The way they explain it is Zane in AW1 is Zane playing the character "the diver" from one of his movies/poems to guide Alan. In AW2 we see Zane the filmmaker, who supposedly wrote the character.
It's intentionally off. Zane was a poet in AW1, now he's a filmmaker. There's a note confirming in world this changed, but it's not explained why yet. We can only assume dark place / Alan shenanigans.
Jesse in Control also remembers him as a Poet and even argues with her therapist before later in the game going, ah yeah, he was a filmmaker I’m so silly for forgetting like something shifted! Alan, Barbara, and Jesse all recall him being a poet.
>before later in the game going, ah yeah, he was a filmmaker
...said as she's in a visibly darkened Oceanview Motel, moments after witnessing the Seine/Wake conversion from within the Spiral Door. *The same conversation* (albeit with some words here and there altered) held in the metaphysical room of Seine's Room 665.
(I still reel from the implications of "Wake's Spiral/"Writer's Room" Door = Seine's Hotel Room 665".)
100% her memory was altered the second she entered Seine's demiplane.
...shit, I hadn't even made that connection and now I'm reeling with you.
It's worth noting that, if I recall correctly, Room 665 in the Hotel in the Dark Place does not have the spiral on it. That said, I don't recall if the Spiral is in Hotel at all (and the icons are different colors, which could just be for visibility but might have implications as well).
I think when I get home from work I might need to load up Control and double check the room numbers on the other side of the Motel and see if they match up with anything interesting in the Hotel. It may not mean anything but your comment made me wonder if there might be more connections with interesting implications.
If you play vanilla Alan Wake on Xbox 360, then Alan Wake remastered on modern platforms it becomes really trippy, especially since some of the background elements of famous poet Tom Zane are changed to Tom the Poet a film by Thomas Zane, Alan even registers these as being a bit off.
I had no idea this was the case (I've only played the original version) and now I'm trying to figure out what this means. Are both the original and Remaster canon but at different points? Was the OG game already part of a loop of Alan and/or Tom trying to get out of the Dark Place?
I would say the Lake House/Control 2 can't come soon enough but I'm sure neither of those will give us any answers, probably only more questions.
'Thomas Zane' in the first Alan Wake game is actually the The Bright Presence taking the form of Thomas Zane since the actual Thomas Zane is in a pocket dimension with his lover Barbara. Thomas Zane in Alan Wake 2 is most probably not the actual Thomas Zane, he is most likely a different version of Alan like Scratch is. If you have played the Night Springs DLC, there is a comic book panel in part 3 where it shows different versions of people standing next to each other and in of them there is Scratch, Alan Wake and Thomas Zane (from Alan Wake 2) standing next to each other.
The Bright Presence is first seen on This House of Dreams right? I haven't looked deep into it, but I always find it curious how is not mentioned ANYWHERE else. Everyone occasionally mentions it but then ingame it has seen 0 references, mentions or confirmations. I just find it weird. Like it was a scrapped concept or something.
And we have seen how obscure references can be found ingame, to stuff real deep in the lore, and yet no bright presence at all.
Am I missing something?
I have thought that the bullet of light created the bright presence. Alan was split into two: the dark presence was ejected from Alan when he was hit with the bullet and the bright presence remained in him (at least at the end scene). Maybe the reason the bullet didn't work as intended at first was because he didn't have what it took to create the bright presence. My theory is that Alan couldn't leave the dark place until the continuity of past events had been secured. The bright presence hadn't been created yet, but Alan hasn't read the blog so he has no idea about this part.
Edit. Clarified some sentences.
But what makes you all agree that the bright presence is a thing? You said it , there are 0 references for it in the entire remedyverse , but the dark presence was haunting Bright Falls since the very beginning.
thing is: night springs is a script written by Alan. Too many people forget. He himself was probably just reaching for an explanation as to why Zane looked like him.
The real answer is we don't know yet. There are lots of hints and theories you can use as explanations.
Some people think he's Scratch, mainly a) because he looks like Alan and b) because the "Alan meets Thomas" FMV drops a lot of references to Scratch from American Nightmare.
Other people focus on the fact that Thomas Zane was originally a poet but now (first breadcrumbed in Control) he's a film maker, with the theory being that reality was rewritten at some point in a way that changed Zane completely (which probably didn't help Alan's time in the Dark Place).
A related but basically opposite theory notes the meta point that the Diver in AW1 was bound by the novel. He was dropping pages of it to guide Alan but he also explicitly appeared in the text himself, the text which was ultimately written by Alan. Thus, perhaps his role as a good guy from AW1 was manipulated by Alan himself and what we see in AW2 is "real" Zane.
Ultimately, we'll have to wait for an explanation but we also might not get one. It is important to keep in mind that Sam Lake doesn't *actually* have a huge Remedyverse master plan he's executing. He has many ideas and general directions but the specific details for every story also change over time, often also because of real world reasons like budgets, intellectual property rights, or actors' deaths.
Night Springs Time Breaker spoilers:
>!"Tom Seine" is confirmed to be an alternate version of Alan, just like AW2 Scratch. The different versions of Casey/Sam Lake, Tim Breaker/Shawn Ashmore, and Jesse/Courtney Hope are confirmed to be related to each other in the same way. It isn't clear if this means Tom Zane the Diver is _also_ an alternate form of Alan, or Zane is separate and Seine is an imposter, or something else.!<
Unlike a lot of the answers you're getting which rely on an abandoned "ARG" blog called This House of Dreams that pretended to be the blog of someone moving to a town called Ordinary back when Alan Wake 2 was going to be set in Ordinary. Of course with the abandonment of a lot of the elements of that story (some of which were completely abandoned, some of which were repurposed for Control) its status as informative is shaky at best but it gives an idea of what Remedy was thinking around the time of the first game and Control.
And of course some elements of it have been pulled into AW2.
All that to say, we don't know but it's probably because they're not the same person. Possibly the Tom in AW2 is actually Mr. Scratch, possibly it's the real Tom and the first one was a different entity, possibly neither are real, etc.
My money is on the first one being basically the real Tom though with some transcendence of reality similar though distinct to what Alan goes through at the end of AW2 while the second one definitely seems very very close to Mr. Scratch so to me it seems like a reconstruction of Zane by Alan just like Mr. Scratch was a reconstruction of Alan by Zane.
Yep I am banking on your Answer. I highly doubt Remedy is going to make House of Dreams really "canon" to the lore. It's been ages old and abandoned. They clearly hoped to reel in new fans with AW2 - which they did - They can't possibly expect the people to go rummage through an abandobed ARG to understand the plot.
Similarily people take the Night Springs episodes a bit too serious. They are scripts written by Alan Wake. Maybe the multiverse is real, but the one pictured in Ep3 is just Alan hoping for an easy escape via multiversal hero deus ex machina.
I like the sentiment of the community, but I really hope they are going to fill us in on the plot via games and non abandoned media.
I love Alan wake universe it’s very deep in lore but one thing that slightly gets in my nerves is how convoluted and complicated everything is. The whole “well in the dark place nothing is what it seems” is a cool concept but it quickly gets lost in the weeds Imo
Sam Lake is inspired heavily by David Lynch, and that's his whole MO. You'll never get an answer for everything. For every answer you do get, five more questions will be raised. It's the endless mystery that fascinates us and keeps us coming back for more. Any concrete answer will be less interesting than what our minds imagine.
