Alan Wake and Paratext

Alan Wake is ostensibly a writer, but his recent output has left something to be desired. In the two years before the game’s events, Alan hasn’t written a single word, and it’s become a problem for his career and his marriage. That’s just one of the reasons why it’s such a surprise when pages from a new Wake manuscript start appearing all over the town of Bright Falls, Washington. Alan has no memory of ever writing these pages, nor does he recall ever having the inspiration for them. Still, the ideas come together fast as he starts experiencing the events from the story in real life. As players guide Alan through the game’s six episodes, they’re able to collect and read dozens of manuscript pages from this latest novel, The Departure, and each page corresponds to something that either has happened or will happen within the narrative of the game. Some pages are from Wake’s perspective; others follow familiar faces like his agent, his wife, and the many strange people he meets in Bright Falls. The inclusion of future events and outside perspectives suggests that Alan couldn’t have written the pages, but the supernatural elements of the story mean all bets are off. The developers don’t clarify the truth one way or the other, so it’s up to the player to choose their preferred interpretation of the game’s events. Maybe it’s all in Alan’s head; maybe it’s not—or maybe the story was real, but Alan wasn’t the author. 

In Alan Wake, player-character Alan is initially presented as both the protagonist and the author of the in-game manuscript The Departure. As if this weren’t confusing enough, the game further blurs the line between reality and fantasy with the introduction of Thomas Zane, the former owner of Alan’s rental cabin, and a possible source for The Departure’s pages. According to local lore, Zane was a poet who lived in Bright Falls until his girlfriend drowned in the same lake that stole Alan’s wife. Desperate to bring her back, Zane channeled the dark power he felt in the water and literally wrote her back into being with his typewriter. The plan didn’t work as intended, however, as she came back tainted by the very darkness he’d used to revive her. Once Zane realized what he’d done, he sacrificed himself to keep the dark power at bay, but first, he devised a contingency plan. To ensure someone would always be there to fight the darkness, he wrote a new character into being: another author named Alan Wake. In Zane’s story, Alan was born with a determination to fight darkness with light, and his desire would inevitably lead him to Bright Falls. If Alan himself is a work of fiction, then Zane is the true author of The Departed; if Alan is real, Zane might be in his head. To save his wife, Alan is willing to accept the idea that he’s a figment of someone’s imagination, but the game leaves enough ambiguity that it’s never entirely clear. All that’s certain is that no matter how blurry the line between fiction and reality gets, on some level, Alan will always be a character in someone else’s story.