If you’ve been reading my weeknotes or checking out my media logs, you’ll know that I recently finished playing Alan Wake 2 (AW2) on my PS5 Pro. I had an absolute blast with it, and would like to spend a bit of time discussing one of my favourite aspects of the game: that is, the brilliant, seamless way in which it weaves live action sequences into scenes rendered by the game engine.
Live Action Media in Gaming: A Brief History
Video game developers are, of course, no stranger to mixed media. Full Motion Video (FMV) games grew in popularity during the 80s and the 90s with the advent of LaserDiscs (LDs), which made it possible to jump between analogue video scenes instantly.1 The basic idea behind FMV games was to provide players with an interactive TV or movie experience: choose your own adventure, in other words, but on the screen, rather than the page.2
My personal favourite FMV game (and one that is well worth mentioning here, as I suspect some aspects of AW2 may have at least been partially inspired by it) would have to be The X-Files Game (1998), which I played incessantly on my original PlayStation. The game is basically a playable live action X-Files episode, in which you assume the role of Craig Willmore, an FBI agent investigating the mysterious disappearance of the show’s lead characters. Willmore’s cutscenes change slightly depending on how you choose to react to the other characters you encounter, and the fairly linear plot is advanced by the clues and items you collect along the way. You can watch a full playthrough here to get a feel for it.
As fun and as interesting as the story ultimately was, The X-Files Game suffered from one significant problem: the gameplay itself. Willmore was not “controllable” in a traditional sense; between cutscenes, you were presented with a dull, static image and had to use your analogue sticks (or your mouse) to move around a slow, disembodied, pixellated hand that occasionally turned into an eye or a pair of lips. Willmore’s “hand” could pick up clues, open drawers, answer phones, pick locks, and point you in the direction of another static scene to explore and interact with. His “eye” could take a closer look at certain objects, and his “lips” opened up dialogue options with other characters. Pretty enthralling stuff, right? To say the least, if you’re the sort of person who enjoys a physical challenge while gaming, point-and-click mixed media games like The X-Files Game can get pretty old pretty quickly.3
When you play classic FMV games, you can understand why the genre eventually faded into obscurity … but it is nevertheless heartening to know that there are still some developers out there who are doing what they can to weave live action film sequences into modern video games without repeating FMV’s mistakes.
Enter Remedy Entertainment
The studio behind AW2, Remedy Entertainment, has been blending different aesthetic mediums together for quite some time now. The original Alan Wake (2010) game did not feature any live action sequences (opting instead for cutscenes built with the game engine), but it did directly lead to their production of Bright Falls (2010), a TV miniseries prequel to the events of Alan Wake featuring a couple of actors (Ilkka Villi, Matthew Porretta) who’ve gone on to appear in multiple other Remedy games since then.
Alan Wake’s American Nightmare (2012) was the first Remedy game to feature limited use of live action sequences via in-game television sets (see here, for example). The game was also promoted online with a live action commercial featuring Mr. Scratch, Alan’s evil alterego. This paved the way for their ultra-ambitious Quantum Break (2016), described on Steam as “part game, part live action show—where decisions in one dramatically affect the other.”
As I indicate in my mini review of the game on my media logs page, Quantum Break didn’t do much for me at all. The gameplay itself was enjoyable, and the live action sequences featured an excellent cast (Lance Reddick, Aiden Gillen, Shawn Ashmore, Dominic Monaghan), but the developers unfortunately did an awful job of tying those different media elements together. The lengthy live action sequences took me out of the game completely, as I had no choice but to put down my controller and essentially watch a TV show for twenty minutes at a time if I wanted to understand what was going on in the game. I ultimately didn’t finish it.
With Control (2019), Remedy dialed back the live action sequences significantly (possibly due to the criticisms that dogged Quantum Break), opting to only use live action for brief videos featuring Dr. Darling. See, for instance, this scene, where we learn more about Objects of Power and Altered World Events via an interview filmed with Darling. All other cutscenes in the game (save for some shadowy overlays here and there) were built with the game engine.
More live action footage crept into Control’s DLCs, especially the Alan Wake crossover, AWE (2020). The AWE DLC frequently featured live footage of Ilkka Villi as Alan Wake interposed over game engine-rendered cutscenes, as well as during playable sequences, as seen here. AWE struck a good balance between live action footage and compelling gameplay, but it’s nothing compared to what Remedy did with AW2.
Alan Wake 2 is A Master Class in Mixed Media
AW2 is basically everything Quantum Break wanted and failed to be: a video game that is simultaneously a live action show.
