Cover story in Pelit 10/2006

[Yki]

Sort of like a year ago after E3, there's a (4-page) cover story on Alan Wake in the latest issue of the Finnish video game magazine Pelit that came out just a couple of days ago. Apparently they interviewed Remedy's top brass (Sam, Petri and some other guys) and made an article about the game. It's not really so much about Alan Wake's features as it is about Remedy's history, their development process and stuff like that and how it all ties in with the game. There's also a few ingame screenshots I don't recall seeing anywhere else and couldn't find on the web with a few minutes worth of searching. Too bad I really don't have a good way of scanning them. Lookin' good as always, though. Anyway, it was of course all in Finnish so I thought I'd kinda (amateur) translate and post it here.
Here goes:

BIRTH PROCESS OF ALAN WAKE - COVER STORY

On the edge of reason
There's something big cooking in Espoo. The maestros of slowmotion gunfights strive to become the masters of suspense with their next game.

The time for fugitive undercover cops is over for Remedy Entertainment. The new video game hero of game designer Petri Järvilehto and writer Sam Lake is a best-seller novelist suffering from severe insomnia. Unline Max Payne, delusional Alan Wake still has something to lose -- his mind. "Max Payne was a fitting character at a convenient time" writer Sam Lake sums up, referring to the boom for Matrix-style action flicks in the early 2000s. Even if the tragic NY cop was a dear child of Remedy's, after seven years of Max Payne the company was in a hurry to move on.
Lake willingly admits that Max Payne's emotions registry only repeated a single note. The limits of a unidimensional revenge character were met fairly quickly. "Alan Wake is more of an ordinary man. He's a regular guy struggling on the edge of reason, looking for a way out. There's more than one side to Wake's personality, and we'll pay witness to a more mature character as the story unfolds" Lake describes. However, Alan Wake is more than a two-man show run by Järvilehto and Lake. There's a 30-strong group of top-notch professionals putting their efforts into realizing the duo's vision.

Marvelously expensive
It's clear by now that Alan Wake is likely going to be the most expensive entertainment production undertaken in Finland. Even the gigantic film budget for Pekka Parikka's Winter War (est. 5.4 million euros [$6.9 million]) pales in comparison to the expenses that go into making Alan Wake. Remedy was financing the production itself for a couple of years until Microsoft Game Studios came in with its vast resources. The game's final budget is a business secret.

Remedy got the money for making Alan Wake from selling the rights to Max Payne to Take-Two Interactive in 2002. According to the press Remedy Entertainment profited over 10 million euros in cash ($12.7 million+) and nearly 30 million euros ($38 million) in Take-Two stock share. Besides securing the company's future financially, the deal made the its owners rich.

On the downside, Remedy no longer has anything to say about the future of Max Payne. Although founder Petri Järvilehto might see his company consulting the making of a third Max Payne game, Remedy can really only consult if Take-Two asks to be consulted. The long-pending Max Payne film is also in the hands of outsiders.

The game concept for Alan Wake has been ambitious right from the get-go. Four distinct design goals were set to the game: 1) Alan Wake is a psychological action thriller. 2) Alan Wake introduces lighting as a new field in game mechanics. 3) Alan Wake has a cinematic story that takes place in a vast, open-ended environment. 4) Alan Wake is a game that has to earn 90+ scores.

"First three of the goals have never been attempted anywhere in the form that we're aiming at" according to Alan Wake's producer Lasse Seppänen. "The final item, quality, is still the most important. Nothing else matters unless we can put together an excellent game."

Seppänen says quality is priority number one in the production of Alan Wake. "We're not tied to a schedule, we don't have to aim at a monolithic release date. If we can make a better game by giving it more time, that's the way we'll go. That doesn't mean, however, that we'd mean to be working on Alan Wake five years from now.

"Money is even less of a priority than money for us. We don't like to be lavish, but if spending money saves us some time, we'll spend it accordingly. Everything here revolves around the thought that we're ready to put our time and money into making the best game possible."

Seppänen reminds us that these noble priorities cannot be applied to every video game production. A sports game that is based on timing, for instance, has to make schedule number one priority. "Of course a new NHL game has to come out on time. In a schedule-oriented production you can stick to a release date by either compromising on quality or by pouring extra money into the production."

