Influenced by the Twilight Zone television show, Night Springs is the name of fictional TV series that players can watch episodes of in their travels across Bright Falls. There are six episodes that you can watch, which will earn you the Couch Potato reward.
Location:
Episode Two. Elderwood National Park. After leaving Barry back in the cabin, Alan set off down a hill towards the visitor centre. Visit the second abandoned cabin to find the second TV. You will need to kick in the front door to access it.
Overview:
Following a murder at a baseball game, an agent takes on the task of interrogating the apprehended killer.
Recording:
Transcript:
NARRATOR: Crime and punishment; the cancer and cure of civilization. but some crimes are impossible to punish. Especially in Night Springs. Tonight's episode.... The Man in the Mirror.
(A police car pulls up to a building, sirens blaring. Inside, we move to an interrogation room.)
COP: He's inside, Agent. He's a weird one!
AGENT: So, you're confessing to killing that guy, huh? Why?
KILLER: He had it coming!
AGENT: Yeah, but why would you do that? I mean, you're a nice guy. Normal. Took your kid to a soccer game. So how come at the game, you pick a guy, and - quoting from the arresting officer's report here - assault the victim's head area repeatedly with a weapon of choice being a pair of bare fists. Wow! That sentence really flows, huh?
(KILLER doesn't respond)
AGENT: Maybe you're not the literary type. Okay, so you mess him up... but why? Who was that guy? We couldn't ID him. Why would a guy like you do him like that?
KILLER: I didn't like his face.
AGENT: Well, you must have hated it, 'cause you really went to town there. I mean, there's no way to tell what he looked like. No ID on him either.
KILLER: That must be difficult.
AGENT: But then we ran the fingerprints. Got a match! Your prints. Identical.
KILLER: Huh. How 'bout that?
AGENT: Your son said you were wearing a white shirt when you took him to the game, but the white shirt is on the dead guy.
KILLER: It's plenty red now.
AGENT: You won't get away with this.
KILLER: Do you really think that's in any way relevant to me? I had plenty of time talk to my boy before the cops arrived, y'know. He won't stop screaming... am I right? You think he's ever gonna be okay? Ha ha, I left my mark, believe me-
AGENT: You bastard!
(AGENT pulls his gun on the KILLER.)
KILLER: What?! You're going to shoot me? What's the point? I'm going to prison. You got me.
(The KILLER's face twitches in ways that aren't natural. It's difficult to focus on him. The AGENT raises his hand to pitch his eyes slightly as he becomes disorientated.)
AGENT: I- I don't understand any of this.
KILLER: And you never will. Don't worry, maybe you'll see me again, Agent. Maybe in the mirror.
NARRATOR: The Agent narrowly avoided becoming a monster, but has he gazed long enough into the abyss? Did he glimpse the heart of... Night Springs.
Notes from Man In The Mirror:
- Quantum Break Ties. The ending narration references a famous quote by German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you".
- Tony Elias. The killer wears an Alan Wake t-shirt reading "I am AWAKE", available through the official store.
- Episode Rewatch. As the voice-over and live-action segments were recorded separately, Remedy was reluctant to share HQ versions of the TV shows. As there was interest from the community, the shows were released via Joystiq to celebrate the Night Springs-based game, Alan Wake's American Nightmare. While Jostiq closed down, these recordings can still be found online.
Night Springs in American Nightmare:
In Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Alan expands on what Night Springs is and its meaning to him in a series of manuscript pages:
- Alan Wake, The Writer. "My name is Alan Wake, and I’m a writer. I didn’t become one overnight. Like most writers, I struggled with it -- a short story here, an article there. Then I got lucky and spent a year as a staff writer on the Night Springs TV show. It wasn’t the great American novel of my fantasies, but it taught me discipline and craft, and the difference between wanting to be a writer and actually writing."
- Night Springs, the Cult TV Show. "Night Springs doesn’t exist. It’s a fictional town from the TV show I used to work on. It was Anyplace, USA, a place we used as a backdrop for whatever strange story we had that week. One of the stories I wrote for the show involved a man, “the champion of light,” fighting his evil double, “the herald of darkness”. It was something I’d written back in the real world -- something I had a link to, a framework I could build on. I adapted it into a new story. This story."
