The Alan Wake forums are quite active and discuss a wide range of subjects that will interest any Alan Wake onlooker. Here are excerpts of some of the most intense discussions and the official answers to those questions by “MarkusRMD”, their popular public figure, who does most of the official answering for the game on the forums.
Cinematic Trailer Comments & Discussion
Is this from the game engine?
Markus-With the exception of title screens (Remedy/MGS/Alan Wake), it’s all from the game engine. The depth-of-field effects have been added as a post-process to enhance the visual storytelling.
Q What platform was used (for the cinematic trailer)?
Markus-PC. The shots were taken in 1080p resolution (using 4xMSAA) and scaled down to 720p for web release. We are only releasing a few shots, and we wanted these to be usable for print purposes as well, therefore the higher resolution. The game looks very good on Xbox360 too but only runs in 720p.
Q: There’s cool Depth-of-Field in the Cabin shot, is this real time?
Markus-That shot is from the Cinematic Trailer. We intend to use DOF effects to enhance storytelling in the in-game cinematics, but (at least at the moment) it is done as an offline post process. Otherwise that image is fully rendered by the game engine.
Q. Markus can you confirm or deny that Alan Wake will use streaming ultra large textures?
Markus-Ultra large textures not being an exact technical term, it’s hard to say, but we do stream textures in in a couple of stages.
Q. Hey Markus is the second screen(the one above) from a gameplay scene?
Markus-Yea.
Q. I watched the trailer of 2008 and thought something about the game was different. What are the changes from the E3 2006 trailer? Are the changes more apparent in Brightfalls, or just more visual effects and polygons?
Markus-The tradition at Remedy is that tech develops constantly, right up to the launch. It’s the same tech than in 2006, but iteratively better from every angle. And obviously we’ve had a bit more time to work on the art too, it would not be fair towards our talented art team to just give all credits to the tech.
Markus on Visuals - Heh, the amount of bloom has been a reoccurring discussion here as well. We even have a debug slider to adjust it in real time, in fact, we can do quite a lot to the image in the game to make it more impactful and matching the mood we want people to experience.
A wild guess concerning AW’s plot
Alan has been in a car accident and fallen into a deep coma. Bright Falls is a manifestation of his psyche being lost in the woods. His coma’s nature is semi-lucid; Alan knows at least subconsciously that he can manipulate how the story proceeds, but he doesn’t exactly know how or why. As he falls deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, things start to get awry and surreal in the small town. It is up to Alan whether Bright Falls will suck him into eternal darkness (permanent coma) or if he can find his way into the light (waking up).
Markus-Your guess is completely, Oh wait, was this the sort of topic we don’t comment on?
Copy protection for Alan Wake
Markus-It’s still probably a bit early for Remedy to discuss this issue, and it might be the responsibility of Microsoft to look after it. I wouldn’t expect it to be too different from other Games for Windows titles, though.
Alan Wake’s Changeable Clothes
Q. In the first trailers we saw Alan in a red jumper, red scarf and a green trenchcoat. I wonder if they dumped this or you will be able to change into these or different clothes
Markus-We restyled Mr. Wake after the 1st public showing to better fit his persona in the game, thus the “2nd wardrobe” and look.
Remedy On The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Markus-I’m happy to see you guys being so passionate about platforms!
1. We never announced platforms except for “next generation of consoles”. Yeah, the plural is in there, so I do understand where the sentiment comes from, so I do apologise for any disappointments.
2. Microsoft did not force Remedy to take the publishing deal
PS3 development was a big unknown to an independent 3rd party developer in mid 2005 when this decision was made. While it’s a great device and has lots of good games nowadays, it’s still quoted by many respected developers as being more expensive and slower to develop for than Xbox360.
We have absolutely nothing against PS3, far from it, and in fact we are still a registered Sony PS3 developer. It was a big decision for us to go with a console first party publisher with Alan Wake, but looking at it in hindsight I still think it was the right one for the game and for the company. We get a better game for you to enjoy and have less technological risks while making it.
CVG recently made a post speculating on the release of the game, they reported “…That said, almost a thousand days into development and they are, at least, prepared to attach the year 2009 to the project. And, if we were to take a bash, we’d say autumn is a good bet.”
This however is subject to serious speculation and Remedy believes in a quality product no matter how long it takes. Max Payne is the perfect example for amount of sheer brilliance found in Remedy’s products.
slim 
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