Alan Wake Notes

I choose hard mode, I may regret this.

Episode 1 Nightmare
A monologue over a view of rolling countryside.
A lighthouse. Alan is talking about a dream. He is driving down a road at night, too fast, on his way to find his wife. He hits a hitchhiker and gets out to investigate. The lights of the car go out and the body vanishes.
We get control. Alan stand in front of the car, we are told to look at a lampost light high up to get our control preference.
Left stick moves Alan, Right is camera.
B is examine. The car is broken.
LB is sprint.
X is jump.
A brick wall has appeared behind us in the tunnel we drove through. Alan comments that it wasn't there a second ago.
Our objective is to go to the lighthouse, the light from it can be seen in the distance.
There seems to be two routes to go here, however the illusion is shattered quickly as the bridge we can see in the distance is out. We have to go back and go down to a jetty we can see.
I find a thermos, which seems to be a collectible.
I try out the game by walking off the edge of the bridge, no invisible walls here as Alan plunges to his death.
I go back and head along the wooden structure leading to the jetty. As I do the camera pans backwards to the car and we see the hitchhiker has returned, only this time he is darkened and flickery at the edges. He is seen in the distance then suddenly right in front of Alan. We have to avoid his axe swings as he comes at Alan. He is taunting Alan as he attacks. Suggesting that Alan is a poor writer. It appears reading between the line that this is a creature of Alan's own creation and it is sick of being manipulated by Alan.
The wooden structure collapses and Alan is left standing below the figure. We are prompted to press the left stick down to focus which pans the camera on the monster as it talks.
We are left alone again and our objective is still to get to the lighthouse.
A sign has a missing persons poster with Alan's face on it.
We come face to face with the hitchhiker again. Alan tells us that he is a character from a story he was working on.
We have to learn how to dodge here, which is done by Pressing LB and moving the left stick in the desired direction. We have to dodge the hitchhiker twice to move on. He vanishes again.
Further down the path the hitchhiker appears again. He asks us how it feels to die at the hands of ones own creation. The hitchhiker then turns into a swirling vortex of dark energy and comes for Alan. We are told to sprint. I follow the path across a bridge. where a man is waiting. The man is named but I didn't catch it. He tells us to get into the house. The man is trapped outside by the hitchhiker and axed to death. We are now inside the house trapped.
I flail around the house looking for what to do next. There seems to be little to do. Only one door. There are tv's showing an eye which follows Alan around the room.
There are rumblings and shudders. Alan is hurt by the shaking and buffeting. A light suddenly appears through a new hole in the wall of the cabin. A voice tells us to go towards the light. Which given the previous history of going towards the light seems like a bad idea. Of course this is a linear game and we have no choice but to follow the set path. Outside the voice tells us to go into a pool of light where we will be safe. In the light our health rises back to the top as shown by a circular bar around the hud.
The light starts babbling about lakes and waves, obviously foreshadowing stuff that might get explained later. It asks Alan if he understands, and he says no. It then tells him to follow it's light and mends a broken down set of stairs. It looks like we are a pawn in the struggle between light and dark, good  and evil.
I move forward and reach another tutorial, this one on combat.
The light tells us to pick up the flashlight. We are told that the darkness protects the monster. The hitchhiker must have the darkness burned away before we can hurt him. This is done by training the light on him. We have to press Left trigger to boost the light. Whilst Right trigger is pressed the light burns bright. The left stick controls the beam and the camera. Aiming at the monster and pressing Left Trigger makes the darkness dissolve. We are told we can now shoot him with a gun by pressing the right trigger. The light handily provides a revolver. We shoot the hitchhiker about four times and he dies.
The light tells us that we can have our dream back.
Alan tells us that the lighthouse is the only safe place left in the world.
X is reload. Tapping X while reloading makes it happen quicker.
We get a few enemies to practice on and it is hard when there are more than one.
I get to a light post and my health goes back up. I find a flare gun which is like a shotgun blast, I take out three enemies at once with it.
I noticed here that there is a building with a thermos in it. I went down a step and could not get back up. This means that it's possible to go to far and miss collectibles that you will never be able to get back to unless you do another playthrough.
We now have to run from the dark hurricaine again and it throws cars and other items of scenery at Alan as he runs to the lighthouse. Inside the lighthouse Alan is safe until the light goes out. Then it seems as if something descends from above to get him. He hears a voice and then wakes from the dream. He is on a ferry arriving at Bright  falls with his wife.
It's daytime and the camera pans over the town before we get control back on the ferry.
On the ferry the wife asks you to pose near an old man on the front of the ferry. He is called Pat and runs a local radio show. He asks Alan for an interview, Alan declines, saying that he is in Bright falls to get away from it all. Alan's agent Barry calls and nags.
The ferry arrives at the jetty and we disembark in Cut scene. Alice who is Alan's wife tells us to go to a diner and speak to Carl who has the keys for their cabin.
In the diner we meet Rose who is a superfan of Alan, she keeps a life size cardboard cut out in the diner. The police chief drinks too mucch coffee and there are aged hells angels who seem to be resident in the diner. An old woman is afraid of the dark and won't go down a corridor. Seems we have to go down the dark corridor.
