Sami Antero Järvi, known to most by the pen name Sam Lake, has been at Remedy Entertainment for his entire career. He has been writing Remedy games ever since 1996’s Death Rally, though it was when his face was used for the protagonist of Max Payne that he really became famous.
That tradition has been renewed with the studio’s most recent release, Alan Wake 2, which dropped last Friday to widespread acclaim. In the survival horror game, Sam Lake performed full motion capture (including face scanning) for Alex Casey, the FBI partner of playable protagonist Saga Anderson.
Speaking to GQ about his future as part of Alan Wake 2 launch coverage, Sam Lake said he could retire at some point, but not before telling some other stories he’s conceived. He referenced one in particular: a big-budget dark gothic fantasy game.
So, back to your question. Would I ever do anything else? Yeah. I’m still thinking that I will. There will be a time when I retire. It’s just that… this has all been so engaging. There are other stories I’d like to tell.
One was this crazy, huge budget, dark gothic fantasy, which I haven’t used for anything yet…
This brief tease was more than enough to get fans wondering what it would be like to play such a game made by Remedy. Would it be an open world game? In a recent interview with Wccftech, Sam Lake said:
In some ways, I feel that Control was a step in that direction in a successful way. I mean, it was this kind of a semi open world hub design, which we are doing now in Alan Wake 2. The future will show how far we would want to go in that direction with future games.
As enticing as the premise sounds, there’s no telling if Sam Lake’s wish will come true. After all, Remedy is already busy with four other projects: Control 2, a multiplayer Control spin-off, the Max Payne remakes for Rockstar, and their first live service game codenamed Vanguard.
Sam Lake will be 54 next March, and even with Remedy’s industry-leading development pace, it may not be until the next decade before the studio is in the position to execute the writer’s concept. Let’s hope he doesn’t retire before that happens.
