The Biltmore Sawmill is an area found in the "special" episode, The Signal. It is not the real Sawmill, but a randition of it created by the Dark Place.
The Sawmill served as the final destination for Wake to go to in order to reach a better point of contact with Thomas Zane, all while the insane version of himself twists and warps the world around the writer to prevent him from doing so, Eventually Wake manages to reach Thomas Zane, but their meeting didn't last long until Alan started sinking deeper into the dark place, forced to fight Insane Alan who appears as a conglomerate of Poltergeist TVs accompanied by numerous Taken.
Although the writer managed to dispose of the TVs, he still couldn't help but continue to sink deeper, with a much longer road ahead of him before he could regain his sanity in the Dark Place.
Behind the Scenes[]
An official screenshot of the early Sawmill layout, back when the game was planned to have an open world
- The Saemill was one of the oldest areas designed for the game, as Remedy was experimenting with the setting of a sawmill since 2007, back when the game was intended to have an open world.
- In early builds of the game, Alan Wake was also intended to fight a Taken version of FBI Agent Robert Nightingale at the sawmill, which became a major boss fight. The idea of Taken Nightingale was scrapped along with the area. However in "The Signal", the final boss fight between Wake and Insane Alan took place in a sawmill, meaning that this idea was used later on.
- The Sawmill was also used for a scrapped mission that featured Nightingale as a playable character.
- Ideas and assets used in the Sawmill were likely used on the Biltmore Logging Camps.
- The Sawmill was originally called The Thomas Sawmill in early game assets, it's only in The Signal that it rechived an official name.
Trivia[]
- The Sawmill is a particular case among the dark place versions of the game's locations used for the DLCs, given that it is based on a location which was cut entirely from the game during development, a location that Alan never got to visit in the final game. A dialogue between Alan and the imagenary version of Barry touches on and makes fun of this fact.