Bad Writing Is What Makes ‘Alan Wake’ Good
Alan Wake was on a massive super-sale last week because of expiring music licenses — if you missed it, well, you missed it. The game is (at least for right now) no longer available for purchase.
But I picked up a copy because I’m a big Stephen King fan, and I heard this little thriller of a game was supposed to pay great homage to the master of horror. A writer battling psychological demons that manifest in reality? Sounds like a King novel to me.
So I booted it up and launched into that opening monologue:
“Stephen King once wrote that ‘Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear.’ In a horror story, the victim keeps asking ‘Why?’ But there can be no explanation, and there shouldn’t be one. The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest, and it’s what we’ll remember in the end. My name is Alan Wake. I’m a writer.”
Well, that’s good and all, but Alan is a thoroughly mediocre writer considering that the game fluffs him up as some amazing best-selling author. His narration feels like a relentless drone. Hell, in those first few lines, you can clearly see the difference between King’s smooth, masterful prose, and Alan’s rhythm-free, toneless plodding.
This is so annoying, I grumbled, as I continued through. I have to listen to his guy prattle on for the next 12 hours (emotionlessly narrating being chased by an axe murderer), as the game hammers repeatedly that Alan is actually a brilliant, brilliant writer beloved by random restaurant waitresses the world over?
This was about five minutes from becoming a piece about why video games are derided as art: because we don’t put nearly enough effort into writing as we do coding.
But as we went on, it struck me: Of course Alan is an awful writer. He’s had writer’s block for two years, and the events of the game obstinately reflect a novel he wrote under supernatural duress in two weeks.
It’s not bad … it’s realistic. Ha!
