Xbox's Alan Wake may be getting a sequel after all
Game developer Remedy's newest title, Quantum Break, isn't out for another month, but evidence has already been discovered that a long-awaited sequel to their previous series, the Xbox 360's Alan Wake, may be in the works. A user on the gaming forum NeoGAF found that Remedy has recently filed a trademark application for the title "Alan Wake's Return." What's more, the purchase of the domain name AlanWakeReturns.com was also tied to Remedy, although the website hasn't been used for anything yet.
Sam Lake, Remedy's creative director, has said in the past that the studio would love to make a proper Alan Wake follow-up, but nothing was ever confirmed. At one point the developer had a working prototype of what was called Alan Wake 2, but it was eventually scrapped and work began what would become Quantum Break.
As a third-person action game, Alan Wake featured a horror/mystery theme inspired by Twin Peaks and Stephen King, and it has gone on to earn the status of a cult classic some six years after its original release. A quasi-sequel was released in 2012 in the form of Alan Wake's American Nightmare, also for the Xbox 360.
While there's still a chance the trademark and website registration could a hoax, there's also several bits of info backing it up as legit too. In the series, the titular character is a novelist, and one of the original game's DLCs ended with Wake writing the title of his next book, "Return."
"We definitely want to keep working on Alan Wake," Remedy's Lake said a few years ago, around the time it was revealed the Alan Wake 2 prototype had been shelved. "I definitely want to create something new for Alan Wake when the time is right," he added.
The other biggest hint that a new Alan Wake is in the works is in the fact that purchases of Quantum Break on the Xbox One will include a downloadable copy of the original Alan Wake, with pre-orders also scoring American Nightmare. If Microsoft wants to introduce the series to new players, and move it beyond its cult status, what better way than giving away the older titles?