At the end of the dark corridor we knock on the gents toilet door. An elederly woman dressed in black wearing a hat with a dark veil appears out of nowhere. She gives Alan the key to the cabin and tells him that she will check in on him later. And ominously says she will meet his wife.
She tells us that cauldron lake is a very inspiring place.
Back in the diner we find that the old men are waiting to be picked up by their doctor. The woman with the fear of the dark tells us we were lucky this time.
Alice appears outside the diner in the car and we can go out to her triggering a cut scene.
This shows Alice and Alan driving to the cabin. As they leave the diner street Carl appears running out of the diner to give them the keys and directions to the cabin. Looks like they have been sent somewhere other than they intended.
Alan talks about his writers block which has seen him unable to write a word for two years.
The arrive at their rather spectacular cabin which is in the middle of a lake on a little Island of it's own.
The little island is called Divers isle. There have already been pictures of a man in an old style diving suit, old tom might be his name. Foreshadowing?
There are always ravens fluttering away from most places in the game.
Alice is afraid of the dark.
I explore the cabin area and find a generator in a shack. I turn it on and realise that I have probably done something in the wrong order.
I come to a point where I am meant to focus and see Cauldron lake Lodge in the distance. Apparently it was a hotel once but is now closed to the public. Looks like we will be going there soon then.
Alice goes into the house and tells us to look around.
A cut scene shows her smiling at us from inside the house and Alan talks about how he hopes he can sleep here and get over his work problems.
I find a radio outside on the porch which plays a little clip of the radio show, seems that the Pat and Rose are determined that everyone in Bright Falls knows Alan is there.
Inside Alice says to come upstairs that she has a surprise for Alan.
Upstairs we find a typewriter. Alan goes off the deep end and is angry with Alice. She tells him that there is doctor in Bright falls who specialises in helping artists. As they argue the lights flicker and a figure can be seen for an instant between them. Alan goes outside in the dark to calm down and be alone knowing that Alice won't follow him out into the dark.
Alan hears Alice screaming inside the cabin and the lights go out inside. We get control back.
I run back to the cabin and am attacked by the ravens. The flashlight kills them.
Inside the door of a cabin a cut scene starts. There is a hole in the wall of the cabin and Alan looks out and sees that Alice is under the water. Alan dives in to save Alice.
He blacks out and wakes on the ground. a voice says "keep going Alan, wake up".
Alan is beside the wreck of his crashed car and his phone is dead.
A gas station can be seen in the distance.
I progress through the forest, I can see the light that spoke to us appear in the distance.
As I approach the light a cut scene starts. Alan finds some pages and picks them up. It seems they are from a book called Departure written by Alan himself. He has no memory of ever writing them. The page tells of someone being attacked in the woods by a shadowy axeman.
I come to a logging yard.
Here we find carl Stucky, but he is posessed by the darkness. He has an axe and someone lies dead.
We are attacked by Stucky and have to flee into the building. Here we get our flashlight and batteries, also a gun.
A phone can be used, however as we call the police the telegraph pole we can see in the distance out of the window is cut down and the phone goes dead.
A large digger type vehicle starts up and moves towards the cabin.
We get out of the cabin and watch as the bulldozer takes the whole cabin over the edge of the cliff.
I am attacked by two enemies here. There is a portable light that can be switched on.
There is a generator type object I am prompted to kick, but I can't see what that did.
There are yellow markings that are only revealed by the torch light. I follow a trail which leads me to a flare gun.
Ah the kicking was to turn off the power so I could get past an electrified area cause by the bringing down of the power lines.
I find a manuscript page of the beaten path. Pays to explore it seems.
A flash comes to Alan, of his wife in the water and the face of the dark woman from the diner.
Another page hidden on a dead end on a set of logs tells of Alan's agent Barry worrying about him.
I come to another logging camp and face more enemies.
I find a set of yellow directions and more batteries and supplies. A message tells us that the taken are filled with darkness. It is graffiti on the wall, shown only by the flashlight.
Who wrote it?
I find that there is an item limit.
A staircase is blocked and we need to find another way.
I see a generator in the distance, A few monsters get in the way and we have to start it using a mini-game where you have to time button presses with a revolving marker.
I then go to a button that is now powered up. This allows us to move a log lift. The log lift is to be moved so that it forms a bridge between two log piles. There is a ladder we can climb to get up on top of the logs. You have to press B to get onto the ladder when near it.
Jumping across the makeshift bridge gets us up on top of the area we wanted to get to.
I come to the first large scale fight. The game is asking me to get better at it here. Lots of enemies attacking in groups of three. There is a generator which when started acts as a health point.
I come to another cabin, inside is a tv and there is an episode of a tv series called night Springs playing.
A man explains quantum immortality theory. He shoots himself and explains that in one reality he was shot and in another reality he didn't die. The trick is to always be in the correct reality. This is a short story by Alastair Reynolds, I can't remember the name of.
A switch opens a gate here.
I find the shotgun in the cabin.
In this next area we have a boss battle of sorts. Around five normal enemies and stucky attack. The shotgun is really helpful here.
Stucky moves faster than the rest of the enemies and takes more light shining to wear down his shield. Once done he take an awful lot of bullets as well.
We reach the gas station and Alan draws our attention to a pardae float for deer fest which is parked outside.
