Remedy: Announcing Alan Wake as a open-world game “was a mistake”

By Johnny Cullen

Remedy’s Oskari Hakkinen has revealed that announcing Alan Wake as an open-world game back at E3 2005 “was a mistake”.

Speaking in an interview, Hakkinen said to Joystiq: “When we announced Alan Wake, we announced it as an open world game, and that was a mistake.

“We’re not even shy to say it. Remedy is a humble group of people and we will say it was a mistake. It was a tick-box back then, that was a trend. “Open-world,” “free-roaming” and “sandbox” was the way to go.”

Hakkinen further added: “We tried that for about six months, trying to get the pacing right of a thriller in an open world setting. When you have the player turning up to a love scene in a monster truck when they should be showing up in a Cadillac you know something’s wrong. You know something is not working.”

Remedy announced late last week Alan Wake had gone Gold, with a new trailer to boot. Publisher Microsoft confirmed earlier that day it had pushed forward the game’s European release date from May 21 to May 14.

It’s original US launch date of May 18 remains unaffected.