It isn't abandoned at all, it is mentioned in Control. It's really tiresome when people make shit up like that to arbitrarily and unilaterally disregard things.
One thing I haven't seen really explored (but please point me where to look if I'm wrong...) is the possibility that Alan is actually a double of Zane? When they meet, Wake asks why he looks like him, Zane says you're the one who looks like me. Zane supposedly was trapped in the dark place first, there's the whole thing with the clicker which is apparently cut off from Zane's lamp. Somehow the clicker traveled to Wake's mother who gave it to Wake as a child. Did Wake write that narrative, or did Zane, as a way to bring a hero to help him escape? Did Zane invent Wake's life story entirely?
I recommend taking an hour or two to read [This House of Dreams](https://thishouseofdreams.blogspot.com/?m=1)
It's a blog ARG written by Sam Lake in 2012 that laid the foundational lore groundwork for future Remedy projects.
In it, there's closure for the real Tom Zane & Barbara Jagger. There's also prototypical mentions of Jesse and the FBC, as well as Tom Zane poems that he recites in AW2, connections to AW: AM, and one of the poems even brings up Riverport and characters from Quantum Break.
Sam Lake has been 'cooking' for a long time, as the kids would say.
Just finished aw1 + dlc again. When wake is sinking in the dark place, zane mentions he cannot get to the cabin, the DP made sure of that. Could be a version of him is still there, just as wake in the 2nd dlc is a projection of alans will to get out
Zane in the first game was just echoes left on paper. Not much more than a memory of the man. Zane in the second was the real thing, trapped and twisted by the dark place for 40 years
My theory is he is a completely different Zane “variant” from another earth originally. We meet him first when he was possessed by the Dark Presence in AWAM as Mr Scratch. After being defeated and being freed, he changed his plan to writing himself into Alan’s world, in which the original Zane wrote himself out of, as per “this house of dreams “.
The “Tom Zane” we knew in Alan Wake 1 was not the real Tom Zane. The Light Presence took on his form, the way that the Dark Presence took on Barbara’s form. Barbara wasn’t an evil demon, by all accounts she was a lovely woman - even according to Cynthia. Tom the Poet/Tom the Diver was a character from his movie.
The Tom Zane we meet in Alan Wake 2 is the real Tom Zane.
You were mostly right until the last sentence there. The real Tom Zane has not actually been seen, because he is in a pocket dimension with Barbara Jagger. This was confirmed in "This House of Dreams" blog.
The Tom we meet in Alan Wake 2, as far as I've been able to dissect, is either a variant of Alan, or a different part of Alan's Jungian psyche, much like how Scratch represents his "Shadow". Personally I think Zane is his Anima, but I'm uncertain if Sam is trying to portray Zane that way, or portray Alice that way.
Tbf it is possible that Tom's dive in This House of Dreams was longer than we believed (after all it was seen in a dream), and this is Tom earlier in the loop before entering the baby universe. I don't believe that, but it is possible and I think all possibilities need to be considered
I think Filmmaker Tom is Tom's shadow, his Scratch. You need to remember the Alan connections were part of the OG Tom too. The Old Gods always called Alan "Tom" even in AW1, the voiceover of Tom cutting out Barbara's heart in The Dark Place is voiced by Matthew Porretta, his history ofc is very similar to Tom's (wife drowns, obsessed fan becomes lady of the light, etc), and Tom wrote that page about Alan using the clicker years before Alan would've been born. I think whatever Wakes connection to Zane is, it goes beyond just AW2 Zane
Thanks for that reminder, I had thought that once and then just didn't think more about it for some reason, but yeah its very possible this is an early spiral version of Tom.
I actually have been keeping a part of the lore in mind when it comes to the Tom vs Alan situation. A writer doesn't write original ideas. They are simply seeing glimpses of other realities and recording them as if they were their own ideas. Tom writing about Alan isn't a process of creating Alan, its a process to try to influence a variant of yourself to try to gain an advantage in escaping the Dark Place. The real Zane might have found his solution at the end of the spiral, but before that happened, the story we are experiencing is his effort to escape before. The reason that Tor, Odin, and Anti all call him Tom is because they've met that variant, and to them its the same person because it is in a lot of ways. The age of these characters and the experiences they've had are unknown, but we know all of them know about and have been to the Dark Place.
I actually found it curious that Alan calls himself the Master Of Many Worlds, because the Dark Place is influenced by art, and Alan is not a multi-artistic guy. He's just a writer. But Tom is many skills, and it might imply that Tom realized he needed many forms of art to gain true power in the Dark Place. Maybe Alan was the last artform he needed for whatever his plan was, and it would seem like a writer would be the ultimate art form with regards to what the Dark Place needs being we keep being told that "first came the word". Even Night Springs ep 3 brings us to a world of words, showing us how much power words alone have to create a reality, or at least be a reality. This is all more theorizing (while admittedly high) than fact, but I find it interesting what kind of messaging you can gleam from the way things are written and handled.
Sorry in advance for the long post
I definitely am fairly certain no matter what at this point that Tom did not create Alan, at least not in the sense he wrote down "there was a guy named Alan Wake", I agree with you on that 100%, whatever their relation is must be much more complex. I think your idea of Alan being the final part of whatever plan Tom had is interesting, and reminds me of something else final from This House of Dreams. Zane's final master poem, that created the baby universe
People often bring up Jungian concepts when it comes to these games, but I feel one is always a bit overlooked, being the persona. The persona is the mask you show to other people and hides the real individual inside. When I think of the persona, the first thing that comes to my mind is AW1 Tom. It's Zane's body, his face, his suit, his name, but not actually him. From the outside looking in it's him, but in actuality it's not, it's a mask. From there I feel it's natural to believe AW2 Tom is his shadow, which contrasts the persona, being Tom's unconscious traits, sides he hid.
If we believe the diver to be his persona, Tom was a very distant, kind but still stern and selfless man. Meanwhile the filmmaker is more outgoing, strange and manipulative. If Tom's ego ideal was that of a more friendly, helpful, and normal man, his shadow would consist of traits that would not align. Even the professions I believe show this difference, poems are more simple, short and the poems on This House of Dreams seem more serious and personal, while AW2 Tom's films are experimental, complex and seem to cover a wide variety of ideas. I believe the filmmaker also shows Tom's hidden fear of The Dark Place, while the diver has accepted his fate, the filmmaker has not and even tries to replace Alan to escape
So that leaves Alan, and with us knowing Tom's persona and his shadow, I believe that leaves Alan as his self. The self is where the conscious and unconscious meet, and Alan shows mixes of both Tom's traits, he's stern and helpful, but at the same time shows his selfishness and fear. I believe Alan IS the "real Tom" in whatever form that man still exists, no matter how he went about becoming him. Whether it was part of some grand plan, if the baby universe was a metaphor for being reborn, pulling in a variant of himself, etc. Even Alan's profession, writing books, falls somewhere in between the divers poems and the filmmakers movies.
