Alan Wake is a spooky third-person action game with creepy shadow monsters and weird characters. It also contained a ton of product placement, including an Energizer-branded flashlight you use in the game to push back the evil. Next month’s remastered re-release removes that and all the other bits of odd product placement.
Alan Wake was developed by Remedy Entertainment (they also developed the original Max Payne and Control) and released for Xbox 360 and PC back in 2010. While the game played like a solid third-person shooter, the narrative and missions were delivered using a TV show format, with episodes breaking up the game into sections and bookending videos teasing what happened and what was coming next between each of these sections. It also was basically Twin Peaks written by a Stephen King mega-fan in a lot of ways. But I loved it! And I’m really happy to see a remastered version of it, announced earlier this week at Sony’s PlayStation Showcase, is coming out next month.
This new version isn’t just improving the visuals and cleaning up the HUD, but it is also making some big changes to the content. Specifically, all the in-game real-world product placement is being removed. According to ScreenRant, Remedy PR confirmed with the outlet that all the product placement seen in Alan Wake have been removed and modified.
This stuff appeared in a few different forms in the 2010 original. You could spot Verizon billboards around the town while playing. Folks drove around in branded cars, like Lincolns, too. And the most noticeable was the Energizer-branded flashlight Alan Wake yields throughout the game, allowing the author-turned-video-game-star to fight off the evil shadow monsters infesting the town of Bright Falls. Wake even finds Energizer-branded batteries scattered around the world too. (I always thought this was odd because the batteries in this game run out in a matter of minutes. Seems like a bad way to advertise your product.)
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If you are worried about the songs and fake-TV shows being removed, Remedy PR also confirmed that all that stuff will be left untouched.
Alan Wake Remastered is out October 5 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC via The Epic Game Store.
