The aim, it seems, is to created gaming's version of something like the television drama Lost. At CES, Microsoft has confirmed that the game will have DLC — something that Alan Wake creator and writer Sam Lake hinted at last month in an interview with GameSpot.

When asked about post release content, Lake replied, "We have talked about it, and with our episode-based structure, it would be very logical. But nothing has been decided on the matter, and right now, we are fully focused on polishing the game and shipping it. After that, let's see."

With the game not yet shipped, it looks like Microsoft and developer Remedy Entertainment have taken a break from being fully focused on the game and confirm Alan Wake DLC at this year's CES.

Alan, torch, darkness...yeah, it's much like everything else we've seen from a game that will see you spending most of your time in the dark, with a torch in your hand.

Love the Twitter advertisement, too. It was only a matter of time before screenshots became as cluttered with ads as a TV screen is with watermarks.

Some of this footage you may have gotten a sneak peek at during this year's E3, but with four video's worth of the Xbox 360 (and PC?) mystery adventure game waiting for you, you're sure to see something new. Like mention of being eaten by grues, for example. Parts one, two, three and four are available in eye-soothing high-definition now.

Alan Wake - HD [GameTrailers]

G4TV quotes the Remedy Entertainment managing director Matias Myllrinne as saying the studio is "insanely careful" about how much of the story it'll give away, and that, if it were his call, he'd hold back the ending.

"I think we're going to be insanely careful about how much of the story we reveal. We'll clearly discuss with some of our friends at Microsoft whether we even give the ending of the game for anybody's preview. I'd like to hold it back, [I] don't want anybody to spoil it for the audience. That's just my personal feeling."

Myllrinne goes on to talk about spoilers and how devastating they can be to a well written story, using the analogy of being told that Bruce Willis' character in The Sixth Sense is dead. What?! He is?! Spoiler alert, Matias, dammit, spoiler alert!!!

Alan Wake Dev Fears Spoilers And Contemplates Hiding The Ending [G4TV via Joystiq]

I learned in Tokyo, however, that sometimes Alan won't have his flashlight or a gun. Sometimes it'll be the dark of night, pitch black except for the flashlight beams bouncing through the woods — silent except for the bark of the police dogs and the woosh of the wind when it sways the trees.

Two developers from Remedy Entertainment, the Finland-based studio making the game, showed me the part of Alan Wake we previewed from E3 and then a new, differently disturbing experience.

In the spirit of the game, which begins it's levels with a TV-inspired "Previously on Alan Wake...." montage, I'll provide a quick recap of what we last experienced. Alan Wake, the character, is an author who was suffering writer's block. On vacation with him in the Pacific Northwest, his wife has gone missing. In the E3 sequence, he was armed with a flashlight and a gun. Before shooting, he used light to break the darkness and weaken possessed townspeople who emerged from shacks and the woods to attack. A cars or a box might break the still of night and hurtle toward him, as if possessed. Wake skulked through small wooden buildings on a hillside, discovering pages from the thriller he couldn't remember writing. A malevolent force seemed to be at work somewhere in the darkness of the trees, bending them and possibly being the thing sending nature against him. Wake narrated some of the action during gameplay, usually in the past tense — as if the game was all one bad memory he had to reluctantly recall.

Remedy is trying for a spooky atmosphere for their dark thriller, with only a flashlight or red flare as an effective defense against the night.

It gets spookier when Wake has no gun or light.

That was Wake's plight in the new Tokyo Game Show sequence that mixed the now-familiar influences of Twin Peaks and the X-Files with The Fugitive. An FBI man, Agent Nightingale, had enlisted the town's sheriff to put her department on the hunt for Wake. The demo opened in the dead of night, with Wake walking through a dried-out riverbed. As he passed beneath a high bridge, a police officer shined a flashlight. The concept would be chase. The pursuit began. The gameplay was to run.

The sequence appeared to involve a series of scripted events. A developer, not me, was in control, so I couldn't tell how tough it all was. But i could tell that it looked like a first-timer would find it tense. A police helicopter buzzed through the night sky. Sirens from squad cars blared nearby and flashing lights split through the forest. Then a police car tumbled past Wake's path, thrown by who knows what. When Wake got to a ridge, the forest filled with the bobbing beams of flashlights and the sounds of dogs. They'd get their prey. But then something happened. The trees shook. Men screamed. Wake moved on. The helicopter returned to chase Wake across a high ridge. Agent Nightingale, audible from police radios, shouted for Wake's arrest. Possessed police from the forest climbed a cliff to approach Wake. The demo ended with him surrounded.

Wake was weaker in this part of the game, though the developers told me this degree of powerless is an exception.

