Alan Wake 2’s first expansion, Night Springs, is here. It’s a roughly 2 hour or so-long set of three episodes. The first is a fun fantasy, while the second and third hint at the future of the Remedy-verse in incredibly exciting ways. If you’re interested, go buy it and come back to watch this review as it’s impossible to talk about at all without light spoilers.
Episode 1: Number One Fan – The Waitress
Each episode is written by Alan Wake and hosted by Warlin Door as an episode of the in-universe television series, Night Springs. The first sees the waitress Rose Marigold in a fantasy where everyone loves her, especially Alan Wake. It’s a sappy, murder-filled romance story that features roughly thirty minutes of serving coffee, cleaning plates, and shooting the shit out of dozens of the base game’s enemies.
Rose runs the Oh Deer Diner and keeps a fresh stockpile of weaponry on hand in case the love of her life, the Writer, ever needs them. Familial intrigue leads to a series of events where Rose must rush to save Alan and the writing is delightfully over the top, ammo is plentiful, and by the end of things it felt like a fun little jaunt. This is the most disconnected story from the Remedy-verse, though.
Episode 2: North Star – The Sibling
Courtney Hope is back. While she appears to be Jesse Faden from control she a power-less version of her. Her alien-mind power friend Polaris is still there and helps Jesse(?) as she attempts to find her brother inside a warped version of the amusement park from the base Alan Wake 2 campaign. Part of this campaign is Shawn Ashmore’s sheriff. He’s trying to figure out why this “cult of coffee” has come into existence as his townsfolk start to disappear.
The flashlight makes a return for the combat in this title, requiring not-Jesse to expose her enemies before her large-clipped, fast-firing pistol can take them down. Once again ammo is plentiful along with healing items and I completed this episode in roughly 35 minutes.
Episode 3: Time Breaker – An Actor
Instead of helping him, you’re now playing as Shawn Ashmore, literally. You are the actor and Shawn is working with “Sam”, with the likeness and voice of Sam Lake, to create a Timebreaker video game. Things go awry and the magic starts to hit. At this point, I went from enjoying episode 2 to loving it, as the context provided here for Remedy’s multiversal plans started to seemingly unfold.
For any fans of Quantum Break, who desperately wanted closure the idea of Courtney Hope and Shawn Ashmore being in a Remedy game together was already exciting. To know, after playing this, that even without the rights to Quantum Break they might finally someday do that? I was about as excited as a 42-year-old man can be over a video game love story.
Wrapping Things Up
For any fan of Alan Wake 2 and especially those that are invested in the greater Remedy storylines this expansion is a no-brainer. It’s $20 for this and the second release, Lake House, which should hit around October 2024. Do yourself a favor and play this ASAP and with as little info going in as possible. It looks and runs great and adds exciting new branches to the ever-expanding storyline of Remedy’s future titles.
Alan Wake II: Night Springs DLC
Played on
PC
PROS
- Episode 1 is hilariously dumb
- Episode 2 is intriguing
- Episode 3 makes it all so much more important
CONS
- Rather short so some may not see the “value” (I disagree)
I played through the first episode last night and it was pretty funny. Can confirm the short length though. I think I finished it in maybe 20 minutes.