Alan Wake – Episode 6: Departure – With Behind The Scenes Level Look

Episode Six brought us to “Departure,” the end of the main Alan Wake story and the final journey back towards Cauldron Lake. There was a lot riding on this one: Alice was still trapped, Alan had the Clicker, and the story needed an ending that would finally put things right.

That should have made for a very focused evening. Instead, alongside the finale we had questionable driving, repeated death loops, chat trying to diagnose my real car, an impromptu Hunger Games, school-bus accusations and plenty of time spent wondering what was hiding outside the level once the story was finished.

🔦 About the Game

Alan Wake follows best-selling writer Alan Wake after his wife Alice disappears during their holiday in the small town of Bright Falls. His search uncovers pages from a thriller he does not remember writing, except the events on those pages are starting to happen around him.

A Dark Presence has taken hold of Bright Falls, turning people and objects into threats while Alan tries to understand the story he has somehow become part of. Light is his main defence against the darkness, but ultimately the real challenge is finding a way to save Alice without simply writing another disaster into existence.

🛣️ Where We Are in the Journey

“Departure” is the sixth and final episode of the main campaign. We began on the road to Cauldron Lake before eventually reaching the Dark Place and the conclusion Alan had been working towards throughout the entire game.

The main story finishes here, but our Alan Wake playthrough is not over. We still have The Signal and The Writer DLC episodes ahead of us, and I have never stepped outside those levels before, so there is still plenty left to explore after the credits.

⚠️ What Happens in This Episode

The night began by looking backwards before Alan could move forwards. “Departure” opened with a glimpse of his life before Bright Falls: his television appearance discussing the Alex Casey novels, the pressures of the publicity tour, and the argument with Alice that eventually led to their supposedly peaceful holiday. It was a useful reminder of just how far things had spiralled from a writer struggling with his temper and his work to one trying to rewrite a supernatural nightmare without making the same mistakes as Thomas Zane.

Chat, naturally, was considerably less interested in maintaining the dramatic atmosphere. We had a phone clinging to one percent battery, threats involving the Gummy Bear Song, rhubarb, mango power, dysentery and memories of school buses being flipped in entirely different games. Somebody also raised the important question of “how awake is Alan Wake?” before we had even properly left the opening cutscenes.

Once the story returned to the present, Alan’s objective was finally straightforward: reach Cauldron Lake, use the Clicker and finish the story on his own terms. Barry, Sarah and Cynthia were left behind while Alan headed out alone, emerging into surprisingly bright daylight for what was supposed to be the final stretch of a horror story.

Naturally, rather than immediately travelling toward the lake, we first tested how far Alan could run in the wrong direction.

Video-game logic demanded it.

The answer was: quite a way, but not forever. Eventually an invisible boundary and a conveniently placed logging truck made it clear that the developers had anticipated at least some level of disobedience. With that important scientific experiment complete, we finally turned around and started the long journey toward Cauldron Lake.

That journey covered a remarkable amount of ground. Bright daylight gradually gave way to darker territory as Alan moved through winding roads, abandoned buildings, bridges and stretches of countryside filled with Taken. Vehicles became increasingly important, although “important” may be generous considering how they were treated. Cars were less valuable transport and more temporary objects that could be driven into enemies until either the enemies or the car stopped working.

Several Taken discovered that standing in the road was a poor career choice.

We also developed a very practical approach to every new vehicle we found: first check whether it could still move, then work out how many things we could run over before abandoning it for the next one. At one point we tried forcing a car through a gap that clearly had no intention of accepting it, became thoroughly wedged, and continued trying anyway despite the growing possibility that the vehicle would explode before it reached the other side.

The motel section briefly slowed things down as Alan investigated the room previously occupied by Agent Nightingale. There was still a sense that something unpleasant was waiting just beyond the next door, so before committing to anything we made sure there was an escape vehicle nearby. This became a recurring piece of survival planning throughout the episode: always know where the car is, because “run away” remains an entirely respectable strategy.

At roughly the same time, chat became a remote mechanic’s workshop because my actual car had been making an unpleasant noise. Gary started working through tyres, bearings, brakes and wheel alignment while Craig raised the reassuring possibility of travelling “warp 2” down the motorway only to watch your own wheel overtake you. Mr Smith suggested we were effectively assembling a repair crew, and “Dr Raven car stream confirmed” briefly sounded like a genuine future programming decision.