What I witnessed of the game in Tokyo was less of a shooter than what I saw of the game at E3. As the demo ended, I recalled some reader feedback. Some had complained that the introduction of possessed enemies into the game's action at E3 had exposed the grown-up thriller they wanted Alan Wake to be as merely another horror shooter full of monsters.

The Remedy developers said not to worry.

"We don't have crab monsters or giant spiders," Remedy managing director Matias Myllyrinne told me. "We don't want to take it too far and have these all-powerful monsters coming at you." He promised that the enemies come from the town, from the environment, from a more grounded thriller tradition. He referred to potential Alan Wake customers as gamers who are "a bit more mature" and said they would be satisfied.

In Tokyo, Alan Wake didn't look like a monster game. It looked like a haunting journey through a quietly menacing place, with good mood but with the asterisk that it's gameplay could not be judged with only a developer at its controls.

As the game's spring 2010 release approaches, hopefully we'll see even more, to determine just what kind of adventure Alan Wake and the players who control him are really in for.

Alan Wake fansite BrightFalls claims to have received a statement from the developers, which reads:

Thank you for your continued interest in Alan Wake. It is accurate that we are currently working exclusively on the Xbox360 version of Alan Wake. PC plans are currently open, and therefore it's safe to say that at least a simultaneous launch with the Xbox version will not happen at this late stage. Remedy has a deep heritage in PC gaming and would love to see a PC version available to its PC followers, ultimately however this decision lies with our publisher.

If this statement did indeed come from Remedy - and we're looking into that - it's not good news for PC users looking forward to the game, as it suggests that even if the game does grace the system, it'll be late.

Then again, after Halo and Gears of War, PC users are getting used to this kind of treatment from Microsoft.

It's true – Remedy comments on No PC version rumors. [BrightFalls]

According to Alan Wake developer Remedy, ""We're focusing all our efforts on the 360 version and will be making comments in regards to the PC at a later in time."

Be patient PC owners!

Re: Can we get a straight answer about the PC version? [Alan Wake Community Forums via Shacknews via GamePro]

Here are the staff of Kotaku's picks for the best of 2009's Electronic Entertainment Expo:

Best Console/PC Game

After three years in hiatus, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell returns with a stunning new look and style of play that is sure to reinvigorate a flagging franchise.

Splinter Cell Conviction (PC and Xbox 360) is Ubisoft's fifth installment of the Clancy-inspired secret agent stealth game, streamlined to make sure players never have to leave the game for instruction, objectives or back story.

Instead of wasting gamers' time with mission briefings or cut-scenes, the game projects everything into the world as you play. Mission goals appear as giant text painted across buildings, or splashed across the scenery as Conviction's Sam Fisher passes through it, cut-scenes are delivered in real-time black and white movies projected on the walls of the rooms he is standing in.

Embedding objectives into the scenery of missions isn't the only change Conviction delivers. Other new features including the ability to put Fisher on autopilot and have him take out a room full of "marked" enemies, a more stylized look for the game and interactive "interrogation" scenes.

Runner-up: Star Wars The Old Republic (PC)

Best Portable Game

In Scribblenauts (Nintendo DS) players work to navigate child-like Maxwell through a hand-drawn world on his quest to collect Starites. The side-scrolling puzzle game does have a significant twist. To aid Maxwell on his journey, players can drop items in the world simply by writing the word on the DS screen. Developers boast a substantial dictionary of words that include everything from guillotines to robot zombies, all of which players can interact with.

Runner-Up: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (Nintendo DS)

Best Downloadable Game

In Q-Games' PixelJunk Shooter (Playstation 3) you have to rescue miners trapped underground by piloting a spaceship through the maze of tunnels. Miners aren't the only thing you'll find underground, some areas are also filled with pockets of lava or water. Blasting holes under these pockets allow the liquid to spill out. If the lava mixes with water it forms rock, if it mixes with miners, you have less miners.

Runner-Up: Shadow Complex (PC and Xbox 360)

Best Original Title

Brutal Legend (Playstation 3, Xbox 360) gives players control of epic-roadie Eddie Riggs who has been sent to a fantasy heavy metal world to do battle alongside headbangers and musicians. The game's fiction is all pulled from the sort of art you'd expect to find on bad heavy metal record albums, and its humorous story is backed by a hefty cast of voice actors including Jack Black, Lita Ford, Rob Halford and Lemmy Kilmister.

Runner-Up: Alan Wake (PC, Xbox 360)

Best Sequel

Ubisoft's willingness to reboot their stealth franchise and turn it into something different will go a long way in making Splinter Cell Conviction (PC, Xbox 360) a hit.