Alan notices a sign which says Deer fest is only 7 days away. It had been two weeks away when he first got the Bright Falls, which means he has lost a week.
Inside the garage Alan sees himself on the tv. He is in the room at the cabin writing at the typewriter. He says the only way to save Alice is to keep on writing.
Inside the garage we have to find a phone. The phone on the counter can be used.
This starts a cut scene where Alan calls the police. A female sherrif comes out to meet him. He asks her to help him, tells her he has been in a car crash and has lost his wife. Alan tells her he is staying in the cabin on Cauldron lake. She tells him that there is no cabin on Cauldron lake, it was destroyed in an erruption in the seventies. She tells Alan she will take him to the lake to show him and then to the station. At the lake we see that there is no Island. Credits roll and we are told that it's the end of episode 1.

Episode 2 : Taken
We see a previously on Alan Wake resume of what happened.
Alan comes into a house carrying shopping. Alice is inside, this seems to be a flashback.
We are in Alan's house. Alice asks him to put coffee on. She is working in a room which appears to be her darkroom, is she a photoprapher?
We have to go and switch on the coffee machine. Then we have to go back to Alice. She asks us to look at cover designs she has left for us in our office. We go to Alan's writing room and find the covers. Then we have to go back to Alice. The lights go out when we do. It is a power cut. Alan check the fuse boxes and gets a flashlight out of it. We have to go back to Alice which starts a cut scene. Alan comforts Alice over her fear of the dark. He tells her that his mother gave him a light switch when he was young, which would turn on a magic light and scare away the monsters. Alan gives the switch to Alice.
We are back to the present and Alan is being looked over by a doctor, he continues to pretend everything is all right so that he doesn't get locked up as a loony. It may be possible that Alan is nuts and hallucinating all of the darkness and just murdering poor unfortunates like Stucky.
We are told by the doctor that we should go back and see Sarah the sherrif.
First sessions play 3 hours.
I leave the room where the doctor tended me and find myself in the police station.
The old woman who is paranoid about the lights is there.
The policewoman at the desk talks about her. Says she was the editor of the local newspaper, then she went a bit nuts and worried about the lights and never stepped on shadows.
We have to go and speak to Sarah in her office.
There is a radio, a thermos and a manuscript page in the room in the other direction.
I go down the corridor and speak to Sarah. She has charged out phone for us.
She asks what happened. Alan tells her about arguing with Alice and leaving the cottage, then going back in to find her gone. He then tells her he woke up and can't remember anything for the last seven days.
He does not tell her about the shadows and Stucky.
Sarahs asks if he means the non-existant cabin on Cauldron lake. Alan's phone rings and he answers it. Alice speaks to him and then someone comes on the phone. He tells Alan to lose the law and meet him in Elderwood national park. He tells him to go to the back lot and look at something first.
I go down the cell corridor after being told by the policewoman at the desk where to go. There is a drunk in the cells ranting about the lights.
I go out the back and find a hole in the fence. We have to use B to kick some boards away. Alice's driving license is on the seat of a wrecked old car.
Barry, Alan's agent calls and telss Alan he is in Bright Falls. Alan asks him to pick him up. I go through the cell area again and the tv there shows Alan in his writer room agonising about continuing to write the story.
In the police station reception Dr Hartman has arrived to pick up the two men we met in the diner. Wasn't that a week ago?
Dr Hartman tells Alan that he can come and stay at his clinic at Cauldron lodge. Alan gets angry and asks if this is a set up between him and Alice?
Alan punches Hartman. Barry arrives and threatens lawyers. Hartman does not want to press charges. Barry and Alan leave. Sarah tells him not to leave town.
Barry and Alan drive to a lodge at Elderwood. Rose meets them in the car park. Barry is sweet on her. Alan wants to wait until the arranged meeting time with the  kidnapper.
There is a statue of a mammoth in the lodge reception.
We have to speak to Rusty to book a room.
He is tending to a dog that was caught in a trap. He asks us to go and get a form from the reception desk and bring it back to him.
He gives us keys and tells us how to get to lovers peaks, which is where we have to meet the kidnapper. Barry thinks Alan has gone insane, but comes with him anyway.
The scene shifts to the cabin and Barry is to stay there and wait While Alan goes to lovers peak and meets the kidnapper.
We start of out in the cabins area heading for the peak.
Inside the cabins are supplies and an episode of Night Springs. This is about mirror images of people. The story show a man being interrogated by a cops. It appears that this is the mirror clone of a man that climbed out of the mirror and killed his real self. Again possibly a quantum link.
We come to the visitor centre and the dark cloud can be seen above it. Shots are heard and Rusty's voice screaming in terror.
We are back at the lodge reception now and it has been wrecked by a massive force. The front door caved in.
Inside we find rusty badly injured by the dark force. He tells us that it happened just like the page of a book he found. He tells Alan that the page is in his office and gives him the key.
I enter the office and find some supplies. The circuit box has an axe buried in it.
All hell lets loose a tree falls in the yard and patches of oily darkness appear on the ground. Two enemies emerge when I get back outside.
The pools of oil can be blown up by using the basic flashlight on them, no need to make it supercharged for them.
Where Rusty was lying it seems that something has torn a mammoth sized hole in the wall. Mammoth sized? a Clue? the mammoth seems a little too much work to go to for aesthetic value alone.