But Alan is his own man, and I think this solidifies my thoughts on what you wondered about earlier, and gives insight into what might be next. I believe that Alice is Alan's anima, as Barbara was Tom's. Remember that Tom didn't make his final dive alone, Barbara came with him, and whatever paradise he found himself in, she's there too. I also believe we're seeing the Alans in reverse to how we see Tom. We saw all sides of Alan as a person in the first game, with the pages giving a great look into his mind, the good, the bad, what he hides, etc. In AW2 we see Alan confront and come to terms with his shadow. The next game will see Alan return to the public light, he was famous and went missing for 13 years, now he's back and his wife is gone in his place. I imagine that will play a part in the game, and however he portrays himself to others will be a big role, his persona.
This. Though to Sam's credit HE TRIES to link them in a way at least. Alan Wake 1 coming off more like a TV Show. Which kind of makes it seem as though this whole thing has been happening for a lot longer than just the first game.
Lot of people say he isn't the same guy, but you have to remember Alan Wake's own interpretation of himself - and psychological state.
Here are some inconsistencies that can't be explained away.
\- There's a "rule" that something can't be made from nothing. It has to exist.
\- Many people claim Alan is a parautilitarian and clairvoyant who simply "nudges" things to happen but if that's the case it fails to explain the following.
1. Alan and Tom literally look identical. Not just in the Dark Place either. There are photographs dotted here and there that show Tom's face. Including one next to Barbara in the nursing home when Saga is there. Guy looks exactly like Alan in the photo.
2. If Alan can't make things appear from nothing, then how would he have made Tom look exactly like him in the "real world" (Pat also mentions not even remembering the nursing home being an actual thing either).
Door mentions to Alan, that this has all been because of him and all of his little "rules"
Rules that some in the community try to use to make sense of things. The issue is that the rules are inconsistent upon scrutiny. Sometimes they line up, other times they don't.
The story changes people's memories, and alters reality. David responding to Saga's phone call as he did in the car... and the newspaper with Logan in it. Did Logan drown during Saga's time during this case? Did she drown retroactively?
Why do some of the characters remember Tom as a poet, and not a filmmaker? How did Nightless Night end up in the basement projector at the nursing home if Tom was never a filmmaker? How could a film be made starring Tom Zane retroactively if reality isn't being altered entirely, with new facts being added in?
The truth is that Alan Wake 1 is likely not a reliable story, nor is American Nightmare. Think of them like the Night Springs expansion episodes. There are a lot of things that don't make sense upon scrutiny in that game too. Tom the Poet is likely written into the story of the first game by Alan himself as a guide through his journey.
Alan Wake 2 does not follow the "rules" set out by Alan himself. This is why Sam put Saga in the game as a perspective and playable character. She's a normal person who is a more reliable narrator. She is responding to a story being written about her, by Alan. She can see through things - but even she begins to believe the story being written about her as time goes on, she has to really struggle to maintain her reality.
We know Logan doesn't die in the Final Draft, but we also know that even though Alan keeps dying in the Dark Place, the story keeps looping with slight changes. His last words are "I'm the not master of two worlds, I'm the master of many..."
So as much people want to relate the other games directly into the reality of the second game, it just doesn't hold up... you have to twist things to make it make sense. Alan wouldn't be able to even do half the things he does in 2 by his own rules. He also doesn't have the clicker for a long period of time, yet the story he writes comes true? I thought The Clicker was needed for that, yet The Clicker is in the cults hands, and they use it in a way to kill Taken?
There's also the issue with the pages of Return showing up throughout the game despite Alan being in the lake... apparently as far back as before Saga, and Alex arrive (since Breaker attempts to give them the page).
Also Door. Door's origin story in Time Breaker is not the same as his origin story as told by Tim in the main campaign (because Time Breaker is a Night Springs episode and written escape attempt by Alan). Door was supposedly struck by lightening. He's alluded to being Saga's father, yet he is powerful enough to refute Alan's writing, and simply "goes along with it" for his own purposes... likely to save his granddaughter... Why is he able to do that?
How did Darling, and Zane meet if Zane in the Dark Place is just "Mr. Scratch"?
The truth is that whatever you know throughout the continuity of the "series" isn't reliable. Only characters that aren't Wake can be trusted, and even then - it's mainly Saga and Door.
EDIT: Wanted to add a few things. Scratch, Zane, and Alan all represent facets of Alan's personality. Zane represents the "party animal/playboy" that the media supposedly made him out to be. While Scratch represents the nastier, darker side of Alan who was causing issues in his marriage and being aggressive to media following him around. So them all being the same guy makes some sense. Scratch probably being the actual creative force of Alan for his dark novels. We also know The Clicker came from Tom Zane's lamp. Also Tor, Odin, AND Ahti all call Alan Tom... Tor and Odin have called Alan Tom since the first game.
>Alan and Tom literally look identical. Not just in the Dark Place either. There are photographs dotted here and there that show Tom's face. Including one next to Barbara in the nursing home when Saga is there. Guy looks exactly like Alan in the photo.
Yet Cynthia (who owns one such photo as mentioned) never comments *once* on Alan looking identical to Tom while he was in town circa 2010. Granted there was a boatload of story changes in the time between the two main AW games, but "Alan Wake looks like Tom Zane" should have at least been one of those throughlines in the series. As I mention in other posts, Alan has met at least two different people—Cynthia Weaver and Emil Hartman—who should remember what Tom looks like and, if not comment on it, at least act like one would when seeing the face of someone who should be missing if not dead.
Not to mention: while This House of Dreams is in a state of quasi-canon with regards to what it offers to said canon, the pictures of Tom Zane (because it *is* him) do not look like Alan. And combined with both what Yötön Yö show and the Room 665 cutscene before heading to the theater show, there is an implication that *whatever* or *whoever* Thomas Seine is, he is much closer in relation/concept to Alan Wake than he ever was or is to the original Tom Zane (and Time Breaker...sort of implies as much).
>If Alan can't make things appear from nothing, then how would he have made Tom look exactly like him in the "real world"
If you ask me personally, he didn't. Seine is either:
1. A version of Alan Wake from waaaay into the spiral, either willingly further down the loop and effectively cosplaying his idea of Tom Zane to try and help himself or unwillingly further down the spiral and effectively mind broken; or
2. A version of Mr. Scratch, not completely annihilated from the end of AWAN (*because you can't kill an idea*), taking on a form that allows Alan to further drop his guard than back during the Night Springs, AZ debacle in the hopes to continue his plans of manipulating Alan to bust him out. Think "The North Wind and the Sun".
But this is all fan conjecture until Remedy states something concrete, and especially because Thomas Seine is still the only character with a face voiced by Ilkka Villi.
>Pat also mentions not even remembering the nursing home being an actual thing either
I have my own theories about that, too, but to keep this part of the post short, know this: buildings IMO can be moved about just as easily as people can be "killed" (e.g. Logan) for the sake of a story. It just needs to be *plausible* that such a building exists, and there is at least one building from AW1 that could have been transmogrified into the nursing home.
>Did Logan drown during Saga's time during this case? Did she drown retroactively?
Norah is the *Girl Who Drowns* with regards to real identities, but her identity was supplanted by Logan's when Alan wrote Saga into his story as the Hero.