The elite gang
The 30-strong Remedy Entertainment is a relatively small development team on a global scale. Despite the company's success and next-generation development challenges Remedy has been cautious in hiring more people. For example, the Helsinki cell of mobile phone game company Digital Chocolate has 125 employees. Bugbear, the developer known for its "FlatOut" rally titles has also surpassed Remedy with its 40-strong staff. "They say nowadays that you can't develop a next-generation title with a crew of thirty" says producer Lasse Seppänen with a hint of upsetness. "Of course you can! It's all about the way your approach things."

"If we we to hire 20 more people, it wouldn't, by any means, mean that our production team would be 20 stronger - instead what we'd end up with is ten new superiors" says Remedy AD Saku Lehtinen.

Staying small is a concious choice of ours" says Lasse Seppänen. "Remedy is composed only of top professionals. When we do have job openings, we expect nothing short of top knowhow from the winning applicant. Thanks to this our company has achieved a sort of critical mass in talent. Utilizing this talent, we can achieve things in our own way. No one here works with a 'who cares' attitude."

"Rule of thumb: a small team is more motivating than a big one" Seppänen continues. "A gigantic team of 200 people would only make for a burdening working environment that is slow and clumsy to work in."

"Besides, you can't have good dialogue in a team of 200" says Lehtinen. "Whereas a team of four or five people can."

Dialogue is an important part of the working environment at Remedy. Key personnel of the project come together every Friday to discuss the direction Alan Wake is headed. Besides Seppänen and Lehtinen, present are game designer Petri Järvilehto, writer Sam Lake, development tool correspondent Sami Vanhatalo and lead programmer Markus Mäki. The session consists of deciding on next week's goals on game design, graphics and programming. If Alan Wake was a ship, the Friday meetings would be the helm on the bridge.

The wardroom shares its thoughts with the crew every Monday at 10:15 AM which is when the goals set on Friday are examined with the whole team assembled. Although office hours at Remedy are flexible, the whole gang gets together for this one event. "Having distinct goals helps everyone concentrate on the essential" says Leppänen.

Let the Asians do it!
Remedy doesn't maintain its small size thanks only to dialogue and talent. Outsourcing lesser activities has been a big help as well. The thought of outsourcing the production of a Finnish video game may sound wild, but from Remedy's perspective it is the most optimal solution.

There's a tough guideline at Remedy: whatever we can spare to outsource, gets outsourced. Cars, for instance, will always look like cars whether the 3D models were produced at Remedy or someplace else, so why waste the time of key personnel on modeling them?

"Everyone knows what a car is supposed to look like" says Leppänen. "We guide the subcontractor as to the type of car models we want, the style of textures they should have and the fidelity of the final models."

"The efficiency of outsourcing is poor unless the subcontractors are properly guided" AD Saku Lehtinen continues. "The level of technical and artistic requirements must be delicately defined in advance." Remedy doesn't rely solely on written documentation in guiding the subcontractor. Remedy makes sure the they also receive functioning prototypes as samples. For example, the prototype of a character would demonstrate its motions, gestures and finger movement. If the subcontractor does a fine job, Remedy might order 10 new character models next, for example. Weak results, however, always get returned to the sender.

Seppänen believes that the game industry is in the process of a fundamental structural change. "The game industry is moving away from the centralized model, where everything is done by hand by the developer, towards a decentralized approach, where there is a whole network of specialized professionals available to developers. The Havok physics engine is an excellent example of the power of the decentralized working method. Thanks to Havok we no longer need to write our own physics code. You don't have to do everything yourself anymore."

Even so, not everything can be outsourced, either. Although available options were carefully considered, folks at Remedy were unsuccessful in finding a game engine fitting for the requirements of Alan Wake. In the end, an in-house game engine was the only viable option left. Coding wizards at Remedy did their best, thanks to which the game profits from a draw distance of two kilometers (1.2 miles) in a gaming environment of a hundred square kilometers (~39 square miles) - with no load times.

