Alan Wake/Headscratchers

• How did Barry power those Christmas lights? He wasn't carrying a portable generator or anything with him, and Christmas lights aren't generally battery powered.
  • There are battery-powered adapters that you can plug anything with a power cable into. They're more common in places like Bright Falls where portable power supplies are more commonly used.
  • Besides, Alan apparently wrote that Barry would have powered lights, which meant reality would have to shift so that Barry would have access to some kind of portable power source for his lights.
• Why didn't Alan just say "Look, the guy who's got my wife is calling me. Here's the phone."
  • To whom? The Sheriff? The kidnapper threatened him not to go to the cops, as kidnappers are wont to do.
  • The kidnapper outright says that "We're watching you!" to Alan. If he tells Breaker that his wife's been kidnapped, then that's a surefire way to ensure he never sees her again.
• What's up with that fat cop who apparently had a personal vendetta against authors? I mean, he kept calling Alan stuff like "Dan Brown" or "Steven King" all while trying to kill him. Was he molested by an author as a child or something?? Did he attend a Steven King book signing event once and the man gave him the cold shoulder/didn't appreciate how much of a fan the guy was ala Buddy/Syndrome from The Incredibles? Did Dan Brown tell him to GTFO when he pestered him with his own personal theories about The Da Vinci Code? Just...why was he so anti-author to the point of murder?
  • Because Alan wrote him that way. It is implied that Agent Nightingale didn't even exist before Alan wrote him into the story.
    • Wait, wait, wait. Recap. You mean the game is a story within a story? Alan's trapped in his own book?
    • ....yeah? They state this explicitly in the game. It's kind of hard to miss, considering Alan says, over and over again, that Cauldron Lake brings the works of art created around it to life. I'm not sure how you didn't get this, considering it's kinda-sorta a critical plot point, as that's how come Zane no longer exists except in the Dark Place, how the Dark Presence was trapped in Jagger's form, and how the clicker is the weapon that defeats the Presence.
    • Erm, yes. Didn't you finish the game?
    • You don't even need to finish the game! When Alan and Barry are driving away from the lodge in Episode Four, Alan quite clearly says what Cauldron Lake does.
  • He's a jerk and he's insulting Alan by never using his real name.
    • I never played the game. I just watched a scene of it on Youtube where the cop was insulting Alan Wake.
    • If you haven't played the game, then why are you complaining on a JBM page about the game?
    • Even if you never played the game, you should see Nightingale's abrasive personality. It's in practically every scene he's in. Introduction at the trailer park: fires on Alan, who's unarmed. Radio station: fires again, in spite of Alan being pretty much captured. Both times, there was a civilian in the line of fire. Capturing Alan at the Anderson farm: holding a gun on him while he's sleeping. Jail: Alan doubles over, possibly in pain, and when Sarah asks him what's wrong, Nightingale pulls a gun on both of them. It's pretty obvious he's a bit crazy.
    • Exactly. In the few scenes I saw of him in Youtube, he's abrasive, threating to shoot Alan all while insulting him and calling him Stephen King or Dan Brown. Hence why I put this in here.
    • He's a bit crazy and he's mocking Alan.
    • With those names he's basically calling Alan a famous and succesful hack. It's insult towards a person who he considers to have made a lot of money without deserving it. There's no deeper dimension to it.
  • The reason for Nightingale's hostility towards Alan is revealed in The Alan Wake Files. After the mysterious death of his partner, Nightingale had visions of Alan and believed that he was somehow responsible or at least involved with his partner's death.
• On the subject of Agent Nightingale, where did he come from and what is his motivation? In some of the manuscript pages, it states that he knows something evil is in the town. How does he know this? Is it because the FBI has files on everything supernatural or something like that? Also, is he part of a sanctioned task force or has he gone rogue? There's really no explanation for why an FBI agent would randomly start hunting an author, except that Alan wrote it that way. But why would he write that?
  • Alan wrote it that way because it gives him an external threat besides the Dark Presence. Outside of the manuscript, the FBI probably sent him because a certain famous author and his wife suddenly went missing for a week. Either that or two men went into a woman's trailer and didn't come out for hours - one page states that Randolph called the cops.
  • All There in the Manual says that Nightingale was fired before the start of the game. His story is quite interesting, actually.
• Why is there revolver ammo in emergency boxes? I can understand batteries, or flare rounds, but revolver ammo?
  • In case of bears or wolves. Also, the Bright Falls Sheriff's office is aware that weirdness happens around the town, and have taken precautions.
    • Plus, Alan could've written it that way.
• One of the big Just Bugs Me for this game is more of a meta thing. Why, whenever someone is trying to ask questions about this game, are the defenses that people throw up generally "because Alan wrote it that way"? It's established very early on that the story has to make sense and be consistent with itself. Thus Alan explicitly "can't" just write it that way. He has to give plausible, solid reasons for the game to progress as it does at every turn. Nightingale isn't a jerk just because the game needs a human jerk to move it along - he's got a very well developed backstory if you read the supplemental materials. Those ammo stashes out in the wilderness? Likely to help out hunters who find themselves in a bind with wild animals or the Sheriff has that there as part of the Night Springs thing. Hell the "Lady of the Light" could have been doing it if he needs a real reason. Notice that you don't find guns in them, they're not just arming random people which would be fairly odd. Those are found in out of the way places most of the time or near supply caches. If there isn't a reasonable explanation for it then the whole thing falls apart, the Dark Presence fills it in with its ideas and we all get screwed.
