Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread! Today, I’d like to discuss Alan Wake II: the darkest game I’ve ever played.
I do not mean in terms of tone or plot. Though 2023’s third or fourth major survival horror game is certainly no slouch in that department—twelve hours in and I’m knee-deep in a unsettling story of crumbling towns, racial animus, unreliable memories, shifting reality, and art turned into evil—I’m speaking exclusively in the visual sense. Alan Wake II is the darkest game I’ve ever played because of its visual darkness. It weaves and presents night, shadows, and the absence of light unlike anything else. There are points when protagonists Saga Anderson and Alan Wake are the only visible parts of their world. In these moments, they bring to mind a swimmer rising for air out of an inky sea, hands and faces visible but clothes and guns as subsumed as anything else. And while this is especially true when they explore underground rooms or the alien Dark Place, it’s everywhere. At times, it feels like a joke on the game’s part; several of Saga’s quests entails midday excursions, only for the trees and buildings to block out all but a few slivers of light the moment she crosses some sort of narrative threshold. You can even be punished for trying to scare away the shadows, as enemies are alerted to your presence more easily when you’ve got your flashlight out. A flashlight that is as necessary as any I’ve used in a game and yet still illuminates no more than a fraction of the screen at any point. More than once, I’ve had to turn it off because the illumination was getting in the way of my aiming.
There are other games that play with light this severely; one of those other 2023 horror games, the Dead Space remake, also delighted in sticking you in lightless rooms. But Alan Wake is special to me in this regard because its interest in light and darkness is both extreme and part and parcel of the game’s story. It’s metatextual, too, an evolution of the first Alan Wake‘s gimmick of light being a tool of defense and offense. Because of that, the darkness feels far more pronounced at every turn, and the game constantly finds new ways to have it creep up on you. Sometimes, it’s from a heavy overcast. Sometimes, it’s from trees keeping you from the sun. Sometimes, it’s from a strange building whose shadow envelopes the land. Sometimes, it’s from the shadows of unique light sources: burning neon, flickering lightbulbs, a flare used as an impromptu weapon. And sometimes, as it was in this cave, it’s from a space that has fully sealed itself from light of any kind.
When I entered this tunnel, it was pitch black. I could barely make out Saga or the ladder she had just climbed down. I pulled out the torch, saw which way to go, and turned it off again. After all, I don’t want to rely on the flashlight, right? What if an enemy spawned in and was drawn to me? But that barely lasted more than a second. Even if it was mostly a straight line, walking in this darkness was beyond unsettling. I felt weak, disempowered, vulnerable, and very, very scared, not just for myself but the character I was controlling. It was this moment more than any other that made me fully realize how dependent on light Saga, Alan, and I are. There are games that have made me feel that (and obviously I’ve experienced this many times through other art and my personal life) but no game I’ve played has presented darkness in such a hard-hitting, almost physical way. And that leads me to my prompt: darkness in games. What are some notable examples of games using darkness? Are there mechanics you’ve found from that in particular that you liked? Are there times where a game tried to explore this but fell short? Are there ways you’d like to see a game incorporate the concept?
And, as always, what did you play this weekend?