Alongside the new level, the expansion update will include an Assist Mode, new songs by Poe and Petri Alanko, plus a return of the beloved grey tweed jacket.
In a surprise announcement, Remedy has revealed its next Control adventure,FBC: Firebreak! The adventure is a three person, cooperative FPS set in The Oldest House.
We recently spoke Tiia Öhman about working as a photographer on the Alan Wake 2 set. Her stunning work can be seen in-game, in marketing, and on merchandise.
To celebrate the game's 10th anniversary, we sat down with Matthew Porretta, the incredible voice actor behind Alan Wake, to talk about his experiences and memories.
Remedy has announced an unusual take to day one bonus items, revealing that the first fifty fans who purchase Alan Wake 2 Deluxe Edition in select stores will also walk away with a green branded bucket. The Finns like a good bucket.
There are two stores in southern Finland where this promotion is taking place; Kosnolinet in Kauppakeskus Kamppi (from 9am), and VPD Pelikauppa in Kauppakeskus Tikkuri (from 10am). The collection must take place in-person, ruling out the possibility of pre-ordering.
Now, you might be wondering.... why buckets? Rachel, isn't your partner Finnish? Can't you just, y'know, ask? And he is, and I did many years ago. It just turns out that buckets are useful, and that was the extent of the conversation. Over the years, I've just accepted the Finnish attitude to buckets is the British equivalent of those shortbread tins that people store embroidery in. Except Finland's approach has less childhood trauma and more walrus approval.
Alan Wake 2 Deluxe Edition (Physical) launches tomorrow, October 22nd. The game is published by Epic Games for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, priced at £64.99. The physical edition comes with the base game (including Digital Deluxe Edition extras), the Expansion Pass, a reversible cover sleeve with exclusive artwork, and a code for Alan Wake Remastered.
ALAN WAKE 2 BUCKETS ONLY IN HELSINKI AND VANTAA 💚 🇫🇮
The first 50 buyers of the physical Alan Wake 2 Deluxe Edition will get a free Alan Wake 2 bucket. Sale starts at 9am at Konsolinet in Kauppakeskus Kamppi, and at 10am at VPD Pelikauppa in Kauppakeskus Tikkuri.
Scheduled to launch in late November, Poe is releasing a new Limited Edition 12" vinyl covering the two songs featured in Alan Wake 2; This Road (AW) and 6 Deep Breaths, the latter of which will feature in the upcoming expansion pack, The Lake House.
Published by their label, Repoezessed, the vinyl is currently priced at $30 USD, and is available to pre-order via the official store. While the listing is marked as "sold out", it looks to be an error message, and fans can still purchase the item as normal. The cover is a simple design, described as a single gatefold securing the vinyl, alongside images of the potential final design.
Poe is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer whose music career kicked off in 1994 when she signed to Modern Records. By 1995, she released her first album, Hello, which received raved reviews and received a Gold certification in the US. Five years later, she was back with the album, Haunted, which contained its iconic track of the same name.
In Alan Wake, the studio used Poe's Haunted, an eerily beautiful song, to bring chapter two to a close. For the sequel, she has a much greater presence in the game, providing the end-of-chapter songs to each of the Dark Place segments.
Back in January, Destructoid spoke to the artist about how the collaboration for the sequel came to be. In their email conversation, Poe wrote, “Being a super fan of Alan Wake and of Sam, I was obviously floored and let him know that, and then we started communicating and riffing with each other. Sam and I riffed and riffed, and then we riffed some more and then some more, and then eventually we started doing Zooms and riffed more there…. you get the picture.”
In the story, they return to a previous teaser that Poe had posted. In 2012, Poe posted a fifty-five-second track on YouTube mysteriously called September 30, 1955, with a familiar tune and lyrics: "Some say that it loops forever this road that I lose you on every time." Another decade-long project coming full circle.
Following last night's reveal of FBC: Firebreak, Remedy has shared a first look video, exploring in more in-depth what the team has been working on.
The four-minute video showcases new gameplay footage, snippets of behind the scenes development, and interviews with Mike Kayatta (Game Director), James Tottman (Art Lead), and Teemu Huhtiniemi (Lead Level Designer). They talk about exploring The Oldest House in first person, bringing in humour to the mix, and the ability to customise your "crisis kits", expanding on the details released in yesterday's Xbox Wire article.
The video acts as a complementary and extended look at what the community saw last night during the Xbox Partner Preview, with fast-paced action and delightful Remedy oddness. Check out the video below or on Remedy's YouTube channel, HERE. As always, you can find a transcript of the video below.
Community First Look - FBC: Firebreak Transcript:
[Introduction] Mike Kayatta: Hi! What you're seeing behind me is FBC: Firebreak. Our new cooperative, three player, first-person shooter in action. I'm Mike Kayatta. I'm the Game Director on this project, here at Remedy. Behind me, you see a few members of our small development team here at our headquarters in Finland. And we're really excited just to show you a small glimpse of what you can expect from Remedy’s next game, coming 2025.
