Microsoft announced that the game would become an Xbox 360 exclusive. Initially it had been announced as a PC title as well. Oskari Häkkinen, head of franchise at development studio Remedy Entertainment, clarified that the company of about 50 people could only devote its resources to work on a single platform. He left the option of a later PC version open, stating that it would require a "sit down" with Microsoft to see where the title went. Remedy has a long history in PC development and Alan Wake would be its first game not to appear on the platform. In December 2011 it was revealed there would be a PC release after all. It was eventually released in February 2012.

References: Max Payne

• Note that some of Alan Wake's novels have names similar to chapters from Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. These titles include The Things I Want and Late Goodbye among others.
• During one of the game's flashbacks you see that New York city is having a very harsh blizzard. The radio plays a warning very much like the one heard in Max Payne.
• James McCaffrey (voice of Max Payne) makes a vocal cameo at the beginning of Act 2. Alan can pick up two pages of a manuscript in his office for a story written in the style of Max's monologues ("I'd lain here in the snow while the lurid chain of scenes that had led me here kept playing in my head, a rerun of my own private snuff movie, a memory of my corpse...") Instead of Matthew Porretta (voice of Alan Wake) reading these manuscripts, as is usually the case, it's the gravelly voice of Det. Max Payne.
• This and other Max Payne references serves to suggest that Alan Wake wrote a story similar or identical to Payne's under the title character "Casey Lynch."

References

• When Wake is being pursued by Agent Nightingale, he calls Wake various famous writers, including: Dan Brown, Bret Easton Ellis, Raymond Chandler, and H. P. Lovecraft.
• In the game, there is a TV show called Night Springs. Not only is this a clear parody of The Twilight Zone, but it is also the opposite of the name of the town in which the game takes place: Bright Falls.
• Alan Wake regularly encounters a woman by the name of Cynthia Weaver, for example in the diner at the start of the game. She appears as a weird woman cradling a lamp. Her manners are identical to the "Log-lady" in Twin Peaks, who cradles a log in the exact same manner.

• The game references Stephen King and his novels such as The Shining.

• Wake's editor cautions him to not upset the natives or "it'll be Deliverance all over". This is a reference to the 1972 film Deliverance in which vacationers are raped and attacked by locals.

Awards

• 4Players
  • 2010 – #3 Best Graphics of the Year
  • 2010 – #3 Best Sound Effects of the Year* IGN
  • 2010 - Best Xbox 360 Horror Game (Editors' Choice)

Information also contributed by Big John WV, BurningStickMan, kent c. koopa and MasterMegid