Summary
Alan Wake 2’s Lake House expansion casts the player in the role of Agent Kiran Eztevez of the Federal Bureau of Control and acts as a bridge between Alan Wake 2 and a potential sequel toControl.
During your exploration of the eponymous house, you can come across a document that references two websites. These areThis House of DreamsandSiren Society(credit to Josh Lloyd for the spot). The first is the more interesting one as it’s a real blog post with multiple entries told from the point of view of a new homeowner. As the in-game report suggests, the website is associated with parautilitarian activity.
This House of Dreams was created for Alan Wake’s American Nightmare and is being re-used for The Lake House, tying everything together. For those who weren’t aware, it’s worth recapping the story. The house is in the town of Ordinary, the hometown of Control’s protagonist Jesse Fadden. Beginning in February 2012 with a post by the blog author, Samantha, explaining how she’s fulfilling her dream of buying and renovating an old house.
It’s Never A Lake, Is It?
The blog continues as normal. Samantha is exploring her new home and, eventually, she finds a shoebox in the attic full of poems and pictures of a couple of divers with their faces inked out (gulps). She has a dream about a federal agent arriving, demanding she give him the shoebox. His badge reads ‘AWE’. When she awakens, she can’t find the shoebox anywhere, but she takes pictures of the poems and shares them.
As you might imagine, the poems are aggressive and haunting, with references to The Dark Place. Samantha’s dreams become nightmares. In one of them, she meets a previous occupant who has been driven insane by his need to keep everything lit up. In June, Samatha sees dark silhouettes outside her window, causing her to panic and hide as they break inside. She calls the police, but they can’t find anything, and she’s held in hospital overnight until she calms down.
The shoebox then turns up again, this time containing a disconnected light switch and more poems. Samantha is eventually contacted by someone who claims to know about the shoebox, but will only help her if she stops posting on her blog about it because it’s dangerous. Samantha, our doomed heroine, doesn’t heed their advice.
The next set of poems come closer to understanding the true nature of the Dark Place. It’s not a lake, as a certain acclaimed author would say. The title page of this group of poems has the author’s name scratched out and mentions Departure, Initiation and Return. As people who have played Alan Wake 2 will know, these are books written by Alan Wake and his evil alter-ego Mr Scratch.
The final post is more detailed. The diver from the picture appears to Samantha in a dream and tells her that his girlfriend has been possessed by a dark presence, while he has surrendered himself to a bright presence. He explains they have emerged from the lake to continue their battle. Ominously, upon waking up, Samantha is filled with an incredible sense of hope as she awaits “something wonderful.” There are no further posts.
The other website, Siren Society, prompts you to join a waiting list. If you do so, you’ll get an email confirmation about the artist Poe who performs the song ‘This Road’ from Alan Wake 2’s soundtrack. This could be a future set-up for an album release relating to the game or something along those lines.
Alan Wake 2
WHERE TO PLAY
Alan Wake 2 is the sequel to Remedy’s hit survival horror game. It blends two separate stories into one, following FBI agent Saga Anderson as she investigates both a series of brutal murders and a story written by Wake himself.
