Alan Wake 2 is a recreation like no different, as we stated in our latest 10/10 evaluation of the sport. A part of that’s owed to the sport’s multimedia strategy which sees the story mix conventional online game ranges and visuals with an array of music and live-action into many scenes in a definite and novel method. If you happen to’ve performed the sport, you recognize one among these scenes, specifically, stands out as arguably one among gaming’s most memorable and total greatest moments of the yr, and even maybe of the previous a number of years.

If you have not performed it but, be cautious of Alan Wake 2 spoilers on this article.

Talking on the Buddies Per Second podcast, hosted partly by GameSpot’s very personal Lucy James, Treatment artistic director Sam Lake revealed that Initiation 4, a stunning chapter halfway via the sport that options an elaborate live-action musical throughout a fight sequence, was practically faraway from the sport throughout improvement, main Lake and others to argue in favor of holding it in.

“It was actually, actually arduous for quite a few causes to have a musical on this,” Lake stated on the podcast. “And there have been many productions conferences [where people said] ‘Come on, we have to reduce this.’ I used to be like, ‘Completely not, we’re not reducing it.'”

Lake went on to quote the explanation why it was difficult for some to think about having within the last model of the sport, resembling how the live-action parts developed over time project-wide, and the way such a scene might, in principle, be completed in numerous methods, that means Treatment needed to decide how such a scene would even come collectively, then decide to it whilst video games can evolve a lot over time they take to return collectively.

“If you say to somebody, ‘We’re gonna put a musical in a survival-horror recreation, the query involves, ‘Properly, how? What is the gameplay loop there?'” added recreation director Kyle Rowley in the course of the interview.

The pair revealed the thought for a musical was Lake’s initially, owed partly to the sturdy reception to Management’s Ashtray Maze and the unique Alan Wake’s live performance standoff, each of which used music in thrilling and novel methods to drive interactive parts of these video games. “I knew that [Alan Wake voice actor Matthew Poretta] is a superb singer, so Alan Wake can sing on this,” Lake recalled pondering. “After which discovering David Harewood, who’s fantastic as [Mr. Door], he has a background in singing.”

Lake went on to speak extra about how Poets of the Fall, the real-life Finnish rock band that’s featured because the in-universe band, Outdated Gods of Asgard, helped direct Harewood and Poretta, and the way he hoped the choreographer could be merciful of their dance directions for a novice dancer resembling himself. You may hearken to the entire episode above, or skip to 2 hours and 13 minutes into the episode for the beginning of the dialogue concerning the recreation’s unforgettable musical.

Alan Wake 2 is out now on Xbox Sequence X|S, PS5, and the Epic Video games Retailer.