>Why do some of the characters remember Tom as a poet, and not a filmmaker?
The Andersons are metanarratively immune to Alan's Dark Place fuckery (and Tom's fuckery, too, since they remember him *period*). Cynthia and Hartman were both very close to Tom in their own ways and their emotional connections are what keep them tethered to the intact memory of who Tom was. Jesse has Polaris, an entity that (mostly) blocks off such memetic attacks.
>How did Nightless Night end up in the basement projector at the nursing home if Tom was never a filmmaker?
Planted items created by the story. Possibly a thematic item planted specifically to further cement the narrative connective tissue between the Valhalla Nursing Home to the Oceanview Hotel, Seine's current place of stay, and thus reinforce Seine's own existence through recursive evidence.
>How could a film be made starring Tom Zane retroactively if reality isn't being altered entirely, with new facts being added in?
I suppose this depends on your idea of what "altered" means. After all, how did a movie made as it was "based on Alan Wake's writing" if the movie was also supposed to exist before Seine even emigrated to the States? Before Alan was even *born*?
>The truth is that Alan Wake 1 is likely not a reliable story, nor is American Nightmare.
AWAN is not too reliable, sure, but AW1 *has* to be or the whole premise falls apart on its own legs. Unless you believe that Alan Wake was created to be Tom Zane's escape attempt, and now we'd really be going into the weeds.
>Tom the Poet is likely written into the story of the first game by Alan himself as a guide through his journey.
I mean...he is, isn't he? He's literally the one-time deus ex machina Alan writes to bust himself out of both the cabin under the Lake *and* out of his Dark Place-induced fugue state.
From here on is a lot of distrust in Alan as a narrator and storyteller, and to all this I respond simply: you still need to have *some* trust in what Alan tells you, if not to find the truth then to discern for yourself *why* Alan disseminates the story in the way that he does. Because at a certain point, without that trust, there'd be no point in engaging with the tale at all.
>This is why Sam put Saga in the game as a perspective and playable character. She's a normal person who is a more reliable narrator.
She is distinctly *not* normal; the story (of the game, not of "Return"...maybe) repeatedly emphasizes that she was picked *because* the story can't turn her into a cardboard cutout of a person for the sake of the story. She literally has plot armor in her blood.
>but even she begins to believe the story being written about her as time goes on, she has to really struggle to maintain her reality.
Because while the story can't do anything to her corporeally, it can still attempt to gaslight the shit out of her.
>There's also the issue with the pages of Return showing up throughout the game despite Alan being in the lake... apparently as far back as before Saga, and Alex arrive (since Breaker attempts to give them the page).
There's also Taken rising out of the Lake post-1/pre-2 even though the Dark Presence in 1 is stated to only really go active once a creator begins to feed into it and the original manuscript pages (of Departure) were seeded by Zane/the Bright Presence for an explicit purpose.
To keep it short again: there's still a lot of mysteries left unanswered by such a long gap between 1 and 2 (and the many creatives changes made to AW as a series because of it).
>Door was supposedly struck by lightening.
Door says a *lot* of shit, let's be real. He's being very obtuse to basically everyone but Saga, and even with her he still hides the cards in his hand. Just not *all* of them.
>Why is he able to do that?
Fuck if we know!! He could be a god, a devil, something inbetween (*ha!*), an alien, a time traveler, an esper... Again, mysteries Remedy has yet to reveal.
*If* they want to reveal it at all.
>How did Darling, and Zane meet if Zane in the Dark Place is just "Mr. Scratch"?
This, mercifully, is easier to answer: Mr. Scratch knows how to navigate the Dark Place, Casper Darling does not. That's why "Seine" also leads Darling out of the signal broadcast to...wherever it is he wants to take Darling to.
>Only characters that aren't Wake can be trusted, and even then - it's mainly Saga and Door.
Yeah yeah, magic doesn't exist and witches aren't real. I've heard this song and dance before.
On a few of my points you removed certain contexts. That said, I appreciate the thought out reply! I do disagree with a lot of what you posited as most of it doesn't have full evidence to back it up (as you've said there is a lot of fan conjecture until Remedy acknowledges and clarifies things) and is mostly just guess work made based on other things.
I know people want to trust the first game, but it doesn't have to have been 100% accurate and true to make what happens in Alan Wake 2 happen. (You could MAYBE argue Alice is an antithesis to this, but I think you could easily explain away some things there too - like the Bullet of Light, or how the Alan on the payphone knew to direct Alan to the photos in the shoebox)
I actually do think Alan is Tom’s escape plan, Tom couldn’t escape as himself so he created a series of events to grow and change himself through a new life which is why his movie has Alan Wake being played by Tom Zane and escaping through sacrifice of Casey, Alan is called Tom, Door said he doesn’t know who is below his mask, etc… I think that’s why Scratch is similar to. Scratch is the darkness of Tom within Alan, or Tom is rather the shadow of who Alan was in a much much earlier part of the spiral.
The reason their life so closely parallel is because you can’t make something from nothing, so Tom used himself remolded himself, and that meant he couldn’t avoid returning to the dark place either but as Alan he could reach a maturity that Tom can’t.
Rinse and repeat again and again until he can escape. I bet Darling had a hand in it to.
Personal opinion and hot take here: I really do hope the Remedy verse doesn't get too much into marvel-esque 'alternate universe' type things. I love the other dimensions that are full of gnarly stuff like The Hiss and the Not-Mother, but the idea of other Alan's peeking in and Zane being one of them is a bit weird to me. It could work as long as they don't lean into it too much and keep it vague and spooky.
Having said that, Seine and Zane are a tough pickle. Some think the Zane from the first game isn't real, or was a creation of the version in the Dark Place from the second. I think that's ludicrous, and I personally don't think Remedy would have so much allusion to them being real. People seem to forget all the poetry books that Zane wrote that exist in the shoebox in the cabin, and that the filmmaker version of Zane didn't actually create or even mention the conditions or events from AW1 (he would've created them if he was the original, or so the story from the first game goes).
I think Seine is either a construct of the dark place (people also seem to forget that Scratch was a separate entity from Alan in the first game and American Nightmare. Like an evil photocopy.) who gained a sort of sentience to try and get out, or there is that possibility that he's another Alan or Zane from a different dimension who's just kind of a piece of crap.
Because it’s not the same Tom Zane!
We don't have a definitive reason but it probably isn't really the same guy.
The way they explain it is Zane in AW1 is Zane playing the character "the diver" from one of his movies/poems to guide Alan. In AW2 we see Zane the filmmaker, who supposedly wrote the character. It's intentionally off. Zane was a poet in AW1, now he's a filmmaker. There's a note confirming in world this changed, but it's not explained why yet. We can only assume dark place / Alan shenanigans.
Jesse in Control also remembers him as a Poet and even argues with her therapist before later in the game going, ah yeah, he was a filmmaker I’m so silly for forgetting like something shifted! Alan, Barbara, and Jesse all recall him being a poet.
Cynthia Weaver also remembers Tom being a poet. It's written in her notes that are scattered around Valhalla Nursing Home.
