It is time for the latest installment of Kotaku's Game Club. We are discussing Alan Wake's second episode: Taken.
Just as we did for the first episode, we're doing this in the comments.
If you, like me, have only played the first two chapters so far, what do you make of the mystery so far? Is this all a set-up by Alan's agent? That's my theory, for now.
And what do you make of the collectibles? The manuscript page-fetching in the first episode annoyed me. I felt that finding the pages was sending me off the game's main path in a way that detracted from the focused mood of Alan's adventure. I am compulsive enough about collecting things in games that I began the second episode hunting for more pages. I was repeatedly straying from the path toward which the mini-map icon was directing me. I was convinced the developers had hid the pages from me, and I had to find them. But, slowly, I'm realizing that most of these pages aren't that deeply hidden and that if I just chill out, I'll stumble across most of them. I like how the writing on those pages foreshadows the narrative. I hope it will be used to confound the player's expectations. But I do with the pages were discovered automatically — no searching required. Anyone with me?
Note: Our Alan Wake Game Club will return Monday, at the same hour, 3pm Kotaku Time (5pm ET/ 1pm PT) with a discussion of the game's third episode.