Remedy reveals their reward methods with Alan Wake's first 10 Achievements

by Xav De Matos
February 04, 2010 16:16 PM PST

As part of an upcoming GamePro feature, Alan Wake developers Remedy Entertainment told us about 10 of the game's upcoming achievements and their reasoning for rewarding gamers for those particular actions.

Remedy reveals their award methods with Alan Wake's first 10 Achievements

When a developer carefully crafts an interactive world, the hope is that they are able to pull players into the experience, making them forget they are spectators to the onscreen action. While this generation has afforded designers the possibility of expanding game stories and characters through impressive technology, it is a mandatory meta-game that threatens to unravel the immersive experience with a simple pop-up that reads "Achievement Unlocked."

In an interview conducted for a future feature article, Remedy Entertainment producer Jay Ranki told GamePro that achievements in the upcoming Xbox 360-exclusive mystery-thriller Alan Wake were carefully created to keep players entertained and interested while exploring the haunted world of Bright Falls.

"Good game design rewards players regularly to hook them to play just that little longer," Ranki told GamePro. "Achievements are a way to add to the game and not just the "meta game" -- which in itself is cool. When they're built right, I think you can accomplish a very rewarding extra layer to the game that adds to the overall experience as opposed to something that's just a "shoe horned" feature."

After compiling a list of over 100 pop-culture inspired achievement possibilities, Remedy whittled the list down to essential rewards with the internal goal that the meta-game should be used to guide players through the Alan Wake world and entice them to return once the final chapter has been written. "You need short term goals and rewards mixed in with intermediate as well as long term goals and rewards," he said, adding there is "definitely a risk" that achievements might break a game's immersion.

Remedy's approach has been to avoid some aspects of achievement design that have been sporadically popular throughout the meta-game's existence: Don't reward "negative or un-cool" experiences and don't make it easy. "Giving achievements that feel disconnected from the game [feels] uninspiring. Giving too many achievements too easily becomes meaningless and cheats certain players of the opportunity of their bragging rights." The key to the mandatory feature, Ranki says, is balance. "It's about catering for different types of gamers rather than forcing everyone to play the same way. Some don't have the time to go off the beaten track and want only the top level experience, others are so involved in the fiction that you need to offer them more to feed their hunger. They get a richer and a richer experience and it encourages them to explore all that the game has to offer."

In Alan Wake, Remedy Entertainment decided to use some of the title's achievements to build suspense throughout the story. Story progression achievement notifications were purposely delayed, to ensure the pop-ups wouldn't suddenly reveal a key sequence has occurred until a player has experienced the moment for themselves.

For Remedy, achievements work best when they ask players to change their traditional approach to conquering a freshly-released title; "Encourage players to change the way they play the game and try things they wouldn't otherwise do," Ranki gleefully explains. "I think this is the coolest aspect of achievements."

Achievements -- and PlayStation 3's Trophies -- may be one of the few constants found in this generation of console titles, but Remedy Entertainment isn't about to form its design document around a set of mandatory in-game rewards. "We actually continually wrote down cool ideas for achievements throughout the production process, but the actual achievement list only starts to really come together during these final steps of production." Until then, Remedy's focus is simple: Deliver on one of the most anticipated titles of 2010.

While the complete list of achievements in Alan Wake is being closely guarded until the game gets closer to release, Remedy's Jay Ranki would share ten of the game's achievements to give us an idea of how it plans to categorize the game's complete achievement list.

Story & campaign progression

Achievement: Park Ranger
"Alan Wake has been broken into episodes, similar to a TV-series structure. The End of a episode is a good calm spot to reward the player with an achievement without spoiling or disturbing anything else going on in the game. This particular achievement is rewarded after an episode where the player has spent considerable time in the Elderwood National Park, an area of the gameworld we highlighted during E3 2009."

Difficult Achievements

Achievement: Gunless Wonder
"Player has to complete a certain section of the game without firing a single bullet, just utilizing his light-based weapons and environment only."

Achievement: Meet the Deadline
"Writers, like game developers, have deadlines to meet. In this one, player has to get through a certain section of the game under a strict time limit."

Leveraging advanced techniques & mechanics

Achievement: Two for the Price of One
"This particular achievement is awarded if a player manages to destroy two enemies with a single blast from his shotgun. This is something that might happen by accident if the player is lucky or something he can choose to go after by trying to setup combat situations where this is more likely to occur."

Achievement: Collateral Carnage
"To receive this one, the player has to use his wits more than his weapons. He needs to collect enough indirect kills, using the dynamic situation and the environment to his advantage."

Achievement: Back! Back, I Say!
"If a player manages to save himself by using a handflare to drive off the enemies when they almost got him, he will receive this achievement."

Utilizing entire inventory

Achievement: It's Not Just a Typewriter Brand
"I'm not sure if GamePro readers associate the name Remington more with shotguns or typewriters, but the brand exists in both categories. Wake believes a manuscript he wrote is coming true. So in essence he created his own predicament with a typewriter and now he has to solve it with a shotgun. To achieve this one players have to prefer their shotgun over other powerful weapons and choose to go in for the close kills with it."

Exploration Achievements

Achievement: Bright Falls Aficionado
"Players who are interested in Bright Falls as a location have the opportunity to dig in deeper to the colorful past and present of the quirky small town. By exploring the gameworld, they'll be able to get a much richer understanding of the place and we reward them with this achievement to boot."

Achievement: Damn Good Cup of Coffee
"Now, the naming of this one is an homage to one of our influences for the game and a good example of those pop cultural references we love to put in our games. I can't tell you yet how you will receive this one, other than it will be related to exploring the gameworld's every nook and cranny."

Achievement: Collector's Edition
"We've already revealed that Wake's lost manuscript is at the heart of this whole mystery player is trying to solve. Throughout the gameworld, players will find pages of this lost novel. Some are easy to find and others hard. Some will be key to understanding the story while others fill in gaps, add color and round out the overall story experience for those players who really get into the story. By collecting every single manuscript in the gameworld - and there's quite a few-- you'll be rewarded with this one."

Xav de Matos is a Toronto-based freelance writer and host of The Freelancers; a podcast featuring tips for aspiring writers and war stories from veterans of the games industry. Follow him on Twitter here.