Tag: article

The Alan Wake Novel I wrote about a few months back has made it’s way into the digital era.

The novel is now available on Apple’s iBook store. You’ll be able to read it on any Mac, iPad, or iPhone.

If you’ll remember, this was the adaptation that was written by Rick Burroughs and published by Tor Books. The digital copy is $10, just like the physical, and was a great way for non-gamers to discover more about Bright Falls via Alan Wake. A year after the game’s release, this is an excellent time for fans of the game to relive the experience as well.

Chris J. Thompson put up a review of Bright Falls (update: no longer active) for Popculture Hound earlier this week. He’s got a lot of great things to say about the series, which if you’ll remember was originally planned to be little more than an advertisement for Alan Wake. Since it’s release, Bright Falls has earned a great deal of critical praise and even it’s own fanbase separate from those anticipating the game itself.

Chris offers up a sentiment I’ve been hearing with greater and greater frequency:

Based on the strength of the four episodes I’ve watched, the game itself has a lot to live up to! Bright Falls sets the bar very high indeed and it’s obvious they’ve invested a lot of time and money to make sure this project is done just right.

Video game “adaptations” have had a poor reputation for years. When it was announced that there would be a live action tie-in to help promote Alan Wake, very few had high hopes for the six part series. How ironic that now, for maybe the first time ever, people are asking if the video game can live up to the video game adaptation.

We’ll find out in just a few short days.

In a previous post on G4 and David Lynch I mentioned the coverage G4TV has been giving bright falls. They’ve since posted articles on the third and fourth episodes as well.

In their impressions of episode 3 Gaskill recaps the episode noting specific references to Lost. Fans of the ABC series will find more comparisons between the storytelling elements than anything else. If you’ve been following Lost all this time (we’re almost there, guys!) you’re plenty familiar with the “more questions than answers” approach. It’s as if each new answer actually reveals a greater distance to the truth…

In the episode 4 impressions Stephen Johnson notes “The Alan Wake ‘Bright Falls’ promotional webisodes are the best promotional webisodes I’ve ever seen.” It’s odd to even think of them as webisodes at this point, but I’m right there with you Stephen. He goes on to say: Continue reading G4, Lost, and the Setting of Bright Falls

Griffin McElroy did an interview with Phillip Van for Joystiq. Phillip, the director and co-writer of Bright Falls, shed some light on a few popular questions fans have been asking.

He talks a bit about pitching his idea through the company Little Minx. Apparently he and Agency 215 (who set up the project) had very similar ideas and were a natural fit for one another. After constructing an outline and writing a treatment, he talks about his presentation for the pitch.

I’m from Oregon, and I was able to include a photo series and a bunch of footage that I shot, some of which made it into the final cut — wide establishing shots, things like that. It just gave a greater sense of my vision for things. UPDATE: He’s likely talking about this video – Phillip Van Bright Falls Atmosphere Video

Phillip goes on to talk about filming the series in Oregon and Washington and the problems they encountered along the way. Continue reading Joystiq Interviews Director Phillip Van

It’s worth reading the original write up on Bright Falls in The New York Times Arts Beat blog. If you haven’t seen it yet, the article was written by Seth Schiesel and talks about Bright Falls an an introduction to Alan Wake. “These days”, the article states, “the best and most interesting games are distinguished not by their graphics or combat mechanics, but by their writing, design, portrayals of character and depth of story.” It goes on to explain Bright Falls as a way to convince potential players that Alan Wake is prepared to deliver on that promise.

There’s a few quotes from Phillip Van (the director and co-writer of Bright Falls) about the making. Van talks about attempting to match locations from the game. Dr. Harman’s lodge, for instance, is the same location that Stanley Kubrick used for the Overlook Hotel in the Shining. On an unrelated note – who knew Phillip Van was only 29?! I suddenly feel like I haven’t done anything with my life! Continue reading New York Times Article

You might expect that Bright Falls would get a lot of coverage on gaming sites because of it’s connection to Alan Wake. You would be right!

Joystiq posted a Public Service Announcement about the shorts appearing on Xbox Live. It’s fascinating to note that nearly the entire audience for Bright Falls are gamers. The Xbox Live launch gave the series a great built in audience. As I wrote about in a previous post, the two entities feed off eachother.

As the reactions to Bright Falls have been coming in, Joystiq still has one of my favorite quotes: “Watching it is like staring into the inky, black eye of madness.”

Speaking of great reactions, MyGaming put up an article called Alan Wake prequel Bright Falls is out, is weird. How great is that? Where as Joystiq framed theirs as a PSA, the MyGaming post reads like a warning. “…late at night, when you’re trying to sleep, and you can’t seem to forget what you saw, or what you think you saw, or what you might’ve imagined all along, and what was that, anyway?” Continue reading Gaming and Art

There are several new articles that popped up about Bright Falls.

Advertising Age listed it in their Best Ads section. The site works in conjunction with Creativity Online who featured it in their AdCritic section. Creative Review is another site focusing on the advertising angle. Although it requires you to login to view the article, Shorts.net had a write up about it this week as well.

The term “viral advertising” has been thrown around so much in recent years that it’s become hard to define. When I think of viral advertising, I remember back to I Love Bees, Year Zero, Why So Serious? and The Lost Experience. While I suppose those are all alternate reality games, the two terms used to be synonymous.

It’s easy to forget that Bright Falls was created as an advertisement. It was produced to get people excited about Alan Wake. It creates buzz, gets everyone talking. It has a certain “did you see this?!” shock value to it, and that’ll get gamers interested in the upcoming Xbox 360 title. While that makes it seem like Bright Falls is doing Xbox a huge favor, think about the other side of things. Continue reading Viral Advertising

Jake Gaskill did an excellent writeup for G4 on his first impressions of Bright Falls.  It rehashes what seems to be an obligatory comparison to David Lynch before recapping the first two episodes. The article is fairly surface in its analysis but promises to revisit the series with each new episode.

But while we’re on the subject…what about David Lynch?

It’s curious how frequently Twin Peaks seems to be thrown around, something this site is just as guilty of. While I’ve also made my case for the uniqueness of Bright Falls, I do understand the comparisons. Continue reading G4 and David Lynch