18th April 2024 Rewatch Today's Alan Wake 2 Audio & Music Dev Stream w. Vida Starčević, Petri Alanko, and Richard Lapington

If you're looking for something to relax to as a little Thursday evening treat, Remedy has just finished up their Alan Wake 2: Dev Stream Episode 1 - Audio & Music, with the broadcast now available in full on YouTube.

Vida Starčević hosted the two-hour livestream, which featured special guests Petri Alanko (Composer) and Richard Lapington (Audio Director), in an in-depth discussion about the challenges and rewards of creating audio for video games. Throughout the talk, they answered questions spanning a range of topics from flaming pianos to creating realistic rain, what it was like to win a BAFTA and finding inspiration for sounds that don't exist. For the final thirty minutes, questions were taken in from viewers. 

If you haven't seen it yet or want to rewatch it, you can check it out below or HERE if you want to watch it directly on their YouTube channel. The video has been embedded with Twitch and YouTube chat, so you can follow the community discussions regardless of where you watch.

Vida and Julius are set to return to YouTube and Twitch on May 2nd at 4pm EEST (2pm BST), focusing on live action and cinematics with Anssi Määttä (Live Action & Cinematics Director) and Mikko Riikonen (Principal Cinematographer).

On a related topic! Today, Inverse published a new article on "Why Alan Wake 2's Creators Are Breaking an Unspoken Video Game Rule", which looks at the studio's decision to invite players to see what went on behind the scenes. In their piece, they talk to Julius Fondem (Community Manager), Vida Starčević (Senior Community Manager) and Thomas Puha (Communications Director) about the inspiration and goals behind the latest schedule. You can read the full interview HERE. 

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18th April 2024 Remedy's Level Designer, Roberto Padron Talks Career Progression With Vandal

The game industry is a tricky place to break into and, these days, almost as tricky to stay in. While there's general advice for aspiring developers, each individual story feels unique. This week, Vandal's Sara Borondo sat down with Roberto Padron (Level Designer at Remedy Entertainment) to talk about his gaming journey. 

The article takes an in-depth look at his career so far. From working at Pyro Mobile Games as a QA Tester Intern in 2015, he has since worked with DNA Softworks, Blackmouth Games Ubisoft, and Supermassive Games before moving to Finland seven months ago to work at Remedy.

In the latest chapter in his story, he looks back on the interviews and tests that secured him at place at the company, and what life has been like for him in Finland. 

While the original interview takes place in Spanish, if you click HERE, you can read it with the help of Google Translate.

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17th April 2024 Behind The Voice Talks to Alan Wake 2's Agent Nightingale, Doug Cockle

If you've been looking forward to Behind The Voice's latest episode featuring Doug Cockle, you can now watch the interview in full on their YouTube channel! 

While perhaps best known as the voice of Geralt of Reivia from The Witcher, Doug Cockle was also the incredible actor behind Alan Wake 2's FBI Agent Robert Nightingale. A surprise player character at the start of the game, Cockle's haunting performance is our reintroduction to the Taken after thirteen years. 

In their eighty-minute interview, they explore a long range of topics, including the actor's career, the future of AI, The Witcher series (of course!), his latest roleplaying adventure with Natural Six, and getting bloodied up in preparation to take on Nightingale. 

When you're through with that episode, you may be interested to learn that Behind the Voice is no stranger to the Alan Wake series, having previously interviewed Ilkka Villi (Alan Wake), David Harewood (Warlin Door), and Sam Lake (Alex Casey).

Created at the start of 2023, Behind the Voice is a podcast hosted by Abhi Jha, which explores the lives of actors behind our favourite characters. Over the past fifteen months, they have drawn 6,370 YouTube subscribers and recently passed 250 Spotify subscribers.

You can follow Abhi's adventure on Twitter and YouTube! 

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17th April 2024 Rewatch Remedy's Alan Wake 2 Kickoff Livestream

The Remedy livestreams are back! Yesterday, Thomas Puha (Communications Director) and Kyle Rowley (Game Director) launched the first of five scheduled broadcasts, set to take place over the next month, with a second set teased for after the summer break. 

Yesterday's "Kickoff" livestream, hosted on the studio's Twitch and YouTube channels, explored the behind-the-scenes journey of Alan Wake 2 with never-before-seen milestone footage. 

Opening the broadcast, they discuss the BAFTA Games Awards, with Kyle having just returned from London, as well as what's currently in the works the DLC packs (although only teasers so far!), and the delicate decision process of showing an in-progress game.

The main discussion, though, was all about Alan Wake 2's development, from pre-production (when the team is focused on concepts and general goals) to development (with set achievements and dates). At Remedy, those milestones were celebrated and communicated both internally and to Epic Games through videos. The approach also allowed bigger developers' teams to gain a general sense of the overall progress of other departments. Accompanied by Kyle's commentary, we see work-in-progress videos from April 2021 and February 2022 (milestone #12).

As for future broadcasts, Vida will be returning as host for the next livestreams, which will delve deeper into specific areas of Alan Wake 2. On April 18th, they will be diving into the audio and music behind the game. For May 2nd, cinematics and live-action are in the spotlight. For some mid-May action, they return to the Pacific Northwest in a location feature on May 16th. Finally, as May draws to an end, there is a broadcast dedicated to The Dark Place on May 30th. All broadcasts will be going live at 4pm EEST / 2pm BST / 1pm GMT. Check them out on Twitch and YouTube! 

Source: RemedyGames on Twitch

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