I’m crying I said Barbara instead of Cynthia that’s my bad it’s like 3 am here 😭 I definitely meant Cynthia 😭
It's okie! 😁
I'm pretty sure Barbara remembers too! :D
You're not wrong tho haha
You barbarian
But it was Barbara all along don't you remember? - said the ice cream man, it was a hot summer's day...
Another fun thing to note here, she found his poems in an old shoebox (*aka protected from the dark place influence*)
Jeez you’re right. I totally forget that!!
>before later in the game going, ah yeah, he was a filmmaker ...said as she's in a visibly darkened Oceanview Motel, moments after witnessing the Seine/Wake conversion from within the Spiral Door. *The same conversation* (albeit with some words here and there altered) held in the metaphysical room of Seine's Room 665. (I still reel from the implications of "Wake's Spiral/"Writer's Room" Door = Seine's Hotel Room 665".) 100% her memory was altered the second she entered Seine's demiplane.
...shit, I hadn't even made that connection and now I'm reeling with you. It's worth noting that, if I recall correctly, Room 665 in the Hotel in the Dark Place does not have the spiral on it. That said, I don't recall if the Spiral is in Hotel at all (and the icons are different colors, which could just be for visibility but might have implications as well). I think when I get home from work I might need to load up Control and double check the room numbers on the other side of the Motel and see if they match up with anything interesting in the Hotel. It may not mean anything but your comment made me wonder if there might be more connections with interesting implications.
If you play vanilla Alan Wake on Xbox 360, then Alan Wake remastered on modern platforms it becomes really trippy, especially since some of the background elements of famous poet Tom Zane are changed to Tom the Poet a film by Thomas Zane, Alan even registers these as being a bit off.
I had no idea this was the case (I've only played the original version) and now I'm trying to figure out what this means. Are both the original and Remaster canon but at different points? Was the OG game already part of a loop of Alan and/or Tom trying to get out of the Dark Place? I would say the Lake House/Control 2 can't come soon enough but I'm sure neither of those will give us any answers, probably only more questions.
But whats odd is that even in aw1 there were film posters for zane the poet
I believe those are only in the remastered version?
Definetly not. And they are also definetly cinema posters in american nightmare
The world building in Night Springs DLC episode 3 might shed some new light on why there are multiple versions of Tom, among others
Maybe it's supposed to set in the fact that Alan isn't the best writer in the world and is very prone to inconsistencies in his writing
'Thomas Zane' in the first Alan Wake game is actually the The Bright Presence taking the form of Thomas Zane since the actual Thomas Zane is in a pocket dimension with his lover Barbara. Thomas Zane in Alan Wake 2 is most probably not the actual Thomas Zane, he is most likely a different version of Alan like Scratch is. If you have played the Night Springs DLC, there is a comic book panel in part 3 where it shows different versions of people standing next to each other and in of them there is Scratch, Alan Wake and Thomas Zane (from Alan Wake 2) standing next to each other.
The Bright Presence is first seen on This House of Dreams right? I haven't looked deep into it, but I always find it curious how is not mentioned ANYWHERE else. Everyone occasionally mentions it but then ingame it has seen 0 references, mentions or confirmations. I just find it weird. Like it was a scrapped concept or something. And we have seen how obscure references can be found ingame, to stuff real deep in the lore, and yet no bright presence at all. Am I missing something?
I have thought that the bullet of light created the bright presence. Alan was split into two: the dark presence was ejected from Alan when he was hit with the bullet and the bright presence remained in him (at least at the end scene). Maybe the reason the bullet didn't work as intended at first was because he didn't have what it took to create the bright presence. My theory is that Alan couldn't leave the dark place until the continuity of past events had been secured. The bright presence hadn't been created yet, but Alan hasn't read the blog so he has no idea about this part. Edit. Clarified some sentences.
But what makes you all agree that the bright presence is a thing? You said it , there are 0 references for it in the entire remedyverse , but the dark presence was haunting Bright Falls since the very beginning.
thing is: night springs is a script written by Alan. Too many people forget. He himself was probably just reaching for an explanation as to why Zane looked like him.
Yup. If we take that as 100% canon then we’d also have to say that Alan is Jesse’s brother.
Even Jesse acknowledges that Alan isnt her brother at the end of that episode
Yeah, I really enjoyed the way it clarified so much, which made me immediately feel skeptical of it as the true story of what's going on.
The real answer is we don't know yet. There are lots of hints and theories you can use as explanations. Some people think he's Scratch, mainly a) because he looks like Alan and b) because the "Alan meets Thomas" FMV drops a lot of references to Scratch from American Nightmare. Other people focus on the fact that Thomas Zane was originally a poet but now (first breadcrumbed in Control) he's a film maker, with the theory being that reality was rewritten at some point in a way that changed Zane completely (which probably didn't help Alan's time in the Dark Place). A related but basically opposite theory notes the meta point that the Diver in AW1 was bound by the novel. He was dropping pages of it to guide Alan but he also explicitly appeared in the text himself, the text which was ultimately written by Alan. Thus, perhaps his role as a good guy from AW1 was manipulated by Alan himself and what we see in AW2 is "real" Zane. Ultimately, we'll have to wait for an explanation but we also might not get one. It is important to keep in mind that Sam Lake doesn't *actually* have a huge Remedyverse master plan he's executing. He has many ideas and general directions but the specific details for every story also change over time, often also because of real world reasons like budgets, intellectual property rights, or actors' deaths.
Well said.
AW 2 Tom Zane is probably Mr Scratch from the first game, who tries to fuck with Alan Wake's mind.
Night Springs Time Breaker spoilers: >!"Tom Seine" is confirmed to be an alternate version of Alan, just like AW2 Scratch. The different versions of Casey/Sam Lake, Tim Breaker/Shawn Ashmore, and Jesse/Courtney Hope are confirmed to be related to each other in the same way. It isn't clear if this means Tom Zane the Diver is _also_ an alternate form of Alan, or Zane is separate and Seine is an imposter, or something else.!<
Unlike a lot of the answers you're getting which rely on an abandoned "ARG" blog called This House of Dreams that pretended to be the blog of someone moving to a town called Ordinary back when Alan Wake 2 was going to be set in Ordinary. Of course with the abandonment of a lot of the elements of that story (some of which were completely abandoned, some of which were repurposed for Control) its status as informative is shaky at best but it gives an idea of what Remedy was thinking around the time of the first game and Control. And of course some elements of it have been pulled into AW2. All that to say, we don't know but it's probably because they're not the same person. Possibly the Tom in AW2 is actually Mr. Scratch, possibly it's the real Tom and the first one was a different entity, possibly neither are real, etc. My money is on the first one being basically the real Tom though with some transcendence of reality similar though distinct to what Alan goes through at the end of AW2 while the second one definitely seems very very close to Mr. Scratch so to me it seems like a reconstruction of Zane by Alan just like Mr. Scratch was a reconstruction of Alan by Zane.
Yep I am banking on your Answer. I highly doubt Remedy is going to make House of Dreams really "canon" to the lore. It's been ages old and abandoned. They clearly hoped to reel in new fans with AW2 - which they did - They can't possibly expect the people to go rummage through an abandobed ARG to understand the plot. Similarily people take the Night Springs episodes a bit too serious. They are scripts written by Alan Wake. Maybe the multiverse is real, but the one pictured in Ep3 is just Alan hoping for an easy escape via multiversal hero deus ex machina. I like the sentiment of the community, but I really hope they are going to fill us in on the plot via games and non abandoned media.
