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. Throughout the game, players can track down six episodes to collect the Couch Potato reward. With the Steam release of Alan Wake, and the pending launch of Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Remedy made three extra episodes available.
Overview:
A police officer interrupts an old man and his apprentice after complaints from locations of them defacing walls around Night Springs.
Recording:
Transcript:
NARRATOR: Magic. Parlour tricks. Smoke and mirrors. But for some, magic is more than that. It's a way of working the secret machinery of reality itself. And more than one member of that Eldrich brotherhood can be found in... Night Springs. Tonight's episode... What's In A Name.
NARRATOR: We find an old man standing on an old, rusting, derelict bridge, clinging his bony frame against the cold steel, and though he looks idle, he is hard at work. His young apprentice attends to him as good apprentices do.
MAGIS: Yes, yes! Coming along nicely. Don't you think, boy?
APPRENTICE: Yes, Magis.
(A police officer walks up to both men.)
OFFICER: Sir, we've been getting some complaints. Are you defacing the bridge?
MAGIS: Oh? No, I wouldn't do that.
OFFICER: Sir, I can see the screwdriver in your hand and the scratches on the steel beams. You've been spotted doing this all over town.
MAGIS: Yes. I have been very busy, but I'm no vandal, officer.
OFFICER: Exactly what are you up to, sir?
APPRENTICE: He's writing his name on the town.
MAGIS: The youngster is correct. I'm writing my name. My whole name. The entire and complete description of my soul on the town. I'm almost done.
OFFICER: Yeah? Well, all I see is an old man tagging public property.
MAGIS: Oh, I should bow down to the wisdom of your years? Words have power, young man. Names and titles especially.
OFFICER: Uh-huh, and what's your name, supposed to be?
MAGIS: Ha ha ha. Tell 'em boy. Tell 'em while I finish the carving.
APPRENTICE: Officer, it's- it's-
MAGIS: Say my name, boy! Say it!
APPRENTICE: It's Night Springs, officer.
OFFICER: But, isn't that... that's the name of the town, isn't it?
APPRENTICE: Yes, it is from now on.
(The man disappears.)
OFFICER: Wait. Where did he go? Hey! Where is he?
APPRENTICE: Oh, officer. You know where he is, and what he is, don't you? I think you should get in your car and drive away, and remember which town you're serving.
(The officer walks away.)
APPRENTICE: Your will be done, Magis.
NARRATOR: Ah, yes. There are too many little towns to count, all of them with some little magic of their own. But some towns have more personality than others, and none more than... Night Springs.
Notes from What's In A Name?
- Latin. Magis is a Latin word meaning "more" or "greater."
- Themes. Similar to Family Occasion, this episode was influenced by Lovecraftian horror.
- Shakespeare. The episode title "What's In A Name" refers to a passage in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”
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."