I head out through the hole and find Rusty posessed. He attacks us. He is one of the fast moving boss types. He doesn't attack much and is harder to catch than avoid and danger from.
Are you only allowed to carry 42 revolver bullets because that is the meaning of life?
I find moonshine cave and a hidden crate of supplies. We have to follow the nature trail to get to lovers peak.
We move along the trail and regularly are attacked by enemies, there are larger enemies that need more shots and light to wear down.
There is an ambush here that is quite hard to survive.
I find a page which describes an Agent Nightingale who is out to catch Alan Wake?
We come to a cable car across a chasm. As we use it the shaking starts and the car starts to run too fast towards the other side. Alan is knocked down and when he comes round the enemies are approaching and his flashlight is too far away. Suddenly a flare goes off and someone helps him up. The man it seems is the kidnapper. He takes us up the hill. We have to shine the light on the enemies and he will shoot them for us. Alan has lost his guns in the cable car crash. We now have flares though, These can be used to make the enemies retreat. We hold RB to hold a flare up in the air it lasts for about ten seconds.
We reach lovers peak and have to defend it against waves of enemies. Shining the light for the kidnapper to shoot at the enemies and using the flares to keep them at bay at others.
The kidnapper congratulates Alan wake on creating something wonderful and terrible. Then asks for the manuscript. Alan just wants Alice back and attacks the kidnapper, they end up falling over the edge. The kidnapper runs when Alan gets his gun.
I get stuck in a bear trap here. Looks like we will have to watch where we are walking from now on.
End of second play session now totalling 5 hours.
Back in the woods and I have a hard fight getting to some old run down shacks with a generator. I find that letting a flare light then letting go of the button drops it. This allows you time to start the generator and keeps the enemies at bay.
I find a hunting rifle here.
I find the wreck of an old plane here. Alan mumbles something about it being very old but looking like the crash only happened yesterday.
I move through more woods fighting until I come to a mill.
Inside the mill we have some platforming to do, which is newish. The plane body tipped when we walked through it and some dodgy old boards here do the same, showing off the physics engine.
The black oil is back.
A graffiti tells us that the darkness wears her face.
I am now heading back to the cabins by another route and am attacked by a chainsaw weilding bigger enemy.
We get a call from Barry telling us that birds are attacking the cabin. Alan tells him that he is coming and to stay inside with the lights on.
We get to a caravan park. We can investigate a locked door behind which we can see a jeep. Alan tells us that we shuld get the keys and use the vehicle to get back to Barry fast.
In the toilets we find the key. A television also shows us Wake talking in his writing room. He is telling us that a story is created by the author but as it grows it takes on it's own identity and demands. Characters have to remain true and one change has repercussions throughout the entire thing.
We get attacked by a monster coming from the toilet stall, which was predicatble really as it was the only door that wouldn't open. I was waiting for it and blew it away quickly.
The car is reached without problem.
Right trigger is accelerate, left trigger is break and left stick to steer.
I drive along roads littered with obstacles and enemies, which are fun to run over.
Eventually I come to a road block I can't pass.
The vehicle handles poorly, though this isn't really the game for advanced driving simulation.
There is a large attack of enemies here. The kidnapper calls and asks for the manuscript again. Alan tells him that it isn't finished and asks for a week. The kidnapper gives him two days and tells him to meet him at a coal mine in two days time. The manuscript to be swapped for his wife.
We progress up the hill to the cabin and Barry. A huge swarm of birds circle high above the rooftops. We have to defend against the birds in the garden of the cabin, they circle and swarm down to attack. The flare gun can be used to take out whole groups with well placed shots.
Barry removes the barricades from the door and lets Alan in. Barry apologises for thinking that Alan is nuts.
The next day Alan sends Barry down to the town to look for the identity of the kidnapper. Alan tries to finish the manuscript, but can't write a word.
Rose phones barry and tells Barry she has the rest of the manuscript. She sounds robotic though. The camera switches from Barry to Rose and we see that she has been taken by the dark and the funeral woman is standing beside her. With a nice flourish the camera pans out of her window and high above Bright Falls. The credits roll.

Episode 3: Ransom.
Barry and Alan arrive at the trailer park where Rose lives. Sarah calls to tell Alan that an FBI agent has arrived at the station and is anxious to speak with Alan.
We have to talk to the trailer park manager.
We do and he will take us to Rose's trailer. As we walk Barry tells us what he found out about things in the town. He tells us that there is a lot of strange goings on in Bright Falls. Most of it centred on Cauldron Lake. Seems there was a writer who lived there many years ago called Thomas Zane, who was heavily into diving. Seems that the volcano errupted in 1970 and Zane was killed in the erruption which made Divers Isle disappear.
There is a yacht in the middle of the trailer park on it's side. Randolph the manager tells us that it fell there one day as if picked up by a hurricaine. Only there was no storm.
Barry continues to tell us that Zane was involved with a woman called Jagger who drowned in the lake a week before the erruption.
Seems that Weaver, the old light obsessive in the town wrote about and knew both of these people.
We get to the trailer and knock. Rose opens the door and it's obvious there is something wrong with her yet Alan and Barry go inside.
The duo drink her coffee and Rose suggests that Alan needs a muse to inspire him.