Runner-Up: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PlayStation 3)

Best New Hardware

When Microsoft unveiled Project Natal (Xbox 360), their controller-free motion controller, during E3 earlier this month the reaction was almost incredulity. Not that Microsoft would be able to garner any attention with another motion controller, but that a high-definition camera could let you interact with games without the help of anything else. Using just the camera and the 360, Project Natal can let you drive cars, swat balls or even interact with a virtual child.

Runner-Up: PSPgo

Best New Gameplay Mechanic

Scribblenauts' ability to turn your written word into a little cartoon version of the item is astounding, add to that the ability to blend these items so they interact with each other or can be wielded by the hero and you have the best new mechanic to hit a video game since Nintendo perfected the waggle.

Runner-Up: Invizimals' (PSP) monster-catching camera.

Best Weapon

In the weapon-centric world of action video games, swords, guns and tanks are all played out. Enter Bayonetta (Playstation 3, Xbox 360). The eponymous heroine with the Sarah Palin glasses can quad-wield her guns, carrying two pistols in her hands and two more strapped to her ankles, and unwind her black hair, which she wears as a jumpsuit, to turn it into giant fists, high-heeled feet and even a dragon .

Runner-Up: Left 4 Dead 2's frying pan.

Best of 2010

It has been four years since Team Ico released Shadow of the Colossus to critical acclaim. The action adventure game delivered an emotional story and reinvented the way people thought about game design, turning the titular Colossus into living levels that had to be tracked down, climbed and destroyed.

During Playstation's E3 press conference, the team unveiled their latest work: The Last Guardian (Playstation 3). The game appears to revolve around the relationship between a boy and a giant feathered creature. Not much to go on, but fans of Team Ico know the developers will deliver.

Runner-Up: Mass Effect 2 (PC, Xbox 360)

Biggest Game Changer

Sony's $250 PSPgo is more than just another portable, it's the first time a major gaming hardware company has jumped entirely into the realm of digital downloads . Its success could blaze the way for digital only gaming, its failure could set the movement back by years.

Runner-Up: Wii Vitality Sensor (Wii)

Well Played is a weekly opinion column about the big news of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Alan Wake has been touted as a more grown-up suspense game, a subtler and more sophisticated take on a genre more commonly infested with zombie nurses and chainsaw villains.

Other games of this type seem to be about darkness. We discovered a game that's just as much about light.

What Is It?
Alan Wake is an Xbox 360 exclusive in development at Max Payne studio Remedy Entertainment. Players control Alan Wake, a man lost in a strange town in the forest of Washington State, searching for his fiancée. As much a shooter as it is a mystery and a game that uses the negative space of quiet, creepy drama, the game is slated for an early 2010 release.

What We Saw
I played through the game's E3 demo, which starts with a tutorial that explains the game's core mechanic of using light as a weapon. The setting was a night-time sequence high in the tree-lined peaks of Washington State. The action moved from a fight against some bad people on a dirt road, to a spooky, tree-shaking event at a cabin, and then a dangerous tram ride over a valley, with a Jeep thrown in Alan's face at one point for good measure. Then, a cliffhanger.

How Far Along Is It?
The game has been in development a long time but could be as much as a year from release. Still, the demo we played was a complete vertical slice.

What Needs Improvement?
This Is Not TV: The demo began with a recap sequence entitled "Previously on Alan Wake" and also used a title card to lead into the action that read "Tonight on Alan Wake." Remedy is trying to make their game feel like an episodic TV season, a structure tried previously in Alone in the Dark, among other games. Maybe that would make the game more approachable for non-gamers, but it just seems odd to pretend that a gameplay session is a night-time broadcast.

What Should Stay The Same?
Light As A Gun: Alan Wake always carries his flashlight and frequently must shine it on the people and things attacking him. He can't hurt them otherwise. Wake has a half-circle meter that represents how much light he has left to project with his flashlight. Holding down a trigger shines that light on a target, cleansing it of some sort of darkened cloud possessing it. Only then can bullets hurt the bad guys. So you aim and shoot with the light. Then you aim and shoot with your gun. Some enemies that were hurled our way — as well as a truck — required a fire-hose stream of light blasted at them. That blast diminished Wake's light energy, which would either be replenished over time or, in a pinch re-filled with a switch of batteries. Essentially, the mechanics require Wake to have to shoot enemies twice, with light first, then a gun. The developers promise more light weapons than just a flashlight (we're guessing flaming torch and strobe-light, but who knows). Possessed objects didn't need to be shot with a gun… that Jeep plummeted to the ground after being flooded with illumination.