Mike Kayatta: For a long time, we've been looking for a way to take our strength at building these fascinating worlds and taking our really action focused combat gameplay and combine them into a multiplayer game. And not just "multiplayer game", but something cooperative. Basically, we want to provide you and your friends the chance to step into one of Remedy’s worlds together for a shared experience. For the first time. To many of you, the setting of Firebreak might look familiar. It's set in the exact same location as Control; The Oldest House.
James Tottman: Each location has been completely reimagined from the ground up, shifted into something that works well for our chaotic three player gameplay. We knew from the very beginning that we wanted to make Firebreak a first person experience. It just felt so unique and original to run around the Oldest House in first person view.
Mike Kayatta: Firebreak takes place some years after the events of that game, but was designed as an entirely standalone experience. So even if you haven't played Control, if you like cooperative shooters, you're going to love this game. So in this game, you play as a volunteer member of a new unit called Firebreak. And that name, Firebreak actually comes from real life firebreaks. It's a physical idea of something that stands between the danger and the thing that needs protecting. And the reason why you're called Firebreak is because that's your job, to stand between the crisis and the thing that needs protecting, which in this case, is the Bureau itself. So before you and your friends drop into a mission, it's important to pick the right gear. And you do that through loadouts that we call Crisis Kits. But of course, your choices and your friend's choices need to make sense together...Or not, it's up to you.
Teemu Huhtiniemi: So obviously when we're making, like, a co-op multiplayer experience, it’s very important to think about the second-to second-gameplay. And once you really embrace that way of working, you start, seeing a lot of genuine feelings kind of arise. And you're you find yourself thinking, how excited am I playing this? Am I having fun?
Mike Kayatta: What we're really excited about is something that we call "Paranatural Augments". What these are is like a special kind of attachment for your tools. They sort of look like mundane items. And this is like a, like an experimental program from the FBC. And when you fire them out, the unexpected happens.
Teemu Huhtiniemi: And what I like to do personally is use laughter as a metric. So, sometimes in the team, someone proposes an idea that is so outrageous that you can't help but laugh. And usually the next step is, "Let’s try that in the game and see if that works." From there on, it's really easy to take what we have and iterate it further and make it more fun.
[Ending] Mike Kayatta: We've only scratched the surface when it comes to FBC: Firebreak. And we look forward to showing you a lot more in 2025!
In a surprise announcement, Remedy has revealed its next Control adventure, introducing FBC: Firebreak!
Broadcast during the Xbox Partner Preview, its launch trailer teases a three-person cooperative FPS set in the Federal Bureau of Control. "As a years-long siege on the agency’s headquarters reaches its boiling point, only Firebreak— the Bureau’s most versatile unit—has the gear and the guts to plunge into the building’s strangest crises, restore order, and blast their way back from the brink." From its description, it seems to take place after the events of the original game, and follows the bureau's continued fight with The Hiss, as it attempts to regain control over the Oldest House. The reveal coincided with the launch trailer for Alan Wake 2's expansion, The Lake House, which is also set to explore the FBC lore.
While the announcement was made this evening, the community has been following this game for a while, under its codename, Condor.
The game relies on teamwork to deal with the threat, spread across a number of challenging missions which Remedy teases will be highly replayable. On top of that there's also a layer of customisation; the developers list the teammember's “Crisis Kits” as an example, allowing players to choose their weapons, tools, and powerful paranatural augments, which are strange items with unique powers that can alter the course of the battle.
The game will be the first title self-published by Remedy, and will launch at a "mid-price point". Following the launch, currently scheduled for 2025, the developers will be expanding upon the adventure with additional content, with more details on those to be posted closer to the date. For those interested in learning more about Remedy's approach for this title, make sure to check out the Xbox Wire interview, HERE!
The game has been in the works for several years; a game project seemingly kindled from COVID, and announced during mid-2021. Since then, it has evolved, and in its press release, accompanying its reveal trailer, we heard from Juha Vainio (Executive Producer of the Control Franchise) and Mike Kayatta (Game Director of FBC: Firebreak).
Up first is Mike Kayatta who said “With FBC: Firebreak, our team is creating a gameplay-driven experience focused on cooperative gameplay that incorporates the strange, surreal elements our fans have come to expect. At Remedy, we have been looking to leverage our expertise in action and world-building in a co-op multiplayer setting, creating something that we hope is attractive to players who have not experienced our games before.”
Juha, who has been a key figure in the Control franchise since the original game's development, stated, “FBC: Firebreak is an opportunity to try something wholly new while fans wait for Control 2 or for those new to our games. Though Remedy is known for narrative-driven experiences, FBC: Firebreak is a chance for the team to flip the script and try our hand at a game that focuses on high-octane action in a multiplayer setting.”
