The Lake House is a welcome return to Alan Wake 2 — and a bridge to the future

After a year, Finnish studio Remedy Entertainment has opened the gates to a mysterious location in the 2023 third-person horror hit Alan Wake 2, known as The Lake House. In this short DLC, released just in time for Halloween, players step into the shoes of Kiran Estevez, the long-suffering agent of the mysterious Federal Bureau of Control we meet in the main game, who allies with Alan Wake 2's protagonists, Alan Wake and Saga Anderson. Set before the events of Alan Wake 2, The Lake House sees Kiran recounting a horrifying event at the titular location to Saga, yet the plot is almost firmly removed from the main game itself.

This is both a boon and a curse, depending on what you were looking for. But as a bridge to the continuation of Remedy's grand connected universe narrative - which also includes the supernatural thriller Control - it's ideal. Instead of waving goodbye to Alan and Saga, Remedy is extending a hand to take us on its next weird journey.

Kiran is investigating a research station, where FBC researchers, doctors Jules and Diana Marmont and their teams, are looking into the effects of Cauldron Lake. In Remedy's lore, there is a connection between the power of creating "art" and the power of otherworldly forces to misuse such gifts.

The Marmonts are experimenting on a painter, Rudolf Lane, who some might remember from the main game. Lane's creativity has a tendency to illustrate - and possibly create - the future, much as Alan's writing did. (God forbid those two ever make a comic book together.) I won't spoil what the Marmonts did, save to say they were monsters long before any otherworldly forces came into the frame. Regardless, the Lake House is suddenly cut off and unresponsive to FBC HQ, resulting in Kiran investigating with a small team. 

Remedy has been playing with a connected universe since Control, and the Lake House is a firm bridge backward and forward to that story. Of course, being an Alan Wake DLC, players can expect the solid third-person survival horror of the main game. 

The Lake House, as a setting, is as unnerving as most of the spaces in Alan Wake 2. However, there's more of a focus on the brutalist and office-space aesthetics from Control, without the outside or natural environments that dominated about half of the main game. In the eerily quiet office spaces, there are visual wonders like looping hallways and rooms of infinite typewriters, which have been programmed to "write" like Alan Wake. 

That last quirk appears to be a clear jab by Remedy's writers at AI slop, with a page of Alan's real writing saying, "The art was not art. Just content for the experiment." Indeed, the whole thesis of The Lake House is the misuse of art for the acquisition of some end product, rather than relishing in the beauty art can create. This is all the more obvious when you figure out who the villain is and who has created the new terrifying humanoid paint beasts that slither out of the walls. Remedy is not subtle in its disdain for the corporatization of creativity, the reconfiguration of art into a harvest field of bland capitalistic fervor. There's no love lost and much hate gained in the Lake House's story, outlining the interaction between artistic freedom and corporate control: a golden hand wrapped around imagination's throat.

To say too much about this already short game would spoil it, so I won't go into detail about the clever set pieces that would feel right at home in Control. Let's just say, light switches and motels make a welcome return, as does a familiar and powerful character. 

Kiran, unfortunately, does not mechanically demonstrate any prowess fighting otherworldly beings, despite her years as an FBC agent. She plays no different to Saga or Alan Wake, once again using a flashlight to whittle down enemies' shadowy armor before unloading a satisfying number of bullets into their bodies. There is also only one new enemy type: the aforementioned long-limbed painting creatures who can only be destroyed with a new weapon Kiran discovers late in the story. 

I would've liked some new ability or mechanic that demonstrates her years of experience in dealing with the weird. Instead, this is relegated to her interactions with the odd object / entity, being able to quickly control her fear, and knowing how to deal with recurring "items" Control veterans like myself know all too well. 

Much of the joy of the Lake House is discovering what occurred and experiencing the few floors for yourself. The DLC takes about two hours to complete. But in that short span of time, it made for not only a satisfying send-off of one of my favorite recent games but also a bridge back into the world of Control.

All signs seem to indicate Remedy will be taking the grand plot of this connected universe to an almost apocalyptic level. We can probably expect to see plenty of returning characters, including Kiran herself, as Remedy steers us through its creepy weird lake of stories.

The Lake House expansion for Alan Wake 2 is available now.