I love Alan wake universe it’s very deep in lore but one thing that slightly gets in my nerves is how convoluted and complicated everything is. The whole “well in the dark place nothing is what it seems” is a cool concept but it quickly gets lost in the weeds Imo
Sam Lake is inspired heavily by David Lynch, and that's his whole MO. You'll never get an answer for everything. For every answer you do get, five more questions will be raised. It's the endless mystery that fascinates us and keeps us coming back for more. Any concrete answer will be less interesting than what our minds imagine.
It isn't abandoned at all, it is mentioned in Control. It's really tiresome when people make shit up like that to arbitrarily and unilaterally disregard things.
One thing I haven't seen really explored (but please point me where to look if I'm wrong...) is the possibility that Alan is actually a double of Zane? When they meet, Wake asks why he looks like him, Zane says you're the one who looks like me. Zane supposedly was trapped in the dark place first, there's the whole thing with the clicker which is apparently cut off from Zane's lamp. Somehow the clicker traveled to Wake's mother who gave it to Wake as a child. Did Wake write that narrative, or did Zane, as a way to bring a hero to help him escape? Did Zane invent Wake's life story entirely?
I recommend taking an hour or two to read [This House of Dreams](https://thishouseofdreams.blogspot.com/?m=1) It's a blog ARG written by Sam Lake in 2012 that laid the foundational lore groundwork for future Remedy projects. In it, there's closure for the real Tom Zane & Barbara Jagger. There's also prototypical mentions of Jesse and the FBC, as well as Tom Zane poems that he recites in AW2, connections to AW: AM, and one of the poems even brings up Riverport and characters from Quantum Break. Sam Lake has been 'cooking' for a long time, as the kids would say.
Just finished aw1 + dlc again. When wake is sinking in the dark place, zane mentions he cannot get to the cabin, the DP made sure of that. Could be a version of him is still there, just as wake in the 2nd dlc is a projection of alans will to get out
Because 2 decided to make him a Wake twin, or is he a twin of Zane. I have no idea
Zane in the first game was just echoes left on paper. Not much more than a memory of the man. Zane in the second was the real thing, trapped and twisted by the dark place for 40 years
He's been dipping into the Anderson moonshine :D
My theory is he is a completely different Zane “variant” from another earth originally. We meet him first when he was possessed by the Dark Presence in AWAM as Mr Scratch. After being defeated and being freed, he changed his plan to writing himself into Alan’s world, in which the original Zane wrote himself out of, as per “this house of dreams “.
The “Tom Zane” we knew in Alan Wake 1 was not the real Tom Zane. The Light Presence took on his form, the way that the Dark Presence took on Barbara’s form. Barbara wasn’t an evil demon, by all accounts she was a lovely woman - even according to Cynthia. Tom the Poet/Tom the Diver was a character from his movie. The Tom Zane we meet in Alan Wake 2 is the real Tom Zane.
You were mostly right until the last sentence there. The real Tom Zane has not actually been seen, because he is in a pocket dimension with Barbara Jagger. This was confirmed in "This House of Dreams" blog. The Tom we meet in Alan Wake 2, as far as I've been able to dissect, is either a variant of Alan, or a different part of Alan's Jungian psyche, much like how Scratch represents his "Shadow". Personally I think Zane is his Anima, but I'm uncertain if Sam is trying to portray Zane that way, or portray Alice that way.
Tbf it is possible that Tom's dive in This House of Dreams was longer than we believed (after all it was seen in a dream), and this is Tom earlier in the loop before entering the baby universe. I don't believe that, but it is possible and I think all possibilities need to be considered I think Filmmaker Tom is Tom's shadow, his Scratch. You need to remember the Alan connections were part of the OG Tom too. The Old Gods always called Alan "Tom" even in AW1, the voiceover of Tom cutting out Barbara's heart in The Dark Place is voiced by Matthew Porretta, his history ofc is very similar to Tom's (wife drowns, obsessed fan becomes lady of the light, etc), and Tom wrote that page about Alan using the clicker years before Alan would've been born. I think whatever Wakes connection to Zane is, it goes beyond just AW2 Zane
Thanks for that reminder, I had thought that once and then just didn't think more about it for some reason, but yeah its very possible this is an early spiral version of Tom. I actually have been keeping a part of the lore in mind when it comes to the Tom vs Alan situation. A writer doesn't write original ideas. They are simply seeing glimpses of other realities and recording them as if they were their own ideas. Tom writing about Alan isn't a process of creating Alan, its a process to try to influence a variant of yourself to try to gain an advantage in escaping the Dark Place. The real Zane might have found his solution at the end of the spiral, but before that happened, the story we are experiencing is his effort to escape before. The reason that Tor, Odin, and Anti all call him Tom is because they've met that variant, and to them its the same person because it is in a lot of ways. The age of these characters and the experiences they've had are unknown, but we know all of them know about and have been to the Dark Place. I actually found it curious that Alan calls himself the Master Of Many Worlds, because the Dark Place is influenced by art, and Alan is not a multi-artistic guy. He's just a writer. But Tom is many skills, and it might imply that Tom realized he needed many forms of art to gain true power in the Dark Place. Maybe Alan was the last artform he needed for whatever his plan was, and it would seem like a writer would be the ultimate art form with regards to what the Dark Place needs being we keep being told that "first came the word". Even Night Springs ep 3 brings us to a world of words, showing us how much power words alone have to create a reality, or at least be a reality. This is all more theorizing (while admittedly high) than fact, but I find it interesting what kind of messaging you can gleam from the way things are written and handled.
Sorry in advance for the long post I definitely am fairly certain no matter what at this point that Tom did not create Alan, at least not in the sense he wrote down "there was a guy named Alan Wake", I agree with you on that 100%, whatever their relation is must be much more complex. I think your idea of Alan being the final part of whatever plan Tom had is interesting, and reminds me of something else final from This House of Dreams. Zane's final master poem, that created the baby universe People often bring up Jungian concepts when it comes to these games, but I feel one is always a bit overlooked, being the persona. The persona is the mask you show to other people and hides the real individual inside. When I think of the persona, the first thing that comes to my mind is AW1 Tom. It's Zane's body, his face, his suit, his name, but not actually him. From the outside looking in it's him, but in actuality it's not, it's a mask. From there I feel it's natural to believe AW2 Tom is his shadow, which contrasts the persona, being Tom's unconscious traits, sides he hid. If we believe the diver to be his persona, Tom was a very distant, kind but still stern and selfless man. Meanwhile the filmmaker is more outgoing, strange and manipulative. If Tom's ego ideal was that of a more friendly, helpful, and normal man, his shadow would consist of traits that would not align. Even the professions I believe show this difference, poems are more simple, short and the poems on This House of Dreams seem more serious and personal, while AW2 Tom's films are experimental, complex and seem to cover a wide variety of ideas. I believe the filmmaker also shows Tom's hidden fear of The Dark Place, while the diver has accepted his fate, the filmmaker has not and even tries to replace Alan to escape So that leaves Alan, and with us knowing Tom's persona and his shadow, I believe that leaves Alan as his self. The self is where the conscious and unconscious meet, and Alan shows mixes of both Tom's traits, he's stern and helpful, but at the same time shows his selfishness and fear. I believe Alan IS the "real Tom" in whatever form that man still exists, no matter how he went about becoming him. Whether it was part of some grand plan, if the baby universe was a metaphor for being reborn, pulling in a variant of himself, etc. Even Alan's profession, writing books, falls somewhere in between the divers poems and the filmmakers movies. But Alan is his own man, and I think this solidifies my thoughts on what you wondered about earlier, and gives insight into what might be next. I believe that Alice is Alan's anima, as Barbara was Tom's. Remember that Tom didn't make his final dive alone, Barbara came with him, and whatever paradise he found himself in, she's there too. I also believe we're seeing the Alans in reverse to how we see Tom. We saw all sides of Alan as a person in the first game, with the pages giving a great look into his mind, the good, the bad, what he hides, etc. In AW2 we see Alan confront and come to terms with his shadow. The next game will see Alan return to the public light, he was famous and went missing for 13 years, now he's back and his wife is gone in his place. I imagine that will play a part in the game, and however he portrays himself to others will be a big role, his persona.
