You've seen Max Payne wear a grimace, but what about a smile? Standing across from Sam Lake is surreal at the best of times, with Remedy Entertainment's creative director having not only shaped some of the best action games of all-time but starred in them too. Now, in the physical manifestation of a world that he wrote into reality, surreal barely cuts it.
We're on a soundstage in Helsinki, Finland, and Lake's wide-eyed enthusiasm is becoming infectious. My grin begins to mirror his own as Ilkka Villi swaggers onto set as Thomas Zane, the actor having now swapped Alan Wake's disheveled suit for a white silk button-down shirt and a pair of tight leather jeans – The Doors' frontman Jim Morrison personified, circa '68. Just when I think I have a handle on Alan Wake 2, Remedy shatters every one of my expectations.
Lake may have been a principal architect of this scene, a live-action echo that will ripple into reality in Alan Wake 2's 'Room 665' mission, but his joyful reaction to seeing it unfold is entirely unscripted. "It was the first moment I saw Thomas Zane come to life – hair, makeup, costume, attitude, all," he says. "We had rehearsed the part with Ilkka, but this was the first time in the room with Zane, and I knew that the scenes we were going to shoot would be among the best of the game."
Earlier this year, I spent a day in the Dark Place – the torturous dreamscape where Wake has been trapped for 13 years. It had been brought to life in the physical world as a series of intricately-dressed sets, each designed to reflect a key location from Alan Wake 2 in service of Remedy's vast interactive storytelling ambitions. The studio has invested further in filmed live-action than ever before, and the commitment to experimentation and authenticity is truly electrifying.
Stepping into the Dark Place
Let's back up, because I should probably set the scene. When I arrive on set, Ilkka Villi (the actor who portrays Alan Wake) is already dressed and ready for action. Layered autumnal clothing that's seen better days; his longer jet black hair and unkept beard signaling the chilling passage of time beneath Cauldron Lake. I've spent much of the last decade hoping that I would one day be reunited with the author responsible for such instrumental novels as 'Departure' and 'Return'. I just didn't expect it to be quite like this.
Villi is already in-character as a terrified Alan Wake as he steps out of Helsinki and into Room 665 at the Oceanview Hotel. The room number, an obscure Remedy easter egg; the location, a link to the Remedy Connected Universe. A bar has been wheeled beside a window which, after a little magic in post-production, will overlook neon-lit New York City streets manifested by the Dark Place. Two used tumblers sit atop the upper shelf of the bar, bottles of half-empty scotch adorn the bottom. Elsewhere there's a stack of CRT television sets, and a large piece of abstract artwork denoting a black and white spiral – the coverart of a book entitled 'Withinside' in Alan Wake Remastered, and an etch on a door in Control's Oceanview Motel. Frayed persian rugs are covered in crumpled, ink-blotted manuscript pages, and there's a discarded typewriter within arms reach of an unmade bed.
"Feel free to look around Alan's room," says Anssi Maatta, cinematics and live-action director, "but be careful not to touch anything." That's a fair request. Remedy has worked tirelessly to ensure that the spaces designed in the Northlight Engine and those reconstructed in the real-world are a direct reflection of one another. You see, live-action isn't merely being used throughout Alan Wake 2 for impact, but rather to further embed thematic threads of the narrative.
"We don't want to hide the fact that we are using different mediums in Alan Wake 2," Maatta adds. "Even the core thematics of the story revolve around different realities," Lake expands, noting that the two mediums are closely interwoven to help capture the "dream-like nature of the Dark Place." He says that the concept is designed to "keep you off balance, make you question what's real and what's imagined, and make you think about the layers of reality. Some of this is achieved by switching the medium from the game to live action and back again."
