Remedy MD: episodic Alan Wake release would be 'interesting experiment'

Alan Wake was one of the victims of Red Dead Redemption's retail shootout earlier this year, but Remedy's Managing Director Matias Myllyrinne isn't bitter about it. Speaking to Joystiq at GDC Europe, the studio head expressed, "RDR is a fantastic game, due credit to Rockstar, they deserve it. For us, Wake clicked with gamers and a lot of the reviewers out there. I think it will continue to sell as folks learn about it."

Myllyrinne expressed hope that the world of Wake would be something that Remedy could continue building on in the future. He couldn't make any announcements on future plans for Mr. Wake, but after seeing the strong reaction from the audience to the game, he feels Remedy established the key things it wanted to do with Wake -- "as a form of entertainment and art." Speaking directly to the numbers and the cost of Wake's five-year production, he said, "Commercially, the numbers will make sense in the end."

The internally episodic narrative of Alan Wake would lend itself well to online distribution (perhaps following in Fable 2's footsteps), and Myllyrinne told us, "I don't think there's anything technically stopping us from doing that. I think those will be business decisiions we'll make together with Microsoft. I think it would be an interesting experiment."

He also told us the next piece of DLC, dubbed "The Writer," is "not too far away" and that, in terms of gameplay, will feel more "surreal," like "Salvadore Dali does Alan Wake." When pushed on whether Remedy would take a break from Wake after the second DLC episode launches, he couldn't get into specifics. Myllyrinne said he had promised some folks that he wouldn't talk, but that Remedy would announce its next project "in a few months."