Here is some info from The New York Times about some short episodic content coming out before Alan Wake releases.
"Shot on location in rural Oregon and Washington, the six episodes are a prequel to the events of the game, telling the story of a reporter named Jake as he arrives in Bright Falls to interview the creepy Dr. Hartman. In the first two episodes, Jake begins to discover that all is not as it seems (naturally) in the woods, hollows and diners that are to be expected from a world inspired by “Twin Peaks” and Stephen King. (The character Alan Wake, the game’s namesake, does not appear in the first two episodes.)
These days, the best and most interesting games are distinguished not by their graphics or combat mechanics, but by their writing, design, portrayals of character and depth of story. The prequel series is meant to engage the potential audience in the mysteries and personalities of Bright Falls to the extent that the consumer’s immersion in the overall Alan Wake fiction is seamlessly extended through the transition from noninteractive video to interactive game.
“We were really trying to set up the world of the game before the game’s characters are born into it,” the series director, Phillip Van, 29, said in a telephone interview. “We wanted to build original content and an original story that really said something about the town as a character itself. It’s almost about the town happening to him, and we really wanted to walk the line between the psychological and the supernatural.”
Mr. Van said the production team tailored the appearance of environments in the video series to match the appearance of locations in the game. It just so happened, Mr. Van said, that the interior of the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood — also known as the facade of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” — matched almost perfectly the appearance of the fictional Dr. Hartman’s lodge in Alan Wake.
The game is structured episodically like a TV series in which you’re left wanting more and you have to play the next episode just like when you’re watching “Lost” or “24″ and you end up staying up all night because you just have to see what happens next,” Oskari Häkkinen, Remedy’s director for franchise development, said in a telephone interview. “So the Web series really sets the game up well for us as an entertainment property. We spent a lot of time molding these characters, giving them a real history and bringing them to life and to be able to do that in a live-action way before the game comes out is awesome.”
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