Alan Wake 2 forges a full-circle moment with Poe on ‘This Road’

12.01.2024 - 21:19 / destructoid.com / Sam Lake / Alan Wake

You could say that Alan Wake 2 was decades in the making. Last year’s blockbuster from Remedy saw the studio return to its roots and the horrors therein, dredging up the past to loop into something new, now. But it wasn’t just the main character or gameplay style we saw return, but the sounds and inspirations of the original Alan Wake too, bubbling up from Cauldron Lake through the music of Poe.

When I was playing Alan Wake 2, I was pleasantly surprised—maybe even a bit shocked—to hear a song that sounded like Poe between chapters. And a quick search later, I had verified as much: singer-songwriter Poe had collaborated with Remedy’s Sam Lake to record a new song, “This Road,” just for Alan Wake 2.

For fans of meta-textual works, this was an incredible piece of news. It felt like several long threads, reaching back through old references and inspirations, now tying a new knot. So naturally, I needed to know as much as I could about how it happened, and reached out to both Sam Lake and Poe to discover. As it turns out, it was more of a full-circle moment than I could have anticipated.

First, we need to lay out a bit of a timeline. Before Alan Wake was released in May 2010, there was a book called House of Leaves, written by Mark Z. Danielewski, and published in March 2000. 

The book follows several characters through a meta-textual journey: a tattoo apprentice named Johnny Truant discovers a manuscript from the strange author Zampanò. It follows a documentary about Will Navidson, a photojournalist who discovers his house is larger on the inside than the outside. The story twists and turns as you read through both the document itself and several different layers of footnotes, as the text and book itself feel like they start to warp too.

Alongside House of Leaves, there is Haunted by Poe. The musician happens to be Danielewski’s sister, and Haunted can be easily seen as a counterpart and companion work to House of Leaves, including tracks like “Exploration B,” “5&½ Minute Hallway,” “Dear Johnny,” and “House of Leaves” – all references to the novel.

It’s not hard to see how House of Leaves became an inspiration for Lake as the team at Remedy was building the layers of Alan Wake. And, through that, Poe’s music.

“House of Leaves is one of my favorite post-modern novels. It has been a big inspiration for me through the years, for the original Alan Wake, and for the sequel as well,” Lake told me over email. “The writer, Mark Z. Danielewski, is Poe’s brother, and Poe’s album Haunted is a sort of a companion piece to the novel. This is how I found her music and fell in love with it. I feel Poe’s music fits Alan Wake perfectly.”

So, the title track from Haunted wound up on the original Alan Wake soundtrack. It’s