Alan Wake is in development side-by-side for both PC and Xbox 360. The development tools for the game are so agile that every change can be instantly tested on both platforms. Alan Wake is expected to run at at least 30 frames per second on Xbox 360. An up-to-date PC is expected to achieve the same when the game is released.

The exact release date for Alan Wake, however, is a completely another story.

...

That's it for the main article. There were also a couple of these boxes laid out across the pages. Here:

Box #1

Art from reality
Remedy AD Saku Lehtinen is responsible for the audiovisual execution of Alan Wake. "If Petri and Sam are the soul of Alan Wake, I'm the outer cover" says Leppänen, who has studied film and architecture.

According to Lehtinen, Remedy was one of the first developers to take advantage of extensive protographing in 3D graphics. For Max Payne, Remedy photographed the seamy side of New York. For Alan Wake, they photographed parts of the scenic Washington in the northwest corner of the United States. To date, they've shot 40 000 photographs for the game. Lehtinen estimates that they'll still need another 40 000.

"Our photo journey took us three weeks, and we covered a total of 3000 kilometres (1860 miles) by car" says Lehtinen. "We had maps, geographical databases and Google Maps. We wanted to capture on film the fundamental nature of the place. Lehtinen and co. filmed everything there was to film: buildings, bridges, nature, dams and even the floor tiles of the hotel in 'Twin Peaks'. Since the photos had to be good enough to be used for referencing, everything had to be photographed from the top, under and sides, which demanded considerable acrobatics at times. "It got pretty dangerous sometimes" Lehtinen admits.

Of all the places he visited, the dreamlike Crater Lake lodged in Lehtinen's mind the firmest. The lake that formed in a crater of a collapsed volcano is located in Oregon, Washington's neighboring state.

"The lake is nearly perfectly round and surrounded by a ridge 400 meters high on all sides. The emerald blue water looked outright mad, because it was bluer than the sky, bluescreen blue, even. The volcanic soil made the whole place look like an alien world."

Making a game look right in terms of scale is hard, even if you're only talking about buildings. You have to take the camera into account in a third person video game, meaning that you have to make buildings higher and roads broader than they actually are. The trick calls for care, as it could potentially make the characters look like children. "Certain things, such as doorhandles, must be maintained at a certain height" Lehtinen hints.

Lehtinen characterizes Alan Wake's visual offering as stylized reality. Many film-based images of Americanism come together in the game. It does demonstrate true globalization that the game is in fact being developed far away in Finland.

Box #2

Who is Alan Wake?

"My name is Alan Wake. You might think I'm crazy, but it's imperative that I warn you before it's too late. My time is running out." With these words starts Alan Wake, the supernatural thriller from Remedy Entertainment.

Alan Wake is a writer who based his breakthrough book on his unsettling dreams. There was something exceedingly odd about the dreams, as Alan started having them only after he met his girlfriend Alice. The powerful dreams generated a disturbing thriller, which Alan wrote with such bluster that it's almost as if something else was manipulating the writer.

The novel was an unprecedented success, a best seller. The book that made Alan famous was also his downfall, when Alice disappeared without a trace. The disappearance bore a frightening resemblance to the events of the best-selling book. Filled with guilt, Alan was no longer able to write and started suffering from serious insomnia.

Insomnia drives Alan Wake to the scene of the game, the small town of Bright Falls in the state of Washington. Alan calms down and his dreams return after he checks in to a dream clinic. Then he starts seeing glimpses of Alice - hallucinations, perhaps? As Alan sleeps, his notebook starts filling with writing, bleak prophecies that turn frighteningly real. Also, Alan can't help but recognize his own handwriting.

The sleepy Bright Falls turns out to be Alan Wake's peronal nightmare. On the edge of what is dream and reality nothing is what it seems.

Famous TV personality
The story of Alan Wake is made up like a continuing season of a TV series. The game consists of TV series-like episodes where the story unfolds as the player completes missions. Some of the episodes end up in a classic cliffhanger, while others are calmer, concentrating on character description and Alan's past. Although you can play the game in one-episode portions, that isn't Remedy's ultimate goal. "We want to give the game an irresistible 'one more episode' atmosphere" lead designer Petri Järvilehto smirks.