Alan thinks she is just being a groupie and gets angry. That is when Barry collapses and Alan realises the coffee was drugged. He too collapses and has a vision.
He is in the dark and the light is speaking again. The light wants to help but it needs Allan to turn on the light it says. The funeral woman appears and tells Alan that he must finish what he started. Alan wakes on Rose's bed. He watches a tv clip of himself talking in the writing room. He tells us that he has an editor now, a woman named Jagger. It seems that this is funeral girl.
Alan tells us that his words are being aggressively edited and that Jagger has worked with another writer called Zane on a similar story.
In the living room we find Rose catatonic and Barry sleeping.
It is night now and Alan has no gun or flashlight. We are told to go to the car.
I make it through the trailer park without incident to find that Randolph has called the police after seeing what has happened to Rose. Agent Nightingale is at their head. Alan can't afford to miss his meeting with the kidnapper. He runs for it. Nightingale shoots to kill but misses.
We are now running for it through the forest.
We have to avoid torch beams and flare as we are chased and shot at by police. A police car is picked up by the dark and thrown, looks like it wants us to avoid the police as well.
A helicopter comes at us and the birds take it down.
The police seem to have been lost and we are now heading for the radio station to get help from Pat. I don't quite know how that one was figured out?
I come to a new puzzle. There is a gate which is taken by the darkness. Looks like it wants us to turn back. Up on the hill above the gate is a searchlight which is powered by a duff generator. We have to turn on the generator, then get to the light and use it quickly. Time left is shown by a line of flashes on the cable from generator to light going out. Running for it and training the light quickly on the gate opens it.
I come to another gate, but handily a flashlight can be picked up from nearby.
At a wrecked police car we find some flashbangs. Which sound like they will be useful.
They are, they act like grenades and take out whole groups of taken.
I progress and find another store of good. Who has left this stuff for us? Zane? Did he fight the darkness and stop it the first time at cauldron lake in the seventies. It took his wife's form though and still keeps it. Will it do that to Alan?
I reach the radio station with only one flashbang to spare.
Inside Pat wants to interview us. The police arrive and Nightingale is totally over the top in he aggression against Alan. He shoots at him narrowly missing Pat. Sarah knocks the gun from Nightingales hand and reprimands him. Alan takes the opportunity to jump out of the window and make another run for it.
I see, alan hoped that Pat would lend him his car to get to the coal mine.
Now Alan has to make it on his own steam.
We are heading for a rail depot now.
There is a set piece ambush where we go inside a shack and suddenly taken appear all around. Why does the darkness not want the police to get Alan, yet it wants him dead at it's own hands?
Alan gets a call from Alice, though she sounds wierd. Talking about being in the dark and looking out from behind Alan's eyes. The call keeps breaking up as well.
We come to a railway bridge and inanimate objects start to move and shake, parts of the bridge collapse. The darkness is growing stronger Alan observes.
We are attacked by floating objects that rise up shake then hurl themselves at Alan, they can be destroyed with the flashlight and flares.
I find a heavy duty flashlight here.
I am ambushed in the train yard.
I find a tv which shows a Night Springs episode. A journalist is looking into paranormal stories and two people approach him with a story. They take him to a house and the woman kisses him letting something enter his body which moves around under his skin.
We come out into the railyard proper for a boss fight of sorts. A bulldozer comes to life and attacks, it's fairly deadly as it just tries to ram you. Taken attack as well and it seems the only objective is to get a door open at the other end of the yard. The taken are eager to stop you and you must take a lot of them out before you can get time to hit the switch in peace. Once done the gate opens slowly and you have to keep alive. Through the gate you come  to a car and a cut scene. Sunrise arrives and unmolested by the darkness Alan has an easy drive to the coal mine.
I stop of a a few buildings I can see and find radio snippets and thermoses.
At the mine which is now a museum when we enter the main building a cut scene starts.
It shows Alan wait all day for the kidnapper to show. He does not and now it is night again. Alan is very angry. The kidnapper phones and tells Alan there has been a change of plan and he want to meet him at mirror peak.
We have to jump over a chain and slide down a slide. Then flick a switch to open a trap door.
There are exploding barrels which if shot a few times explode and take out a few taken at once.
We progress through the railyard and into the mine buildings again.
More possessed objects like small railcarts and large metal cogs.
Inside the building we quickly go back into the outside yard again and see a large darkness hurricaine in the distance.
In the area we have to get back into another building, however there is an electric line down on the fence which is making it impassable. We need to cut  the power to progress.
At the other end of this section of railyard is a generator to cut the power to. There are lots of taken in the yard and a handy jeep makes for some fun running them over.
We are then attacked by taken and flying bits of train. This is also fun and fairly easy to survive. Maybe I am getting the hang of the game by now.
Inside the building we fight through ambushes of taken.
Up some ladders to a higher level.
We come out of the mining area and int the woods again. More open wooded areas with lots of what seem to be respawning enemies.
We are heading up the the Peak and Alan observes that the darkness seems to be moving ahead of him to the peak.
We come to what  seems to be a makeshift graveyard and the keeper attacks us as one of the more boss like taken.
We come to an abandoned town. More flying objects to contend with.
A train flies at you here in a kind of boss battle.
