Alan Wake 2’sThe Lake Houseexpansion has been officially revealed by way of a recent teaser trailer, giving audiences a glimpse into this next chapter in the cerebral, horrifying world of Remedy’s interconnected gaming universe.The Lake Housewill followthe well-receivedNight SpringsDLC, which provided players with a series of “what if?” stories featuring various Remedy characters and locations, thoughThe Lake Houseseems to be taking a markedly different approach with its storytelling.
The Lake Housewill take place alongside the events of the mainAlan Wake 2story, following Kiran Estevez as she investigates a catastrophic event in the Cauldron Lake area. If and how the expansion will factor into the primaryAlan Wakeplot is unclear, but it doesn’t appear to take place in a hypothetical or alternate timeline like theNight Springsstories. As such,The Lake Houseis expected to have major implications for the future of both theAlan WakeandControlfranchises, bringing them together in a similar manner asControl’sAWEDLC.
Alan Wake 2: The Lake House DLC - Everything Remedy Has Confirmed
Players Will Control FBC Agent Kiran Estevez
Introduced as one of the manylinks betweenAlan Wake 2andControlin the base game, Kiran Estevez will be returning inThe Lake House, this time as a playable protagonist. This is suggested by her voiceover dialog in the State of Play teaser trailer, and confirmed in the description of the DLC.
With Estevez taking center stage, it’s likely that the expansion will shine a light on what exactly brought the FBC to Bright Falls in the first place, and what calamitous events coincided with the return of the Dark Presence. Since this expansion will almost certainly be taking place within the same timeline as the base game, it couldset up the next chapter of theAlan Wakesagaand Remedy’s broader narrative universe, while adding context to the events of the mainAlan Wake 2narrative by showing its events from a different perspective. Putting players in the shoes of Estevez will also mean filling in some of the many blanks inAlan Wake 2’s plot.
The Lake House Will Feature a New Setting
As its name suggests,The Lake Housewill be set in an FBC research center just off the shore of Cauldron Lake, which was the venue for a number of dangerous experiments that allowed for The Dark Place to connect with base reality. The sparse information revealed about this new setting suggests that the level design and atmosphere ofThe Lake Housecould have a bit in common withControl, as the FBC’s high-tech resources and absurd bureaucracy are likely to be at least referenced in the expansion, considering its premise.
The Lake House Will Be a Return to Alan Wake 2’s Horror Tone
Remedy’s games have always toed the line between silly and unsettling, with the developer’s singular penchant for uncanny narratives being on full display even back in the early days ofMax Payne. But theNight SpringsDLC definitely leaned further into ridiculousnessthan terror, using hypothetical narrative scenarios and meta storytelling for comedic and lighthearted purposes more than high-concept, horror-focused ones. This is clearly not the case withThe Lake House—something that can be intuited by looking at the teaser trailer, but that has also been confirmed by Remedy itself.
Like with any Remedy project, it’s best not to conjure too firm of a picture ofThe Lake Houseahead of its release this October. The Finnish studio is at its best when it’s serving up unexpected and bizarre stories, and with confirmed elements like a new protagonist and setting,The Lake Houselooks like it could provide exactly that.
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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?
