Spider-Man is a powerful character. So powerful, in fact, that he even terrifies people in real life and influences their business decisions. Marvel’s Spider-Man launched exclusively for PlayStation consoles and later on the PC, with the Miles Morales spinoff game achieving some popularity as well.
Also read: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s Graphics Modes Have Been Revealed
The game that it has impacted is Alan Wake II, developed by Remedy Entertainment, and its prequel Alan Wake was formerly exclusive to the Xbox 360, having launched back in 2010. The Alan Wake series is, like Spider-Man, a single-player, third-person experience but unlike it also features strong survival horror elements and is a much scarier game overall. Recently, the creator of the game spoke at Gamescom 2023 about the two games.
Why did Spider-Man 2 delay Alan Wake II?
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 releases exclusively on the PlayStation 5 on 20th October later this year, while Alan Wake II was supposed to be out on October 17th before being delayed to October 27th. Explaining the decision, creative director and writer of the game Sam Lake said:
“Well, we were looking at the week and we were looking at these brilliant, brilliant giant games coming out, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and all, and just felt like, well, we don’t have to go neck to neck. We can just kind of shift it a couple of days!”
Also read: Gamescom 2023: Alan Wake 2’s Behind-Closed-Doors Preview – One Hell of a Sequel
As Lake rightfully noted, October is full of many highly anticipated video games, such as Alone in the Dark and Ghostrunner 2¸both of whom launched just before Alan Wake II.
How will the gameplay of Alan Wake II be different?
Speaking on the gameplay of Alan Wake II, Sam Lake confirmed that it would be bigger than the first game in the series but it wouldn’t be a traditional third-person shooter game where players mow down enemies. He said:
“Yeah, that felt like a big revelation to us through the years we’ve been trying to make this happen, done other games in between. And the original Alan Wake was very much an action-adventure with a kind of horroresque story, and it always felt like they’re not an exact match. It turned into an interesting experience, a unique experience for sure. But there were several reasons that we were getting criticism on combat being too samey kind of through the whole experience because there was a lot of it like you have in an action game. So that was one thing that we wanted to fix. But at the other time, we really, really wanted to do more with interactive storytelling and merging gameplay with story and having elements of gameplay that are about the story.”
Also read: Alan Wake 2 Is Set to Feature Quantum Break Actor, Shawn Ashmore, in New Role
Noting that there was a strong disconnect in some games in terms of their pacing and by adding cut scenes followed by action gameplay, and then repeating the same cycle, Lake said they wanted to avoid that. Hence the reason to choose survival horror as a genre for the game is that the pacing is slower than most other games and thus right for blending in gameplay and storytelling organically.
Source: Push Square
