Today’s game is some more Alan Wake II. I got to the lake house DLC today, and holy shit, I love it. There’s just a lot of things going on that are amazing. It’s like playing Alan Wake 2 again for the first time.

Namely, there’s these guys. Idk what their deal is, I’m completely blind here, but when i encountered them I fucking ran. Didn’t even try to fight them.

It’s like, taken. Yeah. I can handle those fine. I have experience with those. Then I just get these paint things thrown at me and it freaks me out. They’re tall, gangly, and unnaturally human looking compared to the taken who still feel and look Human.

There’s also this talking painting. After reading some of the lore documents lying around I have an idea of what its schtick is, but I’m not gonna say any theories ahead of time.

And then the themes. There’s a bunch here I’m seeing. Like ideas of autonomy in the pages, or a meta commentary on what I think is Ai Generation through the machines designed to endlessly mimic Alan’s writing, or even just art kind of being a constantly growing thing you can’t really stop no matter how you try to contain it. But the one that really stood out to me is this guy, who’s one of the writers from the beginning.

I ran into him as I was snooping around, fresh off the Typewriter Machine Room. I talk to him and he’s dissecting Alan’s writing in way’s that aren’t what we know Alan’s stuff to actually be about (at least that’s how I understood it). He talks about the Shadows and stuff being about capitalism, when in reality we know the meaning is, albeit a little more personal to Alan, but also a weapon to fight the dark presence. That led me to two conclusions.

Either 1) This was The Writer’s basically saying parallels ≠ Commentary, so my AI comparison might not be meta commentary, or 2) it was them commenting on how we can kind of find our own meaning in other works of art, even though they may not have been intended. Of course I suppose both can be true as well now that I think. Far from a formal opinion (if I meant it to be so I’d have quotes) but it was just something I was thinking about.

I know this is just “I’m noticing details” but that’s part of what I love about this game, so I’ll stop with this last one and just point out I love how Estevez’s jacket gets paint on it. It’s a neat detail.