Review: Alan Wake 2: Night Springs, by Remedy
by
Stuart Holland
Alan Wake 2’s Night Springs DLC swings wildly from the main game’s survival horror into a fantastically bizarre pastiche of the Alan Wake series’ origins. Night Springs, the mystical in-universe TV show within the Alan Wake series, has always worn its kooky Twilight Zone inspiration on its sleeve, and now it has grown beyong being a background collectible to taking over the whole game for a few hours.
I thoroughly enjoyed the base Alan Wake 2 game, and this DLC’s short experiment with doing something very narratively different is still a great breath of fresh air. It doesn’t take itself even as seriously as the main game (which winks and nods at the viewer already on many occasions).
Night Springs (the DLC) is only a few hours long. It’s refreshing to play something experimental and to completion in a short session. It’s broken up into 3 episodes which aren’t directly connected to each other. If you’re worried that I haven’t spoilered out some of the details here, know that Night Springs is hard to spoil. It takes liberties with the concept of “making sense” - the experience of actually playing it is what delivers the fun. Knowing that something will happen later doesn’t prevent you from being surprised in the interim.
Basically, I’ll hide any egregious spoilers, but knowing what it’s about in advance doesn’t detract from the fun of this one. (And I say that as someone who is particularly sensitive to spoilers!)
The first episode has you playing as Rose, who you might recognize from the main game. (She - see there are still some spoiler guards.) In Night Springs, you play through a ridiculously over the top fantasy of Rose saving Alan from his evil twin brother (who’s totally just Alan in a jacket). In the main game, you scrabble for ammo. In this, you have a nearly-infinite-ammo semi-automatic shotgun. You blast through the “haters” going after Alan, all to save your true love. This entire episode hams it up, leaning into the elseworlds-style of a fan’s fantasy of saving their object of obsession.
The second episode, you play as guest star Jesse Faden, who you might know from Control. You end up in Coffee World, which you also might recognize from the main game. The setup here is less over the top, but the setting is more so. When the decrepit voice of some twisted Dark Place monster growls out “You. Are not. Coffee”, you know something special is happening.
And finally, in the third episode, you play as… Shawn Ashmore, the real actor (who you might know from both the main game and Remedy’s other game, Quantum Break). In this episode, Shawn is playing a character who’s an actor. And that actor is performing in an FMV sequence… for a video game. And the director of that video game (inside the setting of the video game you’re playing) is Sam Lake (director of Remedy Entertainment in real life). The layers really do just keep going. And the plot is that there are alternate realities, and alternate Shawns, where he’s a time- and dimension-hopping hero (so, Quantum Break), trying to stop Warlin Door (from the main Alan Wake 2).
What follows is an unapologetically meta and hilariously ridiculous romp through gaming history. At one point your cutting-edge graphics immersive horror game engine drops you and your stupendously powerful 2025+ hardware into .
All three episodes deliver on their ridiculous promises in spades and quickly. I laughed, both for humor and in disbelief. I enjoyed blowing away the dark presence’s new, alternate-world phantoms. And managed to pick up all of the achievements along the way.
Alan Wake 2: Night Springs
