REVIEW: ‘Alan Wake 2: The Lake House’ Refines The Remedy-Verse (XSX)

The release of 2023’s Alan Wake 2 felt like a massive shift for fans of Remedy’s work. It was not only a sequel to a cult classic horror survival game. It also took ideas from 2019’s Control and its two DLCs to create a connected and cohesive world. A world built around the weird and unexplainable that gave more reason as to why the events of Alan Wake were happening. Once the credits rolled, the why made more sense in this universe. The new Alen Wake 2 DLC, The Lake House, draws those connections even closer. And if you’re a fan of either Control or Alan Wake 2, this is a can’t-miss addition, shining a new and important light on the ever-expanding Remedy-verse.

The Lake House takes place alongside the events of Alan Wake 2. As the Altered World Event (AWE) continues worsening in Bright Falls, Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) agent Kiran Estevez checks in on the FBC satellite facility on Cauldron Lake’s shores called The Lake House. This facility’s purpose is to study the AWE that, for some reason, explicitly affects this area of the United States. As she pulls up, something is very off. Nobody answers the gate, and every FBC staff member is missing. Kiran takes it upon herself to discover what happened, leading to a dark mystery and even darker revelations of the FBC research at this facility.

While the DLC isn’t long, it covers a lot. Notably, it’s a good mix of Control insanity in an Alan Wake 2 package. But it’s not just a mix. It takes both and explores unique aspects that, when looking back at what’s past, now feel sorely missing until now. Using an FBC agent as its titular character gives us a good look at what it’s like to be an agent whose day-to-day is unexpected and unexplainable. Janina Gavankar does a great job of bringing Kiran to life.

She’s calm and composed as things continuously get worse. She is experienced and follows her training while discovering how messed up certain aspects of the FBC can be when trying to harness power nobody can truly comprehend. This is an excellent change of pace from Alan, Saga, and Jessie, who are all thrown into the deep end and told to sink or swim in the unknown.

Plus, it’s her calmness that makes the reveals much more impactful. Seeing the events of the DLC unfold through the eyes of someone familiar with the craziness that the FBC is involved with and discovering something appalling and monstrous can show just how depraved this world can be. The Lake House somehow takes a three-hour experience and makes every reveal impactful, even with characters who are just introduced in this DLC.

Where the story works is how it explores a different and darker side of the Remedy-verse. In one aspect of a game whose central motif is about the hardships of artists, The Lake House doesn’t hold back when it explores paintings as a tool instead of writing. On the other side of this coin, it isn’t afraid to show that power and knowledge are still just as corruptible within a workforce that should be aware of how corruptible humans are.

Shockingly, neither subject has been discussed before. Corrupted staff in Control seem to end up that way because of the hiss. And, yeah, why wouldn’t an artist, not just Alan’s writing, also have The Darkness influence his work?

However, there won’t be much new here when it comes to gameplay. It’s a simplified version of the main game’s controls, similar to the Night Springs DLC. And that’s not technically a bad thing. A short experience shouldn’t overcomplicate what works. And boy does the Alan Wake 2 gameplay loop still work. Especially with the new weapon, the Black Rock Launcher, the late-game gameplay is a fun mix of horror and feeling like a god.

Yet the new enemy type, the Painted, is terrifying and annoying at the same time. It’s a clear shift, though, when they become the latter. At first, they are an unbeatable, undefinable force that can get you. But once you get the Black Rock Launcher, they quickly become an entity that will grab you out of walls with little tell about where they may come from next. Maybe more time for them being terrifying would help make them be more bearable later on.

Finally, the puzzles are extremely simple in a disappointing way. Over time, the game gives you the solution instead of discovering them through exploration like you did earlier. And they’re mostly the same type, too. They are just trying to find passwords to computers. Why, at the end, where they should be their most complicated, do they just spell out what to enter? What’s the rush? At least world-building through reading documents and listening to audio logs is top-tier, as we’ve come to expect from Remedy games. And there is a lot to read.

Alan Wake 2: The Lake House refines the Remedy-verse by pushing Alan Wake and Control’s story together in one tight DLC package. Its new enemy is terrifying. The latest weapon is impactful and fun. And Janina Gavankar does a fantastic job of showing what it’s like to be a Control agent living in this messed-up world of cleaning up Altered World Events. Even though its mechanics are a simplified version of Alan Wake 2, it uses simplicity in its favor by focusing more on the story and the world-building Remedy does best. After wrapping everything up, The Lake House leaves you wanting more of the story Remedy is connecting across its various properties.

Alan Wake 2: The Lake House DLC is available now on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.