There is a message in grafitti about a safe haven. The door is locked but the key is in the shack next door.
A television in the shack shows Alan in his room, talking about Thomas Zane and his poetry. He tells us that Zane thought there was something in the lake and writing about it summoned it into the world. He thought Jagger had been posessed by the lake demon.
We have a little bit of platforming here on collapsing rickety bridges on the side of the cliffs.
Then birds attack.
We enter mining tunnels, here Alice can be heard shouting for Alan and we get headaches and visions of Alice drowning.
I am ambushed by taken and their entry to the room I was stuck in makes a door for exit.
Now we come to a puzzle with a moving mine platform we can raise up and down. We have to work our way to the top using the platfrom which we can move around. A bit of jumping and working out the correct route here isn't that hard.
We then come out onto the mountainside again and have an accident in a cable car which is brought down by the darkness as we ride it.
More fights in the forest then a rope beidge where we are ambushed by taken.
We come to a large ruined building, the entrance available to us is the basement. Inside there are lots of the yellow Grafitti. are we about to find out who has been helping us out with all the supplies?
There are references to Thomas Zane, some saying that the person loves him some cursing him.
There are references to Tom talking to the person on TV and initials CN or CW.
We have to make our way up the three stories of the building. At the top we fiind ourself crashing down through the ceiling of one storey into an ambush of many taken. We then climb back out and progress along the mountain path.
Alan tells us that he can see Cauldron lake and a light out on a boat on the lake.
We come closer to the lookout point. The kidnapper is screaming at something. He is kneeling slumped. As we  get closer a flash of Jagger appears in between Alan and the kidnapper. The darkness arrives and in a hurricaine blows the kidnapper over the edge of the lookout point. Alan is next and he sets off a flare in vain to protect himself. This only serves  to illuminate his fall into Cauldron lake. He slips into unconsciousness under the water to see visions. Jagger grabbing Alice and dragging her away. Tom Zane in his diving suit and as an arm reaches into the water from a boat to grab Alan the credits roll for this episode.

Episode 4
Alan wakes to find Alice tending him, she melts into Hartman who tells Alan that he is a patient in his clinc and has been for some time, after the death of his wife unhinged him.
Hartman asks him to take a walk with him and he will explain.
Hartman takes us wandering through the lodge and out into the grounds. There is a huge sundial and it bears an inscription "in tenebras cadere" Also a dedication to Tom Zane.
We then go inside and meet some inmates.
The two old men from the diner are there and they call Alan Tom. They give him a manuscript page.
We have to go back to our room and again see Alan on TV in the room, he is angry now about being used by Jagger.
I go back to the room and there is a noise in the corridor. The guard goes to investigate and tells Alan to get on with his writing. We are given the objective to go and see what is going on. The two old men have hit a nurse over the head with a hammer. We can get her keys. Alan wants to go to Hartman's office and get his manuscript pages.
A picture in this new corridor shows Hartman and the kidnapper.
A tape in Hartmans office has Alice talking about Alan. The next take is Hartman talking about his other patients and Agent Nightingale being blocked from getting into the clinic.
In the next room we find Barry locked in a room.
Hartman office is next door and Alan gets his pages back.
Hartman comes in and tries to continue to suggest Alan is sick. Then when Alan continues to disbelieve him he seems to come clean and urges Alan to help him in what is happening, either to free the darkness or stop it, it isn't clear which. At that point the darkness arrives and goes for Hartman. We have to run for it as tendrils of darkness start advancing through the lodge like smokey oil slicks. The furniture comes to life and flies around attacking.
We have to turn on a generator to make the way clear using light, and also have to use a flare to destroy darkness objects. Out in the grounds Barry has a car but the gate is locked and we need to find another way out. Barry tells us that we can get out through the hedge maze.
He gives us a flashlight.
We use it to break down some gates to open the way.
Then we are into the maze and gardens which are in a state of decay. Much fighting in the maze and then a boss type taken at a bandstand type thing. Then some trellises where we fight lots of taken. At the end of the section we come to Barry and gate. He has lost the key and we have to survive against waves of taken until he gets it open.
Barry and Alan drive away from the lodge. Alan tells Barry that something special about the lake makes works of art come to life here. The dark presence perverts them to it's own ends however. Alan believes that Alice is alive at the bottom of the lake and he wants to set her free. The Andersons, who are the crazy old men, apparently knew something and Alan wants to go to their farm. The darkness causes a rockslide to stop them and the car is run off the road. Barry and Alan are separated and Alan has lost his guns and flashlight.
We have to run through an area of flying debris then turn a light on and move it so that it shines on a dark gate.
We get the flashlight back. Then have to avoid some taken as we can't shoot them.
I get a heavy duty flashlight, a car can be seen leaving the farm.
The light appears again and talks to Alan, it talks about trying to leave the pages in Alan's path in the right order. Alan tells us that it appears to him like a diver, is it Thomas Zane.
It seems from the manuscript page left at this point that the darkness is chained somehow to the dark place, probably the lake bed. It is also bound by the story and will be freed at the end of the story, presumably from both bindings.
Some more woods to fight through.
I get to a farm where a car is parked, there is no sign of the driver.
Inside is a man who babbles nonsense and looks hurt.
Then we get attacked and can now leave the farm by the way the taken get in.