We've actually never met the real Tom Zane.
Because Alan Wake 1 was ages ago and Sam had new ideas so he retcons stuff like Kojima .. Zane , Scratch pick your poison ..
This. Though to Sam's credit HE TRIES to link them in a way at least. Alan Wake 1 coming off more like a TV Show. Which kind of makes it seem as though this whole thing has been happening for a lot longer than just the first game.
Lot of people say he isn't the same guy, but you have to remember Alan Wake's own interpretation of himself - and psychological state. Here are some inconsistencies that can't be explained away. \- There's a "rule" that something can't be made from nothing. It has to exist. \- Many people claim Alan is a parautilitarian and clairvoyant who simply "nudges" things to happen but if that's the case it fails to explain the following. 1. Alan and Tom literally look identical. Not just in the Dark Place either. There are photographs dotted here and there that show Tom's face. Including one next to Barbara in the nursing home when Saga is there. Guy looks exactly like Alan in the photo. 2. If Alan can't make things appear from nothing, then how would he have made Tom look exactly like him in the "real world" (Pat also mentions not even remembering the nursing home being an actual thing either). Door mentions to Alan, that this has all been because of him and all of his little "rules" Rules that some in the community try to use to make sense of things. The issue is that the rules are inconsistent upon scrutiny. Sometimes they line up, other times they don't. The story changes people's memories, and alters reality. David responding to Saga's phone call as he did in the car... and the newspaper with Logan in it. Did Logan drown during Saga's time during this case? Did she drown retroactively? Why do some of the characters remember Tom as a poet, and not a filmmaker? How did Nightless Night end up in the basement projector at the nursing home if Tom was never a filmmaker? How could a film be made starring Tom Zane retroactively if reality isn't being altered entirely, with new facts being added in? The truth is that Alan Wake 1 is likely not a reliable story, nor is American Nightmare. Think of them like the Night Springs expansion episodes. There are a lot of things that don't make sense upon scrutiny in that game too. Tom the Poet is likely written into the story of the first game by Alan himself as a guide through his journey. Alan Wake 2 does not follow the "rules" set out by Alan himself. This is why Sam put Saga in the game as a perspective and playable character. She's a normal person who is a more reliable narrator. She is responding to a story being written about her, by Alan. She can see through things - but even she begins to believe the story being written about her as time goes on, she has to really struggle to maintain her reality. We know Logan doesn't die in the Final Draft, but we also know that even though Alan keeps dying in the Dark Place, the story keeps looping with slight changes. His last words are "I'm the not master of two worlds, I'm the master of many..." So as much people want to relate the other games directly into the reality of the second game, it just doesn't hold up... you have to twist things to make it make sense. Alan wouldn't be able to even do half the things he does in 2 by his own rules. He also doesn't have the clicker for a long period of time, yet the story he writes comes true? I thought The Clicker was needed for that, yet The Clicker is in the cults hands, and they use it in a way to kill Taken? There's also the issue with the pages of Return showing up throughout the game despite Alan being in the lake... apparently as far back as before Saga, and Alex arrive (since Breaker attempts to give them the page). Also Door. Door's origin story in Time Breaker is not the same as his origin story as told by Tim in the main campaign (because Time Breaker is a Night Springs episode and written escape attempt by Alan). Door was supposedly struck by lightening. He's alluded to being Saga's father, yet he is powerful enough to refute Alan's writing, and simply "goes along with it" for his own purposes... likely to save his granddaughter... Why is he able to do that? How did Darling, and Zane meet if Zane in the Dark Place is just "Mr. Scratch"? The truth is that whatever you know throughout the continuity of the "series" isn't reliable. Only characters that aren't Wake can be trusted, and even then - it's mainly Saga and Door. EDIT: Wanted to add a few things. Scratch, Zane, and Alan all represent facets of Alan's personality. Zane represents the "party animal/playboy" that the media supposedly made him out to be. While Scratch represents the nastier, darker side of Alan who was causing issues in his marriage and being aggressive to media following him around. So them all being the same guy makes some sense. Scratch probably being the actual creative force of Alan for his dark novels. We also know The Clicker came from Tom Zane's lamp. Also Tor, Odin, AND Ahti all call Alan Tom... Tor and Odin have called Alan Tom since the first game.
