Shawn Ashmore, also known as the Actor, is the playable character of the third episode of the Night Springs expansion for Alan Wake 2. He is portrayed by Shawn of the same name, Shawn Ashmore.
Night Springs[]
Time Breaker[]
A Night Springs script written by Alan Wake was titled Time Breaker. In this story, Shawn (who goes by the name of the Actor) is seen holding a PRS prop for a scene, directed by Sam (who goes by the name the Director). The Director called for Shawn to have a talk with him about their upcoming scenes for their video game and the Director's ideas of the multiverse, before the Director asks Shawn to take a break in the green room. Upon reaching the green room, he hears Door confronting a man named Branch who appears to be his doppelganger. Shawn also found scripts written by Sam Lake about their upcoming scenes coming to life. Thinking that the Director has played a prank on him, a red-haired woman, the Agent, came into the green room to warn him about Door. However, they were interrupted when Shawn was seemingly transported to Cauldron Lake, taking the form of one of his variants from the multiverse, to which Shawn has longer hair and a thick beard.
He explored the woods of Cauldron Lake and found a trailer that belongs to one of his variants, Branch. Inside the trailer, he finds a TV which allows him to travel through the multiverse and turn himself into one of his variants. However, Branch had hidden away the real PRS near a waterfall. After he had recovered the hidden PRS and charged it with an energy node he found, Shawn used the device on the TV, allowing him to travel to another universe again to which he is a sheriff of Bright Falls in Oceanview Hotel. He navigated the halls of the hotel with the guidance of the clock, while also combatting Time Breakers – antagonistic, darker variants of himself. He found an energy node and charged the PRS with it before transferring the energy to a TV he found before travelling to another again, this time focusing on finding the Agent.
The next universe takes place in a comic-themed universe, where he is a REC agent along side the red haired woman. They both conversed about finding The Master of Many Worlds, exploring about other variants, such as Alan Wake's variants like Scratch and Thomas Zane, as well as how the energies sent ripples through different realities can sometimes harm variants, such as those of Jesse Faden, where one of her variants gets killed in an explosion, while another attains telekinetic powers, and another having the ability to create a bond with an extraterrestrial being. The Agent reveals that Door had the ability to access all realities and he was was not typically after Branch, but after Shawn, with darker variants of himself after him under Door's control, and convinces Shawn to find and stop Door. Shawn sets on a mission to stop Door in which he travels to another dimension again. But this time, he ends up in a retro themed side-scrolling arcade game universe, where he has to survive multiple waves of darker variants of himself.
After Shawn survived waves of fighting his darker variants, he meets with Warlin Door face to face. Door convinced Shawn that he may be the chosen one as he has overpowered most of his variants, before inviting him to join Door and work with him, to which Shawn coldly rejected. Door laughs it off and promises Shawn that he will regret it, also adding that he was lying about Shawn being the chosen one. Suddenly, Shawn is transported to another universe once again, a field filled with piles of powerless energy nodes. Desperate to hunt down the Master of Many Worlds, Shawn fought his way through darker variants of himself to charge his PRS with one active energy node before transmitting that energy to a TV he found, sending him to another universe.
However, in this final universe, this universe is styled in a javascript, to which allows the player to make their selected choice on finding the Master of Many Worlds. There are various options given to how the player wants to navigate Shawn in finding Door. Despite all of the various options available, it all leads to only one ending; Shawn, instead of finding Door, found himself in the Writer's Room. It turns out that the Master of Many Worlds was not Door himself, but Alan Wake, which Shawn found him sitting at the table on his typewriter.
Trivia[]
- This is the second time in the Remedy Connected Universe that a real life actor exists as a character in the games who shares the same name and even profession. The first being Sam Lake who also portrays himself.
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