I was also able to visit the Writer's Room set, which is a physical manifestation of the Writer's Room that you can warp to at any time during Alan Wake 2 – it's where Wake rewrites the reality of the Dark Place with new plot ideas and story threads he picks up on his travels. What's impressive about this space is just how much attention to detail has gone into getting the scale right for when it's seen in live action. It's a dark foreboding place, with little more than a massive writing desk and typewriter, a big blackboard, an old CRT, and naturally, a stuffed owl hanging as the centerpiece.
Maatta says that Remedy "had a bit more freedom to go weird with the stylization" during live-action scenes as they are "somewhat simpler to create than fully computer-based cinematics." Kaleidoscopes, hair gel, cigarette smoke, and all. What's interesting is that, as outrageous as a lot of this is, Remedy demonstrates restraint as it works towards a consistent visual identity. "Live-action works as a gateway to the odd, psychedelic dream reality. Cinematic scenes are used as the glue between the gameplay and the most important story beats," says Maatta, adding that Remedy has paid "extra attention to the transitions so that the overall experience feels as smooth and solid as possible."
To achieve this cohesion has been a labor of love. Alan Wake 2 has been in production for almost four years, with a staff of over 130 working towards its completion. It isn't uncommon for video games to drastically change shape throughout development, and the demands of integrating ambitious shot lists only complicates matters further – once something has been committed to camera, there's little opportunity to change it later. This is something Remedy has brushed against in the past. "Traditionally, video game production is iterative, and live action production is linear," says Lake. "They move forward in different cycles. Fitting them together can be difficult. We learned this the hard way with Quantum Break because we were not in control of the live action production and schedule."
Remedy's 2016 effort utilized four full-length, live-action episodes to connect each act of the game, engineered by an external company, Lifeboat Productions. For Alan Wake 2, Remedy brought as much in-house as possible to give the studio full autonomy over the implementation and structure of the live action intersections. "We carefully picked key locations that were polished far enough in the game to build them 1:1 in the studio. Even then, once built, we photographed them and polished the game versions further based on the physical versions," says Lake, who expands on this commitment to authenticity. "We use scanned digital doubles of the actors in the game to begin with, so having the same actors in live actions was a given. In a few cases we also created the physical costumes for the characters first, then scanned them for the game."
It's not long after Villi takes his position, standing beside the bed, that the set falls completely silent. Villi grips either side of a Steadicam system as crew hunch over monitors to ensure that the scene is properly blocked. "Are you ready?" Maatta asks Villi, who offers a slight nod in return. "Okay then, and action!" A weave of movement follows, with Villi shifting his weight as he recites panicked lines with methodical precision. Standing just off to the side is Sam Lake; his body mirroring Villi's – Wake's – own movements.
Trading places
Something I don't think I've fully appreciated in the past is that Alan Wake is the result of two performances – Ilkka Villi provides the body, and Matthew Porretta the voice. I mentioned before that Villi recites lines with methodical precision, and that's because Porretta has to overdub them externally after the performance has been captured. The enormity of that creative endeavor weighed on me while I watched this scene. Villi, on the other hand, seems unphased.
"I love working with Matt, and I'm very proud to share Alan with him as an actor. Unfortunately, we very rarely got to be in the same room (or on the same continent) when doing Alan Wake 2," he tells me, speaking to the complexities COVID-19 introduced to production. "Luckily for me, the live action scenes were arranged so that I could do the whole performance, voice included, freely, without having to sync up with anything. Matt would then dub all those sequences a couple months later. When preparing, I listened to a lot of Matt's VO material and tried to get a hang of his rhythm and intonation a bit, but I imagine the dubbing task still couldn't have been very easy for him."
For Villi, ensuring that he's in perfect sync with Porretta isn't the only challenge. Villi's presence has expanded for the sequel, taking on the role of Thomas Zane – the poet turned protector who appears throughout the original game in a diving suit. Now, it would appear that something far more insidious is occurring, with Zane swapping the underwater gear for a distorted copy of Wake's body, antagonizing the writer as he attempts to escape the Dark Place. "I've been fortunate enough to get to do a lot of different things in my acting career, some of them quite odd even, but I've never acted in a two-hander where I do both characters before," he says. "So this was a first; it wasn't easy, but it was a lot of fun."