The timing was particularly appropriate because the cars inside Alan Wake were not doing much better.

The game’s lighting also attracted attention, with Craig identifying one particularly bright sequence as a graduate of the “JJ Abrams school of light bloom.” That became increasingly appropriate as Alan spent the night alternately searching for light and being almost blinded by it.

Eventually we reached the scrapyard, where memories suggested something unpleasant was about to happen long before the game actually confirmed it. Trucks and machinery were viewed with immediate suspicion, so we parked the car carefully before moving further inside.

That paranoia turned out to be justified.

Possessed machinery joined the attack and the vehicle position actually helped, giving us a useful angle from which to burn away the darkness without immediately being flattened. The camera did its best to make the process awkward, but the plan worked and we escaped the scrapyard with the increasingly well-established philosophy that cars could serve as transport, weapons, shields and disposable tactical equipment depending on the situation.

The climb toward Mirror Peak became much nastier. Alan faced repeated groups of Taken while ammunition and health became more precious, and one enormous light that looked as though it should solve the entire problem proved remarkably useless because the enemies kept approaching from the wrong side of it.

The panic button made an appearance. Ammunition disappeared rapidly. Enemies refused to die when expected. At one point Alan was left with almost no health while another wave arrived, which was not exactly encouraging for the hero of the story.

Then we discovered the true Dark Presence of Episode Six.

The checkpoint system.

A chaotic encounter ended with the flare refusing to cooperate at exactly the wrong moment, dropping us back much farther than anyone wanted to travel again. That created the evening’s recurring “death loop,” with Alan repeatedly fighting through the same dangerous section while Mirror Peak remained visible in the distance as a reminder of how much ground still had to be covered.

Another attempt ended badly. Then another stretch had to be repeated.

“Happy Jump” became the little ceremony whenever Alan launched himself across another gap, while “back demons” covered most threats appearing from behind. Birds joined the problem, Taken continued arriving, and the complete absence of a sensible checkpoint became increasingly difficult to ignore.

Somewhere during all this suffering, chat began discussing The Witcher, remembered the first game as something of a “running simulator,” and somehow reached the suggestion of a twelve-hour “chair simulator” stream. “Mandatory Mass Effect Friday” also became increasingly mandatory as everyone prepared for the following night’s start of Mass Effect 3.

Chat then found an entirely separate way to generate casualties through an impromptu Hunger Games. Happy Cat Lady confidently predicted that she would somehow end up with a cannonball in the face and promptly became one of the first casualties. Mr Smith later reconstructed the event so that he had effectively become the cannonball himself, taken Happy Cat out on impact and accidentally left me as the winner.

It made about as much sense as some of the events happening in Alan Wake by that point.

The school-bus stories also resurfaced when Samwise was offered a hypothetical lift and wisely declined after hearing about Mr Smith’s driving record. Craig strongly supported that decision. Considering how we had been treating vehicles inside the game, nobody involved was in a particularly strong position to criticise anyone else’s driving.

Eventually, however, we broke free of the death loops and pushed through to the edge of Cauldron Lake. The final approach became a full assault of darkness, Taken and swirling debris as the game built toward the confrontation Alan had been preparing for since the beginning.

The Dark Presence became what can only reasonably be described as a great mass of tornadoishness.

We burned away at it, threw more firepower into the storm than was probably necessary and finally brought the Clicker into play.

The game then pulled one last trick.

Alan appeared to wake beside Alice, apparently back home with everything restored. Except something was wrong almost immediately. The power was out, Alice was behaving strangely, and Alan demanded that the lights be switched on. He realised this was not Alice at all but another attempt by the Dark Presence to trap him inside the story.

Light won again.

The finale then slowed down enough for the consequences to land. Alan understood what the ending of “Departure” required: light and darkness, cause and effect, guilt and atonement. The scales had to balance, and saving Alice required a price rather than a convenient happy ending.

Days later, Alice emerged from Cauldron Lake.

Morning returned to Bright Falls.

And with that, we had completed the main story of Alan Wake.

Chat managed to remain appropriately respectful for several seconds before returning to “click click clicker,” an “Alice… who is Alice?” joke and more discussion of questionable bus journeys. Samwise also mentioned that the stream had helped keep her entertained while waiting for Frodo to get home, leading into one of those genuinely lovely community moments where everyone acknowledged that the streams have become a place for laughs, support and a collection of self-described “mad folk” looking after one another.

