19th November 2024 Sam Lake To Receive the Andrew Yoon Legend Award at The 14th Annual New York Game Awards

Remedy's Creative Director, Sam Lake, has been named the latest recipient of the Andrew Yoon Legend Award for the upcoming 14th Annual New York Game Awards.

The award is presented to industry veterans who have made incredible contributions to the medium throughout their long careers. Previous recipients include Jade Raymond, Hideo Kojima, Neil Druckmann, Phil Spencer, and Tim Schafter, along with other prominent names. For anyone looking at Lake's CV it's easy to see why he was selected; he has been one of the big driving forces behind the Max Payne, Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control franchises throughout his thirty-year career.

The New York Video Game Awards are hosted annually by the New York Video Game Critic Circle (NYVGCC). Their next ceremony is set to be held at the SVA Theatre on January 21st, 2025, starting off the year on a high.

On the Legend Award, Harold Goldberg (President and Co-Founder of the NYVGCC) stated, “What an honor it is to celebrate someone of Sam Lake’s caliber during the 14th annual New York Game Awards. You know a Remedy game when you see it, largely due to Sam Lake’s impact on the worlds he creates. It’s really cool to see how his 20-year career at Remedy has touched so many of our members and interns at the Circle, and we are thrilled to have him join the roster of esteemed game changers previously recognized with the Andrew Yoon Legend Award.” 

“It’s not often that you see a video game studio deliver a superb sequel to a title a decade later, but it’s even rarer to see how it resonates with fans and spawns a whole connected universe comprised of its past franchises,” said Ryan O’Callaghan, Executive Director at NYVGCC. “I don’t think anyone expects anything less from someone like Sam Lake. He spoke with some of our students and interns a few weeks ago, and it was insightful to see where he draws his inspiration and the care that goes into crafting a video game. This will be a year to remember at the New York Game Awards.”

Following the announcement, the NYVGCC and IGN sat down with Sam to talk about his inspirations and fondest memories over the past three decades. You can watch the NYVGCC interview below, and read the IGN interview, HERE (archived). 

Source: NYVGCC Press Release (archived)

Read More

18th November 2024 Alan Wake 2 Update 1.2.4 [Progression Blocks, Cinematic Triggers, DualSense Fixes]

Today, Remedy released a new update for Alan Wake 2 which fixes of the reported bugs from The Lake House, as well fine-tuning certain animations and DualSense responses. The patch went live this afternoon for all platforms.  

The majority of the changes fixes issues with the latest expansion, including ammo rebalances, correcting cinematic triggers, fixing localisation errors, and running maintenance on a dodgy lift. While most are quality of life improvements, if you had a certain progression-preventing bug when moving between locations, make sure to get the update on your platform. 

You can read the full list of changes below or on the Alan Wake website, HERE.

PlayStation 5 (1.200.004)
Xbox Series (1.2.0.4)
PC (1.2.4) 

General 

• The Player can now boost the flashlight while reloading the weapon (canceling the reload in the process). YES! 

Fixes 

• Fixed an issue where the player was not able to shoot after a partial weapon reload 
• Fixed an issue where the DualSense adaptive triggers kept on rumbling and doing the wrong thing at the wrong time 

The Lake House Fixes and Improvements 

• Sent in some additional resource boxes that appear right before the final boss fight, as they should in video games. Stock up! 
• Fixed an issue where the opening cinematic of The Lake House was playing at the wrong time 
• Fixed some shadow banding on the final The Lake House cinematic 
• Fixed a rare case where the player would get stuck in the elevator when returning to Sublevel 1. While this is a realistic issue even for the FBC, this has now been deemed not a great idea for the game experience 
• Added some “missing” paint onto the walls of Sublevel 4, so it no longer seems the Painted attack out of a regular grey wall. (also known as the “good thinking” fix) 
• Fixed the Portuguese translation for the hint for the second computer puzzle, which gave the player the wrong information. 
• Various localization fixes 
• Minor fixes and stability improvements

Read More

11th November 2024 Benjamin Lindquist's July Adobe Article on Alan Wake 2's Environment Art Technology & Workflows

Earlier in the Autumn, 80 Level published an article looking at Remedy's content creation pipeline for Alan Wake 2 when creating vast environments. The article was inspired by a blog post written by Principal Technical Environment Artist, Benjamin Lindquist for Adobe back in June. As we missed the original post, but posted retweeted the 80 Level article, we wanted to revisit the original today to spotlight this brilliant retrospective on Alan Wake 2's production.

In the original piece, Benjamin explains how his job has taken on a more technical focus, with him taking ownership of how the studio creates content in the Environment Art. The piece reviews Adobe's Substance 3D Designer, and how it works alongside their in-house Northlight engine, and OpenUSD. Even though the piece explores the more technical aspects of the role, it's also very approachable. His writing has a nice balance of personal and professional, with a story-like description that creates a story of how the teams worked. 

"My name is Benjamin Lindquist, and I’ve been working as a Game Artist / Environment artist in the games industry since 2012. Despite making “art” for quite some time and enjoying it, I’ve always had a fascination with technical aspects of content creation. During the 10 years at Remedy, I’ve slowly moved towards a more technical focus and taking ownership of how we create content in the Environment Art team. I’m currently working as a Principal Technical Environment Artist which, to put it simply, is a sort of nerdier version of an environment artist. My day to day is very varied, depending on current needs, ranging from [research and development] related to content workflows, writing documentation, mentoring artists, overseeing art-quality, working on visual targets and a lot more."

Check out the full article, HERE! 

Read More

10th November 2024 CGWorld Spotlights Masao Ogino's (Remedy's Senior Environmental Artist) Twenty Years In Games

To kick off the start of November, CGWorld posted an interview with Remedy Entertainment's Senior Environment Artist, Masao Ogino. The piece focuses on Masao's twenty-year career in games and how he got started. 

Born in Tokyo, he attended college in the USA to further study English and 3DCG, before returning to Japan and jumping into games. In the interview, he talks about learning a second language, looking for adventures outside his home country and the courage needed in taking that leap.

The main part of the piece though focuses on about his relocation to Finland to work at Remedy, where he has been for the past eleven years, working on titles such as Quantum Break, Control, CrossfireX, and Alan Wake 2. It's in that section where he describes what the role of a Senior Environmental Artist at Remedy entails and what his initial perceptions were of the studio when he first began.

While the original interview is in Japanese, you can check out a Google Translated-version, HERE. It's not perfect, but it provides the gist of their conversation. 

Source & Image: CGWorld

Read More