From the Steam page for Alan Wake, released Feb. 16, 2012
As an English major, I consider writing one of the most frightening things in the world. Faced with a blank page, I become a miserable idiot. Revising my own writing is an exercise in self-mutilation. A similar fear lies at the heart of Alan Wake, which explores the terror of authorship and the self-destruction that so often comes along with creative identity.
The game’s titular character is an author who must piece together a horror story that he does not remember writing to save his wife from a force called the Dark Presence that preys on creatives. The gameplay consists mainly of fighting hordes of axe-murderers spawned from a tale by Alan himself.
Failure, Isolation, and Separation from Reality: The Author’s Nightmare
The exposition given for Alan Wake demonstrates a fear of failure as one aspect of the horror of authorship. Alan arrives in Bright Falls wanting a vacation, but phone calls from his agent, attention from starstruck locals, and a typewriter brought along by his wife Alice all remind him of the next bestseller that he feels increasing pressure to write. His internal monologue reveals that he has not written anything since he finished his last book two years ago. Alan feels that he can no longer write well, and this fear of failure leads to the argument with Alice that sparks the living nightmare to follow.
Alan Wake also explores themes of isolation and disconnect from the outside world in terms of how they relate to authorship. After the disappearance of Alice, Alan wakes up to a chunk of lost time and scattered pages of a manuscript he has no recollection of writing. Not only does the process of writing deprive him of his memory and a firm grasp on reality, but it disconnects him from his wife, and places him in a new reality where he must battle monsters of his own creation. Some authors feel that they become lost in their own fictional worlds, and this idea becomes literal for Alan, who is estranged in a story removed from life as he knows it.
The Art of Creation, and Self-Destruction
The Dark Presence which terrorizes Alan has a pattern of targeting artists, and so Alan Wake seems to regard art as a doomed profession. Alan learns of a poet named Thomas Zane whose lover was also kidnapped by the Dark Presence and must use what information he has to save himself and his wife from this past couple’s unhappy fate. Alan Wake is a story about how artists are vulnerable to evil, and when they destroy themselves or are brought to collapse by external forces, they destroy those close to them as well. The challenge for the protagonist is to avoid the artists’ fate as presented by the game’s lore, and the horror lies in the trap laid for the artist: to doom themselves by their own craft.
Alan Faces His Fears
Alan Wake’s ending shows him escaping the tragedy of Thomas Zane, as he frees Alice from the Dark Presence. Alan replaces Alice in the Dark Place, and the game ends with him writing his own exit in a new story. Although the Dark Presence uses writing as an evil force that destroys the authors it feeds upon, this ending shows Alan reclaiming his craft as a method of salvation. He creates and destroys, saves and condemns, lives or dies, according to his pen.