Show me the Champion of Dead By Daylight - Alan Wake joins Behaviour's multiplayer horror hit

09.01.2024 - 18:55 / rockpapershotgun.com / Sam Lake / Mathieu Côté / Matthew Porretta / Frank Stone

I will not lie to you, reader, I used up about 95% of today's remaining creative energy/caffeine on that headline joke, but let's charge our flashlights, sharpen our hooks and struggle on through the body copy anyway. Remedy's Alan Wake is joining Behaviour Interactive's Dead By Daylight as a playable Survivor, having been conjured from his writing desk by the latter game's villainous Entity.

Mind you, I'm a little unclear on the causality here. The press release includes a cheeky quote from a lost Alan Wake manuscript in which the perennially troubled horror author suggests that he is the creator of Dead By Daylight's universe, not Behaviour Interactive. "As I searched for a way out, memories of a script I wrote for Night Springs about a fog-engulfed place flooded back," it reads. "Surrounded by the same fog, I became a pawn - trapped. I must find a way out. Rewriting that script is key." Oh Alan. Have you tried laying off the coffee and going for a stroll, now and then?

Slated for release on 30th January, the Dead By Daylight version of Wake is performed once again by actors Ilkka Villi and Matthew Porretta, and features brand-new voice lines. He'll join the game alongside a new Lights Out Modifier - a limited-time terror layer that strips players of key tools.

The worlds of Dead By Daylight and Alan Wake have many similarities - both are about purgatorial spaces, where fictitious monsters become flesh, though Dead By Daylight doesn't have any rock concert interludes that I know of. There's a bit of commentary to that effect from Remedy's creative director Sam Lake in the press release. He notes that "the lore of both games is surprisingly compatible, a true match in... hell."

Behaviour's head of partnerships Mathieu Coté is of the same mind. "Since its launch in 2010, Alan Wake has influenced us on the Dead By Daylight team," he wrote. "Our games already feel connected in many ways. To finally see Alan come to the Fog as a Survivor feels like a full-circle moment."

Behaviour are on something of a third-party collaboration spree right now - they added the bloomin' Alien to Dead By Daylight not long ago, and have enlisted Until Dawn developers Supermassive to devise a single player spin-off, The Casting of Frank Stone. Remedy, meanwhile, have several chunky irons in the fire, including Control 2, a multiplayer Control spin-off, and remakes of the first two Max Payne games.