Alan Wake 2is approaching its first anniversary this Fall, and developer Remedy Entertainment has an exciting piece of content planned for around the same time.Alan Wake 2was hailed upon release as one of the most engrossing horror titles of 2023, and perhaps Remedy’s most accomplished game to date. With the Remedy Connected Universe uniting the studio’s properties within a common world, the forthcoming DLC forAlan Wake 2, The Lake House, will likely serve as the next building block for it.
Alan Wake 2’s first DLC, Night Springs, was a collection of fun “What If?” tales featuring some fan-favorite characters. However, it didn’t really advance any major points or set up the next chapter of the core narrative. This is what the upcoming second majorDLC, The Lake House, will ostensibly strive to do. The Lake House promises to explore threads teased inAlan Wake 2. At the same time, it could also circle back to fill in some of the gaps from the first title that still haven’t been fully illuminated.
Alan Wake 2’s Lake House DLC release dateis set for sometime this October.
Alan Wake 2’s Lake House DLC Should Loop Back Into the Original Title
The Lake House’s Legacy in Alan Wake
In the original, Alan and Alice Wake arrive in Bright Falls and are led to Cauldron Lake’s Bird Leg Cabin, which sits on Diver’s Isle. The problem is that this place is a nexus for The Dark Presence entity, and it reaches out from its home in the alternate dimension known as The Dark Place to trap the Wakes in its Lovecraftian snare. Bird Leg Cabin is an integral location inAlan Wake’s story and lore, but many facets of its history and true role remain cloaked in secrecy.
During the events ofAlan Wake 2, fans learn that theFederal Bureau of Control, from Remedy’s other paranormal IP in the RCU, had been aware of Alan’s disappearance and was investigating the interdimensional disturbances rippling out from The Dark Place’s epicenter at the cabin in the aftermath. The FBC was maintaining two sites around Cauldron Lake; one a smaller outpost, the other a research center deemed The Lake House. They were described as abandoned and overrun by Taken in the time between Alan unwittingly unleashing The Dark Presence 13 years prior in the first game. The DLC is implied to focus on this sequence of events, though exactly when is currently unclear.
How Alan Wake 2’s Lake House DLC Could Tie Into the First Game
AsControlis next in lineto continue the RCU, The Lake House could be pulling double duty by closing some of the unanswered points left open sinceAlan Wakewhile setting events in motion to lead intoControl 2. Since fans didn’t actually revisit Bird Leg Cabin inAlan Wake 2, and now knowing that the FBC conducted operations there at some point, it would provide the perfect connective tissue to return to it in the DLC while learning more about its past and what precisely befell the FBC’s installations.
The Lake House could possibly feature multiple timelines, showing the FBC initially gathering data about the Altered World Event and anomalies caused by them in the vicinity. Fans might then play through the disaster as it struck, before following up in the present day, perhaps with Agent Kieran Estevez (who assisted Alan and Saga Anderson in the main campaign) as she puts all the pieces together.
Other potential avenues include the eccentric artist,Thomas Zane, whom Diver’s Isle is named after, and was also tangled up in The Dark Presence’s influence there decades before Alan. Zane’s part in the overall story has not been fully explained yet, although he has appeared inAW1’s DLCs. The Lake House is thus primed to loop back into some of the mysteries introduced in and still lingering from the first game, while simultaneously propelling the series forward.
Alan Wake 2
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A string of ritualistic murders threatens Bright Falls, a small-town community surrounded by Pacific Northwest wilderness. Saga Anderson, an accomplished FBI agent with a reputation for solving impossible cases arrives to investigate the murders. Anderson’s case spirals into a nightmare when she discovers pages of a horror story that starts to come true around her.Alan Wake, a lost writer trapped in a nightmare beyond our world, writes a dark story in an attempt to shape the reality around him and escape his prison. With a dark horror hunting him, Wake is trying to retain his sanity and beat the devil at his own game.Anderson and Wake are two heroes on two desperate journeys in two separate realities, connected at heart in ways neither of them can understand: reflecting each other, echoing each other, and affecting the worlds around them.Fueled by the horror story, supernatural darkness invades Bright Falls, corrupting the locals and threatening the loved ones of both Anderson and Wake. Light is their weapon—and their safe haven — against the darkness they face. Trapped in a sinister horror story where there are only victims and monsters, can they break out to be the heroes they need to be?
