Stephen King Gifted The Opening Alan Wake Quote to Remedy For $1

The video game Alan Wake has gathered a lot of praise for its narrative and gameplay in the more than thirteen years since its debut.

In an interview with Eurogamer, the Creative Director of Remedy, Sam Lake, revealed how much he wanted the game to open with a quotation from Stephen King since it perfectly fitted with the supernatural horror elements that the game featured. Sam Lake confessed that he "desperately wanted a quote" to start off. 

It turned out that Stephen King's quote in the first Alan Wake was a gift from the author, and it only cost Remedy $1. The game opens with an eerie scene where we see Alan Wake, the main protagonist, driving through the lonely countryside, and we hear him say the following lines:

"Stephen King once wrote that Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear." Then the protagonist goes on and says: "In a horror story, the victim keeps asking 'why?' But there can be no explanation, and there shouldn't be one. The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest, and it's what we'll remember in the end. My name is Alan Wake, I'm a writer."

The quote was taken from a piece the author wrote for Entertainment Weekly in 2008. The article, Why Hollywood Can't Do Horror, explores the inability of high-budget studio productions to effectively evoke terror while appealing to mass market audiences. The King's inspirations could possibly be more pronounced in Alan Wake 2, which is scheduled for release on October 17. This game is reportedly intended to be more of a survival horror game than the original one.

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