Episode 6: Departure (Alan Wake)

Departure is the sixth episode of the episodic game Alan Wake. It is the last episode that is played before the DLC episodes.

Plot

Alan decides to go alone to Cauldron Lake to fight the Dark Presence once and for all. He makes his way through the devastated mountainous areas surrounding Bright Falls while the Darkness attacks him by sending the Taken while hurling large objects from the lake through the air. Alan fights through the dark forces and reaches the top of Cauldron Lake, only to face a giant black tornado that has sucked in boats, planes, and other vehicles. Alan fires several flares at the tornado and destroys it completely. Following Zane's manuscript, he jumps into the lake, only to wake up in a fake dream created by the dark presence. In the dream, he is confronted by an illusion of Alice in their apartment, imploring him to stay with her as he wanders through the house looking for the clicker. He shines his flashlight on a glowing word spelling "Clicker," grabs it, and escapes. He then wakes up to find Zane in a diving suit in the water around him. Zane introduces him to Mr. Scratch, a mirror image of Wake to take Wake's place while he's in the cabin. Alan fights through the darkness surrounding him,shining light on various words to bring them to reality. As he moves forward, The Dark Presence sends messages to him in both Jagger and Alice's voice. As he nears the cabin, he hears an echo of the past, Thomas Zane, having brought his love Jagger back through the power of the cabin, sees her heart filled with darkness, and physically cuts out her heart with a knife. Alan enters the cabin to find Jagger with a hole where her hearts was. He sticks the clicker in the hole and turns it on, destroying her. He then goes up stairs to finish the manuscript, and a cut-scene is shown where Alice resurrects from the lake 10 days later, shivering on the broken pier, calling Alan's name. Deerfest begins, several characters are shown cheering (Tor and Odin), and we are shown Rose, now appearing much as Weaver was, with a lantern, hunched over in front of the Oh Deer Diner, with Agent Nightingale standing in the window, appearing much like Jagger was in the previous episodes.

In the end, we see Alan once more in the Cabin, we Alan typing at the typewriter, his eyes seeming dead and unseeing, much like his first visit in the cabin after Alice's fall. We hear him say the last few words of the last page of the manuscript: "It's not a Lake; It's an Ocean." As the screen blacks out, we hear the voice of Alice saying "Alan... wake up". The episode ends with a period mark followed by "..."

Walkthrough

This walkthrough will:

• Tell you how to progress through the game.
• Inform you of the storyline achievements you should earn (The achievements you will obtain through the storyline).

This walkthrough won't:

• Tell you how to find all the chests.
• Tell you how to find all the coffee thermoses.
• Tell you how to obtain every single achievement in the game.

Trivia

• Alan's last sentence in the last cutscene is rather reminiscent of Zane's poem/rhyme from the nightmare the game opens with.

Alan:

"It's not a lake. It's an Ocean."

Zane:

"For he did not know,

That Beyond the lake he called home

Lies a deeper, darker ocean green,

Where waves are both wilder, and more serene.

To it's ports I've been

To it's ports I've been."

This may allude to the Lake being the Dark Presence's home, as the poem may suggest, or Alan's writing of this sentence may be some unknown way of him allowing for his own escape. The latter possibility is further supported by the "..." that appears as the last thing we see before the episode ends, implying both that there will be more of the game, and also that Alan himself may have typed that, finishing the book in a way that would fix what had been destroyed, and bring Alice back to life without making her the Dark Presence's new host, while at the same time leaving himself an out for writing a sequel to Departure that would allow for his own escape from the cabin by an unknown method. However, this is all speculation, though the similarities between the two statements still should be noted.

• Mr Scratch is an old folk name for The Devil in the legends of New England and pre-civil war. Could this mean something?

Unanswered questions

• Who is Mr. Scratch?
• What happened to Alan?