Once filming wraps on Alan Wake – a torturous few days by all accounts, given the headspace Villi had to occupy – it's back to hair and makeup. "One day after lunch it was time to shave off my beard and face the battle of getting Zane's leather pants on," he laughs. Villi explains that he's had a wide berth to settle on how he would portray Zane now that he's in full command of the body and voice, and that he worked closely with Sam Lake and Anssi Maatta to refine the performance.
"We had a rehearsal day for the character of Tom Zane prior to the shoot," Villi continues, "where we bounced ideas and sort of sketched what Tom could be like this time around. Sam actually finalized the scripts for the Hotel Room scenes only after that. So the three of us kind of gave birth to the character together. But the first time I actually played Tom Zane was after we had already filmed Alan's side for all of their scenes together."
Anssi Maatta directed the delightful Dr. Casper Darling live action segments in Control, but he says his work on Alan Wake 2 has been far more complex. "Story and production wise, the Dr. Darling scenes were quite simple. We had one actor, the wonderful Matthew Porretta, and a very small studio set with only one usable camera angle and a crew of 10 people. Now we have multiple genres varying from comedy to horror, very deep and complex story structure, a lot of in-camera VFX, a big cast, and over 10 different sets and locations. Everything is so much more demanding and challenging, pushing us, the team, as creatives to a whole other level."
As Tom Zane steps onto set, the whole crew jumps into action. Villi and Maatta stand over a monitor and scrutinize the Alan Wake performance that was recorded just hours ago, and a few minutes later Lake is joyfully teaching the actor a dance that some of you may recognize from Alan Wake's American Nightmares. It's a blur of movement and stage directions, with close attention being paid to Villi's positioning and presence. Not only does he need to figure out how to portray Zane – presented as an out-of-control filmmaker, one who may well have been trapped in the Dark Place for over 60 years – but also how best to act off of his previous performances. Wake and Zane share scenes together, with Villi performing both roles.
"We had an actor to help me out in the scenes between Wake and Zane, standing in first for Zane and then Wake. He'd be focused and deliver the lines, but I would always ask him to be very neutral in his delivery. I needed to be the one to decide what Zane would be like and how he would react to things. So in a way I was already acting a little bit as Zane in my head while I was actually acting as Wake," says Villi.
"The fact that Wake's dominant state of mind is confusion and a certain what-the-fuckness made that somewhat easier. The irony of it all was that when I finally had a scene partner in the Alan Wake 2 live action shoots, I still didn't really have one. But Sam and Anssi were constantly there to direct me, help me with everything and convince me that what I did made sense. I thought it was a beautiful collaboration." Later, on a large monitor, I see the separately recorded Zane and Wake performances aligned together to replicate their shared scene, and honestly, the effect is astounding.
Ripples of reality
When it's all said and done, I walked away from the soundstage more convinced than ever that Alan Wake 2 is Remedy Entertainment's most ambitious project to date. The studio has played with the seamless integration of live action and in-game play in the past, but never to such an audacious extent. It's the attention to detail and the willingness to experiment that stuck with me, and made me even more keen to check out the final result on October 27, 2023.
Speaking to Lake, he knows full well that there were easier paths to take. The intersection between gameplay, cinematics, and live action that Remedy is shooting for brings challenges for both the developers and performers, with the expansion of Villi's role adding yet more complexity to proceedings. Then again, he wouldn't have it any other way.
"Having two actors work together to create the character of Alan Wake is a lot of hard work. Ilkka and Matt do it very well and have been doing it a long time now. They are both brilliant actors. I wanted to give them both an opportunity to have a character fully for themselves, where they could make all the choices themselves to portray the character. Matt was Casper Darling in Control, and now Ilkka is Thomas Zane – and I can't wait for the players to get to know Ilkka's Zane."
