'Alan Wake 2' revives the story-driven video game

From Until Dawn to The Evil Within series to all those excellent Resident Evil games, I’ve played plenty of horror video games. But I’ve never had to stop playing one just 10 minutes in.

That’s exactly what I did when I started Alan Wake 2, though. And that’s because I’ve never played a game quite this creepy and legitimately scary. The opening moments of Alan Wake 2 start you off in a green-gray world, walking uncertainly around with no clothes except your hairy back. And then just minutes in, the screen flashes with images of something else. As you walk, this continues – and you don’t know why.

Those images got to me early on, leaving my mind to run wild about what they could be, what they could mean – and why I would be better off playing Alan Wake 2 in the daytime and not at night. And it’s this extreme horror factor that’s captivated gamers since the game’s release. In Alan Wake 2, developer Remedy Entertainment proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that a game can still excel with storytelling and mood as its backbones.

Alan Wake 2 arrives on a gaming landscape that increasingly gravitates towards multiplayer games and rogue-lites instead of story-driven experiences. Emblematic of that was the struggles of Immortals of Aveum, a story-focused FPS, earlier this year. But Remedy maintains steadfast in its story-first approach, crafting a pulse-pounding atmosphere and tale. During an expansive Q and A, creative director Sam Lake and game director Kyle Rowley explained why the story game remains as relevant as ever, and how current-gen tech makes Alan Wake 2 an even more complete experience:

DN: The original Alan Wake was released way back in 2010, on the Xbox 360 generation of consoles. How was it different developing this sequel a whopping 13 years later – and two...