Writing Alan Wake came along gradually. The game was first given a general arc where the designers added more details little by little. "We didn't start cutting the script into smaller episodes until after several revisions, after which the structure of the game started shaping up" Järvilehto says.

The 650-page script for Max Payne 2 acted on a film standard. It adhered to an old rule that one page of the script should be equivalent to one ominute of onscreen action. In Alan Wake, the length of the script is multiple times that of Max Payne 2.

Järvilehto claims the TV series-like plot structure fits video games perfectly. "Previously, video games have been written in the same fashion as films. The three-act story arc practiced in film fits a two-hour-long end product perfectly, but streched out across a ten-hour video game makes it dragging.

"The series format was a truly central thought that was the basis of our concept for Alan Wake" says writer Sam Lake. "When you watch multiple episodes at one go from a DVD season box, the series feels instantly better than if you saw only one episode per week. The structuring seemed like the perfect tool for our game."

The plot of Alan Wake is tied in episodes, but the game world isn't. You can move freely around Bright Falls and the surrounding nature without any artificial urgency. There is much to explore in the huge environment and by talking to the residents you might discover unexpected secrets. "However, Alan Wake isn't a Bioware RPG" Järvilehto clarifies. "The storytelling doesn't advance if the player wonders aimlessly around the woods."

Light and shadows
The contrariety of light and dark is one of the central themes in Alan Wake. The further the game progresses, the clearer it gets that bad things take place by night. "A setting sun doesn't bode well for Alan Wake" says writer Lake. "During nightfall the player has to either equip himself properly or look for shelter."

In the dark, Alan Wake's enemies make an appearance as dark, obscure characters. Light is Alan's only weapon against the forces of darkness, as the enemies are invulnerable in shadows. It's not that simple however, as Alan hypersensitive to light since he was born. "The events fall under one big shadow from the beginning: the dilemma of what is real and what is merely a nightmarish figment of Alan Wake's imagination" says Lake.

If Alan Wake is adventure and drama during the day, the suspense pedal is put to the metal at night. The fight scenes in the game emphasize on quality and uniqueness, not quantity.

"Even the risk of having to get involved in a fight has to feel suspenseful" says Petri Järvilehto. "One of our biggest challenges has been to try and turn a fighting encounter that lasts only for a couple of seconds into something that feels thrilling even after a minute."

The further Alan Wake's "first season" advances, the longer the writer's night gets.

...

It honestly isn't that long if you have a 24" widescreen monitor.

[Morry]

Brilliant find, Yki. That was a really informative read about a great deal of things to do with the game and its production. A big thanks for the translation as well, definately a decent effort to translate all of that.

What to say? A whole heap of new information about the game.

It was interesting to find out about the whole design process for Remedy. How they accomplish all of their wonderful work with only 30 staff is astounding. I'm interested to hear from the Remedy people just how many aspects of the game that they have passed on to external artists.

[Maddieman]

That's an incredibly informative article -- thanks for translating Yki.

[SlamDunk]

There were also a few new screen shots. Looked awesome, as always

Excellent translation job there Yki

[ADM]

If someone could scan the new screens in that would be appreciated.

[dejay]

Very nice article - thanks for the translation

The episodic nature of the game will hopefully lead to some good pacing - I like the idea that buying the game is like buying a DVD box set of a series. The idea that some episodes will be suspenseful and action driven while others will be character driven and relaxed is awesome - like a good series of TV should be. Hopefully the episodes will be diverse, like a season of Buffy for example.

[ancient]

Indeed, a coincidence or not, but all Alan Wake parts outsourced to third party companies look like the weakest elements of the game: the cars, Alan's movements, the grass... They would look OK in another game but when seen next to beautiful lighting, story and music, they start to stand out unpleasantly.

Remedy doesn't outsource their key factors of success such as the story, which is correct according to the outsourcing theory, but apparently the selected third party companies can't achieve the quality required by the game... They don't have the critical mass of talent, they don't breathe the idea of Alan Wake every single minute and because of that produce generics...

Maybe it's still cheaper for Remedy to do movements, cars or grass themselves if they manage to create terrific lighting rather than constantly correct the mistakes of the outsourcees or even redo their work? Shouldn't be that hard to create smooth transitions between Alan's movements (standing still - starting to walk - stopping) or thicken the grass a little bit.

