He's still not awake

Anytime there's buzz about a new game from Remedy Entertainment, everyone hopes for the exact same thing: A full-fledged, big budget Alan Wake sequel. Remedy dabbled in Alan Wake side stories with the fever dream-like Alan Wake's American Nightmare, but there has been no movement on a proper continuation of Wake's story.

Remedy knows how beloved Alan Wake is, and the studio admits it tried to work on a sequel. In an interview with VG247 at PAX East, Remedy's Thomas Puha says "We were working on Alan Wake 2 years ago and it just didn't pan out, so there's nothing. We're just booked solid for the next couple of years, really. We do own the Alan Wake [property] but it's never quite as simple as that, but yeah, we do own it."

Puha doesn't elaborate as to why the sequel was scrapped. Maybe the writers were struggling to find an angle that warranted another game; maybe the designers couldn't work out a gameplay hook that'd differentiate it enough from the first game. Or, maybe Remedy got to the pitching process and couldn't find a publisher that seemed like a good fit. Whatever the reason, it's probably slightly less frustrating to know Remedy tried and couldn't make it work, rather than our years-long assumption that Remedy never tried at all.

"We were working on Alan Wake 2 years ago and it just didn't pan out" -- Remedy [VG247]