A Good, Haunted Mood: It's hard to predict whether Alan Wake will be scary. But it is definitely spooky. Remedy is using their creepy forest environment well, letting distant but mysterious shaking in the treetops or the nearby flocking of dark birds (or were they bats?) strike the wonderfully discordant note of a menacing other presence making itself known.

Good Fighting: Combat in Alan Wake was smooth. That's not a big deal, unless you consider that many other thriller games that are great on atmosphere are often clunky with combat. Not here. Alan Wake is no super-hero of a demon-fighter, but he can run, duck and shoot like you would hope that you would, if possessed woodsmen and Jeeps were messing with you.

Final Thoughts
Alan Wake has the right mood: that something in its world is very wrong. The mechanics are promising, though potentially repetitive. As long as having to shoot enemies with light and then guns doesn't become tiresome, the game could play quite well. Whether it can present the intellectual and tonal sophistication that some fans have been hoping for is something we could not judge at E3, unfortunately. But those potential qualities could make Alan Wake transcend the pack of thrillers and horror games it's still among. We'll keep an eye on that angle, because, in the end, that's what could make or break Remedy's long-in-the-making game.

My personal favorite of the day's clips is the LEGO Harry Potter teaser — but I'm a sucker for all things LEGO-related. A close second is the Ayane gameplay footage, followed by the Old Republic trailer. If you have no idea what I'm talking about because you missed all of this glorious, game-related cinema, go through the list below and start watching.

I'll just be at the store, buying more popcorn for tomorrow's night's E3 clip binge.

Crysis 2 Trailer Is Light On The Crysis 2
LEGO Harry Potter And The Teaser Trailer Of Doom
In the Interest of Time, A Modern Warfare 2 Gameplay Clip
Old Republic Gets New Trailer
Watch Ayane Kick Some Ass
APB E3 Trailer Full Of Cops, Criminals
Halo: Reach Trailer Knows What You Know
Alan Wake Creeps Me Out
All You Need Is The Beatles: Rock Band Debut Trailer
Metal Gear Solid: Rising Teaser Trailer
Molyneux's Milo Brings a Virtual Child to the Xbox 360
See Microsoft's Project Natal In Action

It is, as Mike McWhertor says, like a Silent Hill we want to play. I get a sort of Evil Dead vibe off of all of that running around in the woods and the trippy effects, and not the remake, the original.

Developer Remedy, responsible for the Max Payne series, is bringing "multilayered character interactions, unique problem-solving and intense combat against terrifying enemies" with Alan Wake, a title that looks to have a big focus on play with the contrast between light and dark.

In the trailer we saw during Microsoft's E3 press conference, Wake fended off nightmarish creatures with a flashlight and flares, powering a giant floodlight with a generator to stop of horde of things not quite human.

Players will assume the role of Wake as he searches for his missing wife in the Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls. The official announcement name checks Twin Peaks and The X-Files, should you like that kind of vibe. Further details are harder to come by, as the official release notes that Alan Wake will be a mission-based title that has a heavy focus on story. But since we have eight new screens of the game, consider another 8,000 words attached to this post.

Credit Xbox360Achievements.Org with discovering the Halo: Reach page on Xbox.com. In the course of keeping abreast of the latest achievement news they keep a watch on all new game pages, even if the achievement lists are currently blank.

Following their lead, Destructoid went snooping, discovering pages for Alan Wake, Joy Ride, Shadow Complex, and Forza 3, many of which we knew were coming...we just didn't know how soon.

Of course this could all be coincidence, or this could be a handy checklist to play along with as you watch our live blog of the E3 2009 Microsoft press conference.

Remedy has joined forces with Imagination Studios, who is supplying the Finnish dev with "motion-capture and animations" to enhance Alan Wake. Remedy exec Lasse Seppänen stated, "It is with great pleasure that we can recommend Imagination Studios. Remedy has been extremely pleased with their co-operation and devotion in bringing the characters of Alan Wake to life."

The developer is also best know for churning out the first two Max Payne titles for Rockstar Games. Max Payne 3 is being created by Rockstar's Vancouver studio — a sign that Remedy could be working full capacity on Alan Wake.

Delayed Alan Wake given new life with mo-cap tech [Develop]

An interview with Remedy Entertainment's Oskari Hakkinen reveals that the game will, like Max payne before it, introduce a key gameplay innovation/gimmick. But while Max brought us bullet time, Alan will be using the light as a "crucial element", which features not only in regular gameplay but in combat as well.

So yes, there will be shooting. Just...not much. The game is being pitched as a "psychological action game", and Hakkinen says that, despite the crazy nature of the game, you won't be fighting monsters or zombies or anything like that.

More familiar details can be found at the link below.

The Mystery of Alan Wake [IGN]

Uusi Alan Wake -traileri… [Pelaajalehti via VG247]