Finishing the campaign did not mean finishing the episode, because we immediately reloaded “Departure” for our now-traditional behind-the-scenes exploration.

The first stop was Alan’s New York sequence, where stepping outside the intended camera angles quickly revealed how much of the world only exists where the player needs to see it. Apartment walls ended in empty space, scenery stretched strangely from the wrong direction, interiors disappeared and distant parts of New York became carefully positioned backdrop rather than a complete city.

We then returned to the long road toward Cauldron Lake and explored it from outside the normal boundaries. From above, the sheer length of the episode became much clearer. Instead of the tightly controlled route experienced during normal play, we could see how roads, woodland, buildings and encounter spaces had been arranged across the landscape.

The motel was still there, including Nightingale’s room and areas we had never needed to enter. We moved along the roads, inspected the bridges and looked beneath sections that had collapsed or transformed during normal gameplay. Without the darkness, enemies and scripted events firing around us, the whole journey became a fascinating collection of individual sets connected together to create the illusion of one continuous trek toward the lake.

Back at the scrapyard, we could see where the possessed machinery had attacked and how our conveniently parked car had helped make that encounter easier than remembered. Further along was the little settlement containing the large light that had failed us so spectacularly, followed by the area responsible for several of the evening’s death loops.

Even tiny details became interesting once we could stop and inspect them properly. We zoomed in on emergency flare packaging, wandered through buildings that were little more than empty shells, inspected roads that clearly would not pass anyone’s safety inspection and generally looked at everything the game never expects the player to stop and examine.

The most satisfying discovery came near the finale itself. Across previous explorations we had seen a mysterious platform or “plate” and wondered what purpose it served. This time we finally had the answer.

It was part of the actual endgame setup.

From outside the level we could see the rings used during the final sequence, the relationship between the Cauldron Lake scenery and the distant New York backdrop, and how the game had assembled different pieces around the player to create the ending. From the right angle, it even looked as though someone sufficiently determined to glitch out during normal gameplay might catch sight of scenery they were never supposed to see.

We finished with one last look around the strange, darkened landscape, including the distant lake, ghostly town scenery, the Woo Burger area, a phone booth and, naturally, a random chair.

Then it was finally time to return to the menu.

The main campaign was complete, but Alan Wake itself still has more waiting for us. Next come the two DLC episodes, The Signal and The Writer, and I am particularly interested in those because I have never stepped outside their levels before. After seeing how much was hiding beyond the boundaries of the main game, there is every chance the darkness still has a few more secrets left for us.

🎬 Watch the Episode

If you want to see the full journey to Cauldron Lake, the repeated checkpoint suffering and the behind-the-scenes exploration, you can watch the complete episode here.

You can follow the whole playthrough through the Alan Wake series playlist, and you can find more videos on my YouTube channel. If you enjoy the episode, leave a like, let me know what you thought in the comments and subscribe so you do not miss the DLC.

🔴 Join the Adventure Live

The finished video contains the story, but the livestream is where we discover whether the car will survive, how many times a checkpoint can send us backwards and what chat will decide to discuss while I am trying not to die.

You can join us live on Twitch or YouTube and become part of whatever happens next. Sometimes we even make it to the objective without starting a remote vehicle diagnosis.

🌌 Community & Links

The darkness may be waiting at Cauldron Lake, but there are plenty of places to find the rest of us between streams.

Live — Come along for the next stream and join the chaos as it happens:
Twitch | YouTube

Community — The conversation carries on long after the stream ends:
Discord

Socials — Keep up with everything across the rest of the network:
TikTok | Bluesky | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | X

Music — If you would rather swap the flashlight for some headphones:
Spotify | Apple Music

Support — If you would like to help support the streams and everything around them:
Fourthwall | Teespring | Streamlabs

More — There is plenty happening away from gaming as well:
Business Centre | Download the Brochure | About Me | Blog

🌅 The Main Story Is Finished, but the Darkness Is Not

So that is the main Alan Wake story completed. We survived the road to Cauldron Lake, the death loops, the Taken, the vehicles and the checkpoints, then went back through it all from angles we were never really supposed to see.

Next we move into The Signal and The Writer. I already know the story continues, but I have no idea what those levels will look like when we step outside them. After everything we found in the main game, I am very interested to find out.

— Dr Ravenholm