A car can now be used to drive to the Anderson farm.
In large field we get to fight taken, then a digger comes to life. thankfully it is a fixed one.
We come to a large field with a festival stage and some seating. It is old and derelict.
Barry is on the stage being attacked by taken, he stumbles and switches on the lights and manages to save his own ass. We find ourself on the stage with Barry behind a bar using the lights to help us. We have to survive the biggest mass attack yet as waves and waves of enemies attack. Eventually Barry sets of a huge firework spectacular and kills all the taken.
We go to the Anderson farm, we have to climb up to a switch to get inside. Inside is a large longboat suspended from the ceiling.
A manuscript pages tells of Tor and Odin, the two old men who used to be in a heavy metal band  making moonshine from the lake water.
An episode of Bright falls shows people standing in line watching a man, they all but one believe that they are part of the dream that the man they are watching is having. They want him to keep dreaming so that they can continue to exist.
We have to make the longboat swing and smash open a door to progress. A boss taken here and some more to fight.
We enter the actual farmhouse now.
The still interest Barry, which really means his a.i. can't follow us up stairs.
We move up through the building then down in a lift into a barn. Here the combine harvester tries to harvest us along with a group of taken.
We then have some climbing to do to get a key and open the silo door to let Barry out.
Now have to push gates together to get them open.
Inside the actual house at last we have to fix the fusebox, then get a record player to play. The message the Andersons have for us is in their song lyrics and concerns the Lady of the Light.
Seems this lady of the light might be cynthia Weaver, the light obesssed woman from the town, who it seems tangled with the darkness in the Tom Zane days.
They decide to wait until daybreak and go into town. Barry brings out the moonshine and they get drunk, which seems an absurdly bad idea. They both pass out drunk and Alan begins to dream. he is back on divers Isle.
We watch as a first person disembodied spirit as a ghostly Alan acts out the events of that night. Alice screams, the lights go out and Alan runs back to the cabin. Inside he finds the wall broken and ripple in the water far below. He jumps in and we watch as he climbs back out a few minutes later unable to find Alice. Jagger appears and tells him to look up at the window. Alan goes back inside the house, Jagger suggests that Alice might still be inside.
Upstairs Jagger tells Alan the Alice did drown, however, Cauldron lake is special. If Alan writes a story with Jaggers guidance he can bring her back to life. Alan realises that he is being used. He writes his escape into the story and with the help of Tom Zane he escapes the cabin, only after the manuscript is finished.
He is weak and groggy and crashes the car. This explains the missing 7 days.
Alan wakes to find Nightingale pointing his gun at him.

Episode 5 The clicker
Alan wakes in jail with a hangover, Barry is with him. A vision shows Weaver, she talks of something Zane wrote that was his insurance.
Nightingale and Sarah Arrive. Nightingale is boasting and happy about catching Alan. Sarah thinks he is as much of  a nutjob as Alan. The darkness arrives and Alan has visions and falls clutching his head. Nightingale is grabbed and pulled out of the station by the  darkness. Sarah is convinced enough to let Alan out and follow his lead.
We go to the fuses and fix the lights. Then to Sarah's office where we get our equipment back.
Sarah will take us in a helicopter to Weaver's place, she lives in a power station apparently.
Barry is told to wait in the police station and to call a list of names and tell them what is happening.
We go out the back door of the police station.
We have to climb over the rooftops avoiding oil and birds to get a gate open.
Then we are out onto the streets.
Sarah actually helps us  fight. The a.i. isn't as dumb as I thought.
Oh yes it is actually. Sarah gets stuck behind a gate and won't follow Alan through and you can now not open the gate when you get back.
This pauses whatever set pieces are meant to happen next and you can't do anything to get back to Sarah.
Even restarting the checkpoint is useless as the checkpoint is after going through the gate.
I have to restart the entire chapter to get past this glitch.
It takes about fifteen minutes to get back to where I was and now we can progress.
Sarah goes to a fence and we have to defend against an ambush.
We get to the helicopter building and have to find some keys and get the fusebox fixed.
A short trip through some rooms and we get ambushed and find the key.
We come out onto the street and see Barry running down the street in cut scene. He is being chased by the darkness and fying debris including a school bus.
He dives into a house as the bus clatters into the doorframe.
We are now going to find Barry, the way is blocked so Sarah leads us through an ambush and into a bookstore. Then back out onto the street.
We are ambushed again at the church doors.
Inside the church we go down into the basement, or crypt.
We get to the door and are ambushed, Barry Saves us, he appartently found a load of flare guns in the store he got stuck in and is now Rambo, with a set of xmas lights around his chest to ward off the taken.
We come to a fairly fun set piece where Sarah and Barry get the chopper flying Alan takes on the taken and a storm hurling girders at the area.
There is plenty of ammo and this is more fun than hard.
In cut scene the helicopter flies to the dam and is attacked by birds. Alan is sent flying out of the chopper, luckily they were low enough for him to not be hurt by the fall.
Alan lands in a transformer yard and we have to fight our way through. A chain must be shot off a door to progress. The amount of enemies attacking at once is getting higher.
We cross the transformer yard which is filled with sparking electrical conduits. Shooting the taken when they are still dark makes them recoil, and this can be used to knock them into the electricity for easy kills.
