Remedy's sound dev is shocked that someone has noticed the early sound cues that give away the villain of Alan Wake 2.

The best easter eggs are those that give away the entire game ahead of time but you wouldn't notice them on your first playthrough. Baldur's gate 3 did it with music, BioShock with revive system and, hey! I guess Alan Wake 2, too. Spoilers for Alan Wake 2 are ahead.

Still here? Great. Alan Wake 2's enterprising fan has discovered that the game reveals Scratch, Alan's evil doppelganger, very early in the game. Scratch is a product of Dark Presence, who impersonates Alan. Or, to be more precise, he possess him. It turns out that Scratch lives in Alan's head.

Finding out that Scratch is the source of the game is usually a major surprise. However, a player named WillieTPJ noticed on Twitter that if you hover your mouse over the prompts around Alan's picture in the Mind Place, the game will begin to play eerie Dark Presence Sounds, suggesting that Scratch is in Alan's mind.

This seems convincing to me. But I suppose sceptics would say that WillieTPJ is reading way too much into a simple sound. Well, hush your cynicism. Josh Adam Bell, Remedy's sound designer, told fans that the sound cue had been "100% intentional." It sounds like he was surprised that it took so long for people to realize what was going on. "Finally, someone noticed," he wrote. He then added a sweat-dropping-crying-emoji that I don't know how to quote.

Remedy has been trying to tell us for a long time, but we only realized it now. This is just another reason Alan Wake 2 was a great game last year. It earned us our coveted Best Story of 2023 spot, and Robin Valentine gave it an 88% in our Alan Wake 2 Review, saying that Remedy felt more confident and independent than ever. Sneakier too, looks like.