Alan Wake 2 fan notices a sound cue gives the game away about its villain early on, Remedy sound dev gasps 'Finally someone noticed'

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Scratch that.

Alan Wake with a glowing bullet hole in his forehead in Alan Wake 2.
(Image credit: Remedy Entertainment)

Surely the best kind of easter egg is one that gives the whole game away ahead of time, but which you'd never notice on your first time through. Baldur's Gate 3 does it with its music, BioShock did it with its revive system, and, hey, I guess Alan Wake 2 did it as well. Spoilers ahead for, you guessed it, Alan Wake 2.

Still here? Great. An enterprising Alan Wake 2 fan has realised that the game lets the cat out of the bag very early on with regards to Alan's evil doppelganger Scratch. If you need a reminder, Scratch's whole deal is that he's a product of the evil Dark Presence who impersonates our Alan. Or, more accurately, he possesses him: It turns out over the course of AW2 that Scratch pretty much lives inside his head.

Ordinarily, finding that out is a big twist, but a player named WillieTPJ on Twitter noticed that if you hover over the prompts surrounding Alan's photo in the Mind Place early on, the game will start to play eerie Dark Presence sounds, suggesting that ol' Scratch's source is right there in Alan's head.

Which seems pretty convincing to me, but I suppose sceptics might say WillieTPJ is reading too far into a simple sound cue. Well, hush your cynicism. Remedy sound designer Josh Adam Bell chimed in to tell fans that the sound cue was "100% on purpose." In fact, it sounds like he's a little surprised it took people this long to clue in. "Finally someone noticed," he wrote, followed by a sweat-drop-crying emoji I'm unsure how to quote.

So there you have it, Remedy was trying to tell us all along, but it took us this long to realise. It's just one more reason Alan Wake 2 was one of the best games to come out last year, netting our coveted Best Story 2023 spot and a score of 88% from Robin Valentine in our Alan Wake 2 review, who said Remedy felt "more confident and more independent than ever." Sneakier too, looks like. 

Joshua Wolens
Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.