We use a lift to escape the transformer yard and then come to a roating road bridge.
The bridge is taken and continues to whirl around. We have to survive bird attack and get across.
An episode  of Night Springs in the cabin on the other side of the  bridge shows a woman urging her neighbour to come and look at something in the basement. There is a swirling black hole down there. God appears and tells them its a bit of the universe he forgot to make and apologises. An absence of creativity. He tells them to go have coffee and he will sort it out.

The chopper is back and is now hovering over us as we go to the power plant.
We can use it's light to aid us and remove the taken's shield. Lots of attacks here and then the birds go for the chopper It leaves. We progress to the power plant.
The symbol for the power plant is the same as the one on the hidden caches. Seems that Cynthia Weaver is the one who has been filling Bright Falls with ammo, guns, flares and batteries. She has been waiting for Alan to come and fight the darkness.
She wants us to go to a specific room she has prepared. She has a path which is lit. She wants us to turn off power in the transformer yard first though.
We have to go out to the yard and flick the switch, this will make the pipe that Weaver's safe route is through passable. There are taken in the way and a little floodgate makes a puzzle then a platforming menace once the power is cut. Lots of enemies ambush on the way back to Weaver.
Weaver takes us into the pipe which leads to her well lit room. She talks about Tom and how she was jealous of Jagger. She implies that she and Alan are creations of Tom, written into the story which he started in the seventies.
Alan calls Barry and tells him to meet him at the dam. The chopper Crashes and Alan goes to help, against Weavers wishes.
We go out of the pipe and into the woods. The helicopter can be seen in the distance. Birds attack but that is all until I reach the copter and find no sign of Barry or Sarah.
We see flares going off all over the place up and ahead and find Barry and Sarah under heavy attack. They both follow once you take out the taken.
Two boss taken attack. Then we reach an elevator that will take us to the dam.
Again defend until the elevator reaches you.
At the top a door button must be held open, Barry and Sarah go inside. An object drops down from above and Alan is trapped outside.
We are attacked by debris and a new path is opened.
A page tells us that Zane had to write himself out of existence to stop the dark presence. Seems he left insurance should the darkness ever get free again. He left a shoebox with something inside, the only thing of his not to be written out.
There is a huge spotlight here which acts as an emplaced gun against a horde of taken.
As we reach the top of the dam we have a chase sequence where the dark hurricaine attacks and we have to run and jump to avoid being killed.
We reach a lift and all the gang including Cynthia are there. She takes us down into the well lit room and we get the shoebox of Zane's it has a page and the clicker. The manuscript is a page from Zane's story and talks about Alan aged 7 being given the  clicker by his mother in an echo of Alan giving the Clicker to Alice.
Seems Zane wrote Alan into existence at Cauldron lake all those years ago.

Episode 6 departure
Alan wakes in his New York apartment. He has a hangover and we have to get him some painkillers from the bathroom and his sunglasses to shield his eyes from the light.
A message in the hall on the answering machine is from Barry. Seems Alan has been on a chat show and at the after party with Barry.
We get to see the tv show which shows Alan on a chat show trying to be funny. He tells us about killing off his long time hero in this last book.
There is a cameo from the writer of the game here, Sam Lake, also the model for Max Payne.
Alice comes in and berate Alan about his wild partying on his book tour with Barry. He apologises and suggests they go away together for a holiday, somewhere quiet.
We are back in the present and Alan tells the gang he must go to the lake Alone. The rest of the gang are told to stay in the well lit room until he returns. Alan must finish the story which is still in his typewriter at the cabin on the lake.
A manuscript page tells us that the darkness now only wants to stop Alan since he has Zane's weapon.
We have to drive to the lake, stopped by roadblocks at time we have to fight taken.
We come to a junkyard and have to enter a building to open it's gate. Then inside there is a two switch gate to open. A bulldozer and taken run interference.
We can go no further in our vehicle and have to go through an old farm building. We have to push machinery aside here for the first time.
We now get all sorts of fun as we make our way through farms, spotlights, hurricaines, lots of taken.
Then we come through a tunnel and are at the hurricaine.
WE have to get close by jumping cliffs and shoot flares into it's heart.
Alan then jumps into the lake.
He wakes with Alice in New York in his bed.
It is a vison, and Alan knows it. Alice is the dark presence. We are told to find the clicker. It is in the living room.
Tom Zane appears floating and the room vanishes, we are underwater. He tells us we must get to the cabin. We see a person that looks almost identical to Alan.
We appear in a void, with ground. There are glowing words. For example barrel, if we shine the light on it we hear clicking of a typewriter and the barrel is brought into existence.
I shine the torch on bridge and path and cabin and get into the cabin.
A cut scene shows alan walking into the cabin.
He meets Jagger and hugs her, she vanishes.
Alan goes to the writing room upstairs and writes the ending, he knows what to do.
We seen a new cut scene. He tells us that Zane never realised that there must be balance and he would need to sacrifice. Alan arrives at the cabin and sees Alice in the water.
Then we see her swimming to the surface.
The camera pans out over Bright falls and zooms in on the town.
We see the people watching Deerfest parade. Rose still looks posessed and so does Nightingale.

Around 18 hours at a guess, my timing might have been off a bit.
640 achievement points