The game's sudden decision to finally just start delivering some straight-talking, no-nonsense snippets of information to you about what's actually been going on around here this whole time seems like an odd tact for a game that has shrouded itself in utter mystery for an entire main game and DLC pack prior.
If the intention was to keep things ambiguous and purely down to the players interpretation, then it seems like a strange switch up to suddenly start spilling the secrets so abruptly. Even after all this, the episode still concludes Alan Wake on a cliff-hanger.
Anyway, we did ultimately come into the final piece of DLC for Alan Wake looking for definitive answers, and we do get them - sort of - but only by virtue of the game's strange u-turn to drop the mysterious persona it's been playing on for the last 7 episodes and just begin delivering answers. You are trapped within your own mind. You're struggling to free yourself after making the sacrifice to save your wife. Everything you're facing around you has been conjured up by your own mind through Alan's creative writing which has gotten out of control.
I know I'm on the cusp of breaching my own rules of generally trying to be spoiler free, but that's the first time I've been able to comment on the plot with any sort of reasonable conviction. In the 8th episode of the game. Even then, the game still doesn't even reach a true conclusion, and it's no surprise at all the game has a sequel.
There are 9 additional trophies added for the episode, and the approach is exactly the same as it was for the Signal DLC. There's no pressure to beat the episode on any specific difficulty level, so an initial run through on normal difficulty in an attempt to unlock the "No Punctuation" trophy, awarded for Making it through The Writer in one dazzling dash. As before, this just translates to beating the episode without dying or restarting from a checkpoint.
Compared to the Signal, there is a much lower emphasis on combat in the Writer, and instead, is substituted by periods where the mysterious voices in your head are confirming plot details back to you as you move through empty space. The game suddenly takes an interest in platforming segments too, and Alan Wake is most certainly not built for platforming. If you thought it was clunky before, wait until you try and navigate moving platforms/objects whilst timing jumps. It's definitely easier to make it through this episode without dying than it was previously, and that is due to the more limited combat, but it's a shame because one of the strongest suits of the game has suddenly taken a back seat.
With that being said, I didn't succeed on my initial run, and abandoned it in favour of the "Go Gentle In That Good Light" trophy, awarded for Making it through the approach to the lighthouse without firing a weapon. The few hectic battles you'll encounter are made much easier by environmental help. You can use your torch to burn words and manifest explosions to eliminate enemies, or summon the support of the booming lighthouse beams to protect you. The sense of jeopardy that the game is capable of delivering in combat scenarios is well removed in this episode, and once I knew what to expect, I beat it without dying incredibly quickly.
There are also 10 Night Springs video games to collect. I missed a couple of them on my initial run and made sure I grabbed these afterwards in subsequent play throughs, and this also gave me a good opportunity to grab the remaining miscellaneous trophies to finish off the list at the same time - None of which are any trouble.
The episode is only around an hour in length, and I didn't need to play it for any more than a total of 3 times in full to grab all 9 trophies on offer.
Alan Wake is a solid game. It's made me curious enough to want to explore the sequel, but the plot is like a complicated relationship. It's full of second guessing and confusion, and it's always been a personal gripe of mine when games just refuse to give you any sort of clarity, especially when additional content should set the expectation of delivering conclusions, not cliff-hangers.
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