Interactable television sets are everywhere in the game. Sometimes, the live action sequences you watch on the sets are just fun little throwaway commercials, like this hilarious 80s-style advert for the Coffee World amusement park. Other times, they tie directly into key plot points, as seen during Alan’s awesome interview with Mr. Door.4 These moments feel completely natural in the game, and are never forced.
Brief live action sequences also appear in Saga Anderson’s mind place (warning, major spoilers) and during the echoes of half-remembered plot points Alan comes across while re-writing his story, layered over engine-rendered scenes using the same visual technique employed in Control: AWE. We also occasionally get split-second live action jump scares featuring characters like Mr. Scratch and Cynthia Weaver. These moments, too, never feel forced and never take you out of the game.
The finest example of what I’m talking about here occurs during the musical sequence that unfolds while Alan is still trapped in Mr. Door’s studio. If you have no intention of playing this game, please just do yourself a favour and watch this sequence in its entirety to witness what is easily the best mixed media moment in any video game ever.
Major spoilers for the musical sequence.
Engine-rendered Alan remains fully controllable by the player during the musical. The sequence takes place on a constantly-shifting TV set, where you walk Alan past large screens showing live action footage of himself and other characters singing about the events of the first game, with music supplied by the fictional heavy metal band, The Old Gods of Asgard. Live action characters occasionally beckon toward you from the screens, and point you in the right direction. Masking tape on the studio floor also directs you where to go. At one point, you come across a flashlight, and eventually find the flare gun that featured prominently in the first game; you use this flare gun to take out a few monsters that appear, all while the ridiculous live action heavy metal musical happens on the screens around you. It eventually turns into a jazz number – you know, because it wasn't already absurd enough.The musical sequence in AW2 was one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had in gaming in many years. And to think, it was almost cut from the game…
Why Does it Matter?
At this point in the post, you might be wondering “yeah, so what?” What difference would it have made if Remedy had opted to render all that live action footage with the game engine, rather than filming it with real flesh and blood actors?
Quite a lot, I’d argue.
Generally speaking, mixed media (when done well) is just incredibly impressive from both a visual and a technical standpoint. Think of classic mixed media titles like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? or Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It is (for me, at least) a joy to see different visual storytelling mediums woven into one seamless whole. I’m not sure why that is. It just is.
In a story like AW2 where the lines between reality and unreality are so blurred, it is also wonderfully metafictional of Remedy to use a medium that looks “realistic” (i.e. live action film) directly alongside a medium that looks “sort of real, but uncannily so” (i.e. modern 3D video game rendering). It just makes sense for them to do it that way, given what the game is ultimately trying to do and say. Those scenes would still have worked if rendered entirely with the game engine, for sure, but they wouldn’t have felt quite as strange and unsettling without that juxtaposition between the real (live action) and the unreal (3D render).
Speaking of metafictionality, the Alan Wake universe is one that deliberately draws attention to the creative process (and, specifically, to the choices we make during the creative process). Jarring moments in the game when live action shots of actors suddenly give way to the game engine-rendered representations of those same actors serve to remind us of the following: that was a deliberate creative choice. When we eventually realize that Sam Lake, one of the live action actors in the game, is actually the game’s lead writer and Remedy Entertainment’s creative director … our brains just sort of implode a little. (Mine did, anyway.)
Final Thoughts
Alan Wake 2 is, to my mind, everything that the old FMV games I grew up with could have been if modern video game technology had existed in the 80s and 90s. To be sure, it’s not flawless, but it is nevertheless a stunningly creative example of what is possible. I cannot wait for Control: Resonant, and hope that the awesome folks at Remedy continue to push video game storytelling to its limits for a long time to come.
Footnotes
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If you’re interested in learning more about LD technology and its relationship with gaming, this video (which explores these topics via a focused look at Pioneer’s LaserActive player) is pretty thorough: https://youtu.be/WQvkTN3Vvlc ↩
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Probably the most notable early example was 1983’s Dragon’s Lair, a LaserDisc arcade game that was essentially a playable cartoon animated by Don Bluth. ↩
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The X-Files Game wasn’t the only classic FMV title that suffered from uninteresting gameplay; it was a problem that plagued the entire genre, for the most part. As loath as I am to link to articles hosted on Medium, here’s a decent write-up on the issue from Leftover Culture Review: The Failure of 90’s FMV Gaming. ↩
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As an aside, as much as I enjoyed David Harewood as Mr. Door, it made me so sad to learn the role was originally intended for Lance Reddick. RIP. ↩