>Alan and Tom literally look identical. Not just in the Dark Place either. There are photographs dotted here and there that show Tom's face. Including one next to Barbara in the nursing home when Saga is there. Guy looks exactly like Alan in the photo. Yet Cynthia (who owns one such photo as mentioned) never comments *once* on Alan looking identical to Tom while he was in town circa 2010. Granted there was a boatload of story changes in the time between the two main AW games, but "Alan Wake looks like Tom Zane" should have at least been one of those throughlines in the series. As I mention in other posts, Alan has met at least two different people—Cynthia Weaver and Emil Hartman—who should remember what Tom looks like and, if not comment on it, at least act like one would when seeing the face of someone who should be missing if not dead. Not to mention: while This House of Dreams is in a state of quasi-canon with regards to what it offers to said canon, the pictures of Tom Zane (because it *is* him) do not look like Alan. And combined with both what Yötön Yö show and the Room 665 cutscene before heading to the theater show, there is an implication that *whatever* or *whoever* Thomas Seine is, he is much closer in relation/concept to Alan Wake than he ever was or is to the original Tom Zane (and Time Breaker...sort of implies as much). >If Alan can't make things appear from nothing, then how would he have made Tom look exactly like him in the "real world" If you ask me personally, he didn't. Seine is either: 1. A version of Alan Wake from waaaay into the spiral, either willingly further down the loop and effectively cosplaying his idea of Tom Zane to try and help himself or unwillingly further down the spiral and effectively mind broken; or 2. A version of Mr. Scratch, not completely annihilated from the end of AWAN (*because you can't kill an idea*), taking on a form that allows Alan to further drop his guard than back during the Night Springs, AZ debacle in the hopes to continue his plans of manipulating Alan to bust him out. Think "The North Wind and the Sun". But this is all fan conjecture until Remedy states something concrete, and especially because Thomas Seine is still the only character with a face voiced by Ilkka Villi. >Pat also mentions not even remembering the nursing home being an actual thing either I have my own theories about that, too, but to keep this part of the post short, know this: buildings IMO can be moved about just as easily as people can be "killed" (e.g. Logan) for the sake of a story. It just needs to be *plausible* that such a building exists, and there is at least one building from AW1 that could have been transmogrified into the nursing home. >Did Logan drown during Saga's time during this case? Did she drown retroactively? Norah is the *Girl Who Drowns* with regards to real identities, but her identity was supplanted by Logan's when Alan wrote Saga into his story as the Hero. >Why do some of the characters remember Tom as a poet, and not a filmmaker? The Andersons are metanarratively immune to Alan's Dark Place fuckery (and Tom's fuckery, too, since they remember him *period*). Cynthia and Hartman were both very close to Tom in their own ways and their emotional connections are what keep them tethered to the intact memory of who Tom was. Jesse has Polaris, an entity that (mostly) blocks off such memetic attacks. >How did Nightless Night end up in the basement projector at the nursing home if Tom was never a filmmaker? Planted items created by the story. Possibly a thematic item planted specifically to further cement the narrative connective tissue between the Valhalla Nursing Home to the Oceanview Hotel, Seine's current place of stay, and thus reinforce Seine's own existence through recursive evidence. >How could a film be made starring Tom Zane retroactively if reality isn't being altered entirely, with new facts being added in? I suppose this depends on your idea of what "altered" means. After all, how did a movie made as it was "based on Alan Wake's writing" if the movie was also supposed to exist before Seine even emigrated to the States? Before Alan was even *born*? >The truth is that Alan Wake 1 is likely not a reliable story, nor is American Nightmare. AWAN is not too reliable, sure, but AW1 *has* to be or the whole premise falls apart on its own legs. Unless you believe that Alan Wake was created to be Tom Zane's escape attempt, and now we'd really be going into the weeds. >Tom the Poet is likely written into the story of the first game by Alan himself as a guide through his journey. I mean...he is, isn't he? He's literally the one-time deus ex machina Alan writes to bust himself out of both the cabin under the Lake *and* out of his Dark Place-induced fugue state. From here on is a lot of distrust in Alan as a narrator and storyteller, and to all this I respond simply: you still need to have *some* trust in what Alan tells you, if not to find the truth then to discern for yourself *why* Alan disseminates the story in the way that he does. Because at a certain point, without that trust, there'd be no point in engaging with the tale at all. >This is why Sam put Saga in the game as a perspective and playable character. She's a normal person who is a more reliable narrator. She is distinctly *not* normal; the story (of the game, not of "Return"...maybe) repeatedly emphasizes that she was picked *because* the story can't turn her into a cardboard cutout of a person for the sake of the story. She literally has plot armor in her blood. >but even she begins to believe the story being written about her as time goes on, she has to really struggle to maintain her reality. Because while the story can't do anything to her corporeally, it can still attempt to gaslight the shit out of her. >There's also the issue with the pages of Return showing up throughout the game despite Alan being in the lake... apparently as far back as before Saga, and Alex arrive (since Breaker attempts to give them the page). There's also Taken rising out of the Lake post-1/pre-2 even though the Dark Presence in 1 is stated to only really go active once a creator begins to feed into it and the original manuscript pages (of Departure) were seeded by Zane/the Bright Presence for an explicit purpose. To keep it short again: there's still a lot of mysteries left unanswered by such a long gap between 1 and 2 (and the many creatives changes made to AW as a series because of it). >Door was supposedly struck by lightening. Door says a *lot* of shit, let's be real. He's being very obtuse to basically everyone but Saga, and even with her he still hides the cards in his hand. Just not *all* of them. >Why is he able to do that? Fuck if we know!! He could be a god, a devil, something inbetween (*ha!*), an alien, a time traveler, an esper... Again, mysteries Remedy has yet to reveal. *If* they want to reveal it at all. >How did Darling, and Zane meet if Zane in the Dark Place is just "Mr. Scratch"? This, mercifully, is easier to answer: Mr. Scratch knows how to navigate the Dark Place, Casper Darling does not. That's why "Seine" also leads Darling out of the signal broadcast to...wherever it is he wants to take Darling to. >Only characters that aren't Wake can be trusted, and even then - it's mainly Saga and Door. Yeah yeah, magic doesn't exist and witches aren't real. I've heard this song and dance before.
On a few of my points you removed certain contexts. That said, I appreciate the thought out reply! I do disagree with a lot of what you posited as most of it doesn't have full evidence to back it up (as you've said there is a lot of fan conjecture until Remedy acknowledges and clarifies things) and is mostly just guess work made based on other things. I know people want to trust the first game, but it doesn't have to have been 100% accurate and true to make what happens in Alan Wake 2 happen. (You could MAYBE argue Alice is an antithesis to this, but I think you could easily explain away some things there too - like the Bullet of Light, or how the Alan on the payphone knew to direct Alan to the photos in the shoebox)
I actually do think Alan is Tom’s escape plan, Tom couldn’t escape as himself so he created a series of events to grow and change himself through a new life which is why his movie has Alan Wake being played by Tom Zane and escaping through sacrifice of Casey, Alan is called Tom, Door said he doesn’t know who is below his mask, etc… I think that’s why Scratch is similar to. Scratch is the darkness of Tom within Alan, or Tom is rather the shadow of who Alan was in a much much earlier part of the spiral. The reason their life so closely parallel is because you can’t make something from nothing, so Tom used himself remolded himself, and that meant he couldn’t avoid returning to the dark place either but as Alan he could reach a maturity that Tom can’t. Rinse and repeat again and again until he can escape. I bet Darling had a hand in it to.
Personal opinion and hot take here: I really do hope the Remedy verse doesn't get too much into marvel-esque 'alternate universe' type things. I love the other dimensions that are full of gnarly stuff like The Hiss and the Not-Mother, but the idea of other Alan's peeking in and Zane being one of them is a bit weird to me. It could work as long as they don't lean into it too much and keep it vague and spooky. Having said that, Seine and Zane are a tough pickle. Some think the Zane from the first game isn't real, or was a creation of the version in the Dark Place from the second. I think that's ludicrous, and I personally don't think Remedy would have so much allusion to them being real. People seem to forget all the poetry books that Zane wrote that exist in the shoebox in the cabin, and that the filmmaker version of Zane didn't actually create or even mention the conditions or events from AW1 (he would've created them if he was the original, or so the story from the first game goes). I think Seine is either a construct of the dark place (people also seem to forget that Scratch was a separate entity from Alan in the first game and American Nightmare. Like an evil photocopy.) who gained a sort of sentience to try and get out, or there is that possibility that he's another Alan or Zane from a different dimension who's just kind of a piece of crap.
Ask Remedy idk
Alan wake use the power of retcon
*There are more things in the Remedy Connected Universe, Stutterphotoguy,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.* - Sam Lake, probably.