Alex Casey from Alan Wake 2

The protagonist of Alan Wake’s novels may be named Alex Casey, but for those of us who’ve been playing games for the past 20 years or more, the sight of a detective with Remedy creative director Sam Lake’s signature scowl who talks like the hardboiled hero in a dime-store Raymond Chandler knock-off conjures another name: Max Payne. Throughout Alan Wake 2, this figure—phantoms of him, at least, lurking in the dark alleys and at the grisly crime scenes of the nightmare New York Wake is trapped in—appears before Alan constantly, and it’s just so delicious.

This isn’t just a fun reference, a playful bit of fan service. This is Sam Lake making a game about a writer who can’t seem to escape his own legacy, and he does it by leveraging his own legacy, which looms so large in the landscape of early 21st-century gaming. The choice brings rich, exciting layers of thematic meaning to Alan Wake 2. But it is also just a pleasure to once again hear voice actor James McCaffrey dispensing the kind of world-weary observations and hard-earned, hard-drinkin’ wisdom that only true noir anti-heroes like Payne—sorry, Casey—can dispense. — Carolyn Petit