Havok physics also doesn't look 100% natural to me. As seen back in Max Payne 2 and here (Intel demo), objects feel too light when they drop; they also bounce back too high from the surfaces. Yet Havok is the best engine available out there so there's no choice but to accept this little quirk

I recall the final scene from Max Payne 1 (the tower crushing the helicopter). The physics in that particular spot looked surprisingly believable; watched the scene over and over again just because of that ) All new things are forgotten good old stuff?

Interestingly enough, Alan's Intel demo felt fairly empty until the music kicked in and introduced Alan on the snowy top of the mountain. Started to realize what a radically different emotion you can create just by changing the background music Insightful...

[Onjoo]

Originally Posted by ancient

Indeed, a coincidence or not, but all Alan Wake parts outsourced to third party companies look like the weakest elements of the game: the cars, Alan's movements, the grass... They would look OK in another game but when seen next to beautiful lighting, story and music, they start to stand out unpleasantly.
...

I have to agree. What we have seen in the new pics, those outsourced parts look kind of crappy. For example look at the gas station screenshot. THe car on the right hand side looks terrible. It really doesn't look like a real car. Yeah I know there are 4 wheels and some windows and all, but it looks silly. And then the engine room. What kind of V8 is that ? Some one put a piece of engine poster inside a hood?

I don't even want to comment on the guy leaning on the car...

Originally Posted by ancient

... Interestingly enough, Alan's Intel demo felt fairly empty until the music kicked in and introduced Alan on the snowy top of the mountain. Started to realize what a radically different emotion you can create just by changing the background music Insightful...

Game area feels empty indeed. At this point I need to say that we have seen only a few game elements in the videos/pics, and that has been an enormous disappointment .

The info we have been given has mainly been game engine related. Although lighting (or lack of it) is a important part of the puzzle in A.WAKE, this is pretty much what we have seen this far.

Environment feels completely empty. NO wildlife, No NPCS , Nothing...

I'm just wondering is this "game" going to be the new 3dMark engine or playable game as promised.

[ancient]

Yeah... the emptiness strikes me... the alien planet

On the other hand, the recent previews always quote another demo, which showed the bits of actual gameplay. The articles praise this gameplay as "stunning emotional experience" so I still feel positive about the story part. But uneven graphical quality certainly ruins the impression and kills the film-like illusion.

It's important, Remedy: when it becomes possible to compare certain aspects side by side, they all should be more or less strong. Players don't absorb the game feature by feature in the established order of priority. They absorb the game as a whole. A subtle difference that is sometimes difficult to grasp by developers whose minds are a lot more structured than those of casual gamers.

When the whole experience is gray (i.e. an average game), another gray dot in the overall picture is OK. However, when the whole experience is white (i.e. Alan Wake), the player immediately notices the same gray dot. The principle of contrast backfires immediately.

I'm heavy into programming and experienced the same problem when building an internal information management system for our company. The users will never forgive a so-so implemented feature that you, as a developer, consider low-priority Either it should be done well or removed at all.

Especially when the same concept was successfully implemented in the past when Remedy decided to go single-player only. Better to have fewer but really strong elements...

[Morry]

Personally, I don't want to see more than scenery pictures for now. Seeing too much will spoil the mood and atmosphere of the game. For example, if we were to see one of the enemies in the game up close, it would make our first playing experience more bland, as the surprise factor is gone.

[RTsa]

Graah. Need to get my hands on that mag. Maybe they have it at the library.. -> Goes look.

[AlianAnt]

Originally Posted by Morry

Personally, I don't want to see more than scenery pictures for now. Seeing too much will spoil the mood and atmosphere of the game. For example, if we were to see one of the enemies in the game up close, it would make our first playing experience more bland, as the surprise factor is gone.

Indeed, ay indeed. Today I skipped reading a review on Splinter Cell: Double Agent because I really don't wana know what happens at all. I honestly hope that Remedy keeps it under wraps, except for maby what exactly I'll be doing during the game. But no story bits. At all. Ever. If I see a review up one day, I'll just look at the score, and move on.