When Alan Wake was in its earlier phases, it had a heavier element of open-world gameplay, there was more exploration. That got squeezed into a more linear form. What do you think are the advantages of linearity as opposed to open-world design?
It was a difficult decision to walk away from the sandbox, but it was absolutely the right choice. I mean, we had it working, there's nothing stopping us from doing it, other than -- it just didn't gel right. We didn't like what we had. It was okay, but it wasn't great, so we walked away from that. I think the biggest issue with combining a thriller with a sandbox is, for a thriller, you want a heart-pounding thrill ride. You want to control the pacing. You want to have foreshadowing. You show the knife on the table, the camera pans away, the knife's gone. You know, that kind of Alfred Hitchcock thriller moment. And really delivering that in a sandbox just wasn't working. It's a much more tightly paced story where we're controlling the tempo of things, but it's not a linear tube by any means. I think if we look back at the Max Payne games, you know, you're essentially going from room to room, maybe a corridor to a large room. But this time around, we have the Pacific Northwest there, but it is a linear story and there is a path or paths to follow.
