During a gameplay walkthrough with Game Trailers, Remedy Entertainment’s head of franchise development, Oskari Hakkinen, asserted that Alan Wake’s American Nightmare will last players roughly 4-5 hours, depending on how much time they spend exploring the optional story components (i.e. collectibles and videos):

Considering Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is a downloadable game (not a full-fledged Alan Wake 2 or more Alan Wake DLC), 4-5 hours is about what players should have been expecting - given that the original title was about ten hours and each of the DLC episodes added roughly an hour or so of playtime.

That said, we’ve yet to hear an official price for Alan Wake’s American Nightmare - so, even with the new “Fight till Dawn” arcade mode, it’s unclear what kind of value the downloadable title will actually offer. Microsoft will no doubt want to price the game competitively (probably 1600 MS points - i.e. $20) - since both Remedy and Microsoft had invested a lot of money into the Alan Wake brand and, no doubt, hope that the American Nightmare will not only get new gamers to check out Alan Wake, it’ll also ignite interest in a full-fledged Alan Wake sequel.

Could that Alan Wake sequel already be en route? According to a new Remedy job listing, the developer is hiring for a Gameplay/AI Programmer to help design a “groundbreaking AAA console project” and  work “on the next iteration of Remedy’s in-house engine that was previously used in Alan Wake and Alan Wake’s American Nightmare.”

At this point, Remedy is pretty dedicated to the Alan Wake brand - with American Nightmare and Alan Wake on PC as the only remaining announced projects at the studio. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly likely that, as mentioned, Remedy intends for American Nightmare to stoke interest in Alan Wake - before they announce a “groundbreaking AAA” sequel in the coming months.

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare will release as a part of the XBLA House Party promotion next month.

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Follow me on Twitter @benkendrick for further updates.

Source: Remedy Entertainment (via VG247); Game Trailers (via CVG)