Alan Wake II + Gaea
More than a decade ago, a writer named Alan Wake went on a vacation that was meant to rid him of his writer's block only to be trapped in a nightmare world. 13 years later, Remedy Entertainment took us back to Cauldron Lake and chose Gaea as their primary tool to bring this place to life.
More than a decade ago, a writer named Alan Wake went on a vacation that was meant to rid him of his writer's block only to be trapped in a nightmare world. 13 years later, Remedy Entertainment took us back to Cauldron Lake and chose Gaea as their primary tool to bring this place to life.
Alan Wake II earned many accolades including Best Narrative, Best Game Direction, and Best Art Direction. The team behind the game at Remedy takes us behind the scenes to show us how they brought the world to life.
Alan Wake introduced the town of Bright Falls and Cauldron Lake. With Alan Wake II, Remedy was building an even more detailed world set in a fictional part of the American Northwest. They chose QuadSpinner Gaea as their principal tool to realize this world.
Nazareno Urbano, Lead Environment Artist, shares "We used Gaea as our primary tool to create landscape for ALAN WAKE II. Our concept artist and environment artist (Juhani Jokinen, Jose Zapata) used Gaea to create heightfield maps, mountain meshes, and textures for the world of Alan Wake."
Mountains for the opening shot of the game, and asset detail shots.
"Gaea's power lies in its artist-friendly interface and its ability to empower users to art direct the shapes, look, and color of the landscape. This was particularly beneficial to us as it allowed us to focus on the artistic vision without the need for a strong technical background (empowering the artist side). The procedural non-destructive workflow also perfectly matched our need for constant iteration of the game landscape and the look of the world."
Mirror Peak, overlooking Cauldron Lake.
Cauldron Lake Breakdown
The Remedy team loves the Gaea community and has generously shared this detailed breakdown so everyone can learn how they crafted this iconic landscape.
The terrain was created entirely in Gaea, then exported along with masks and textures, and setup in Remedy's proprietary Northlight Engine.
Terrains are an ever-present feature as you move around Bright Falls, lending that unmistakable feeling of being in the Pacific Northwest.
Nazareno also enthused, "Can’t wait to use Gaea 2.0 in our future projects."
We can't either! We're big fans of Remedy games ourselves, going all the way back to Max Payne, and we can't wait to see what happens next. In fact, given that the Bureau of Control is ████████████ ████████ it means that ████████ has to ███████████ █████████. Remedy did confirm to us privately that █████████ ████████████████ █████████████ ██████. [Redacted under Authority Code FBC981]
Circling back to Gaea 2.0, in the Cauldron Lake breakdown you may notice how localized shapes were added along the crater rim, and later how several layers of textures were set up. These are exactly the kind of workflows we have made easier in Gaea 2.0 with gizmo based Transform nodes for precise placement, and the powerful Mixer node for layering numerous textures without creating a cluster of nodes.
QuadSpinner thanks Nazareno Urbano and the talented folks at Remedy Entertainment for generously sharing behind-the-scenes information with the Gaea community.
If you haven't seen it, they have also published a wonderful talk from GDC 2024 delving into how they created The Dark Place.
Visual content used with permission from Remedy Entertainment. All rights reserved by their respective owners.