  • Those could be the reasons given in Departure, the story-within-a-story. Now, take a look at Nightingale's backstory, as you mentioned: he and his partner were the epitome of lawful, by-the-book cops before his partner started talking about darkness, went crazy, and was "taken" by something. Sounds pretty familiar, right? Why would his partner be touched by the Dark Presence if the DP can't leave Cauldron Lake, except if an artist lets it? Alan let it. What caused the events that made the Sheriff prepare for the Night Springs plan in advance? Alan wrote that weird things happened in Bright Falls even before he arrived. As for the supply caches, it's very, very strongly implied that the Lady of the Light is doing it - but what would make Alan go off the path in the first place? He wrote that he got lost. Alan even says right at the beginning of the game, "In a horror story, the victim keeps asking, 'Why?' But no explanation is given, and there shouldn't be one." According to him, unanswered mysteries such as this are an integral part of horror. Plus, take a look at the other Headscratchers and tell me how many of them have "Alan wrote it that way" as the first or only explanation.
  • Plus, Alan could have written it that way.
• Why is Sarah so freaked out when those two Fast Taken attack? Barry hasn't seen one before, so that's understandable, but you fought one earlier outside the church with Sarah and she didn't say a word about it other than her combat one-liners.
  • Probably because there were two of them. One you can keep track of; two is a whole 'nother ballgame.
• What happens if a writer doesn't write a self-insert story? Does he become the main character of his story, or does the main character simply operate in the background?
  • The story happens in the world around them. The main character likely appears out of the firmament from nowhere, the same way other things in the story appear.
  • The writer would sit in the cabin on the bottom of the lake until he starved to death, like Alan was doing until he went back and rewrote himself into the book.
• At one point Sheriff Breaker says the townsfolk are not surprised by weird stuff happening in Bright Falls to the point that Night Springs is based on the town. So, does that mean the weird stuff is caused by the Dark Presence, or is the Dark Presence is just one of the many unusual things going on around Bright Falls?
  • Occam's Razor would say that that the Dark Presence is causing it.
  • Perhaps the other, lesser weird stuff is just the result of other, less talented artists being exploited by the Dark Presence. Without Wake or Zane's ability, they can't create an entire world, but they can create a weird monster or short story.
• After Alan escapes from the police and is chased by them, he runs for quite a while through the forest, unarmed and helpless, and, sure enough, not a single Taken takes interest in him, even if in the background the Dark Presence is gorging itself on the deputies. Once he finds weapons however, the bastards are right on the spot. Any in-game reasons for that (and if you say "because Alan wrote it that way", I'm going to hit you)?
  • You can bitch about the "Alan wrote it that way" explanation all you want, but that doesn't make it any less valid, especially considering he did write it that way.
  • If you absolutely need an in-game reason, the Taken are toying with him. Simply knowing they're out there would make Alan nervous and possibly cause him to make mistakes, making him easier to kill. They're basically having fun tormenting him. Then Alan goes, "Flashbangs? Hell, yes!" and instantly becomes a threat. The Taken attempt to Get Dangerous and fail.
    • Note also that the Taken's priority is to get Alan back to the bottom of Cauldron Lake so that he can finish Departure and release the Dark Presence. They can't do that if Alan is in jail or actually dead. They have an interest in keeping the cops off Alan until they can get him alone and capture him.
• Hordes of Taken appear throughout the game, there have to be hundreds of them. I get that most of them are disappearances that occurred over decades, the Dark Presence taking a few campers or a couple of hikers now and then, very slowly bolstering its forces. But quite a few of them are also taken during the events of the game, like Rusty and Carl Stucky. When all of the events of the game are over, the town should be pretty much wrecked by the various tornadoes and Taken battles, and a lot of people would suddenly be missing, but no one seems to notice this in the cutscene ending. What happened? Did Wake's victory over the Dark Presence warp reality so that the events technically didn't happen, or something?
  • Wake explicitly rewrote the events surrounding the end of the game to repair the damage he inflicted. He explicitly states this in the first DLC's intro, where he says he wrote a happy ending to Departure.
• So where'd all the manpower for chasing Wake come from? Bright Falls probably wouldn't have a chopper and a few dozen men, much less several over the course of the game. The Agent couldn't call them in without blowing his cover. Or is it because Alan wrote it that way?
  • According to the Alan Wake Files in the Limited Edition, Nightingale is actually a rogue agent, and was fired from the FBI. Additionally, he had nightmares where he saw someone who closely resembled Alan and became obsessed with finding him. Don't quote me on this, but I think I read somewhere that Nightingale was following a string of mysterious disappearances; for all we know, he thinks he's hunting a serial killer.
  • If you hang around the overturned squad cars, you hear Nightingale tell Sheriff Breaker that all her deputies have been killed by Alan. And only after that do cop taken show up. So yes, they were all the law enforcement of the town. The helicopter was probably the sheriff's, too. After all, the sheriff escorts you to the fire department helicopter and not the police helicopter. (or was it a forestry department helicopter?)