Young mother working on a laptop on the couch at home with her daughter sleeping inside … [+]
The survival horror game Alan Wake 2 (2023) document the stress and guilt of trying to balance work and family. This post contains spoilers.
Alan Wake 2 It follows bestselling crime writer Alan Wake as he tries to escape the Dark Place, a horrific, alternate dimension that preys on people’s insecurities and fears. The game takes place thirteen years after the events of the original Alan Wake, in which Alan and his wife Alice travel to the small beach town of Bright Falls so that Alan can work through his writer’s block. In the first game, Alice is kidnapped by a dark presence and Alan sacrifices himself in the Dark Place so he can escape.
Alan’s personal and professional lives bleed into each other in complicated ways. Part of speech Alan Wake It’s so terrifying that Alan’s writing and his insecurities about being a successful writer shape The Dark Place. The game blurs the distinction between reality and horror story.
Alan Wake 2 develops this theme by introducing the player protagonist Saga Anderson: Saga is an FBI agent who, along with her partner Casey, travels to Bright Falls to investigate a series of ritual murders and ends up uncovering the dark presence that haunted and it was consuming Alan.
Saga’s introduction hints at the fact that family will be an important part of her story. as she enters Bright Falls, she is on the phone with Logan’s daughter, explaining that the trip might take a little longer than she thought, adding that “I’m sorry I’ve been gone so much lately, Logan.” In a touching moment, Saga expresses her regret that she won’t be able to join Logan for the final episode of their favorite TV show.
As the dark presence begins to dominate reality, Saga realizes that in the Dark Place version of her life, her daughter Logan has died. Throughout the game, this is the reality that Saga desperately fights to prevent.
Many games use a child who has been kidnapped or otherwise threatened to motivate the player character. But what I found original and heartwarming about Saga’s story arc is how the game works through the self-doubt that comes with being a working parent.
Saga feels increasingly guilty about not being with her daughter and increasingly doubts the way she has balanced and organized her life.
This tension explodes when Saga is trapped in the Dark Place towards the end of the game. The Dark Place looks different for each character. For Alan, it’s his writing room. For Saga, it’s like her Mind Place — a mental space she’s gone to throughout the game to organize information about the crimes she’s trying to solve. Typically, the player interacts with this space by pinning “clues” on a board to advance the plot.
In this scene, the only clues the player can organize are Saga’s negative thoughts. These boil down to self-doubt about her abilities as a mom and a detective: “I let everyone down. Logan, Casey, Myself. It’s my fault’, ‘You were a terrible detective’, ‘I abandoned my family for my job’, ‘I’m a terrible mother’.
What impressed me the most Alan Wake 2 Depicting work and parenting is how trying to balance both often leads to feeling like you’re failing at both.
While the most important part of Saga’s world is clearly her daughter, in her lowest moment, she sees herself as a bad mother and a bad detective. Trying to balance the multiple points of her life and her identity, she feels this fails in every.
This reflects the way that many modern parents, especially mothers, feel like they’re always letting someone down—surviving, rather than thriving, on all playing fields. It’s not so much that one area of life is sacrificed for another, it’s that all areas of life are constantly being sacrificed. Saga sums up the feeling well when she says, “I’m drowning.”
Saga is able to overcome these paralyzing doubts by recognizing her own strength and abilities, repeating to herself that she is doing her best, that her daughter loves her, that she is not a bad detective.
I was surprised that the game managed to capture how parenthood is often a trade-off—there’s no simple set of choices that doesn’t involve loss, whether at home or at work. Saga does not tell herself that she is a perfect mother who can ‘have it all.’ Instead, she focuses on how it is enough to succeed in both areas of her life. Alan Wake 2 resists easy answers about balancing work and family, but also celebrates the strength and resilience that comes with being a working parent.
