AS ABOVE SO BELOW

After 13 years, Remedy is ready to make the game of its dreams

- ALEX SPENCER

The log cabin, real or imagined, where a writer has been chained to his typewriter for the past 13 years. The forest in which a detective finds herself lost, clutching a tattooed heart, as reality ebbs away around her. The insides of both characters’ heads, which you can walk around. We’ll visit all of these places in time, but for Edge the story starts somewhere stranger still: on the set of a late-night chat show.

Outside, it’s a bright day on the streets of Helsinki, the long dark of winter finally thawing. In here, though, the only window shows a gloomy New York nightscape. It’s positioned alongside a sign that declares that we’re watching In Between With Mr Door, the soft light from which reveals that this view is a fabric backdrop, the slight ripples in its surface ensuring you don’t forget the artifice. Because nothing here is real, as Alan Wake is about to learn.

Action is called, and Ilkka Villi emerges from behind a billowing red curtain, blinking in the spotlights. Later, he’ll tell us: “I just counted 18 years with Alan Wake,” having been cast as the physical embodiment of the character during early development of the first game, while Matthew Porretta provided the voice. “Games were a lot different then,” Porretta says. “This would never be done this way now, right? The person who mocaps it would voice it. But back when it first started out, we were just figuring out how to do it.”