I had the day off today, and decided to use part of it to start one of the many, many Game of the Year contenders for 2023: Alan Wake II. And I didn’t even get into the game, proper, before it taught me a new word.

hyperacusis, noun – elevated sensitivity to sound, particularly environmental or background noise

Learned from: Alan Wake II (PC, Playstation 5, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by Remedy Entertainment

Published by Epic Games Publishing (2023)

I’d heard some cautionary tales about this games PC performance before picking it up, and it turns out there is some validity to those claims. It doesn’t run terribly, by any means, but I had to do more tweaking to get it at a decent, stable framerate than I did for other demanding games like, say, Returnal. But it was in poking around the options, that I stumbled across a toggle for a hyperacusis filter.

In the game, it seems primarily focused on reducing the amount of high-frequency background noises, like birdsong, that occur while you’re playing. So, in this instance, it seems like it’s less about reducing the amount of environmental noise as a whole, and more focused on high-pitched sounds. Either way, it’s nice to see this kind of accessibility option included, because I fully understand what it’s like to be bothered by certain types of sounds (in my case, it’s chewing noises).

I suppose I should talk a bit about the game, itself, even though I’m not terribly far yet. First things first, it would probably be a good idea to play the original Alan Wake before diving into this one. It might not hurt your experience too much, but the opening sequence involves a returning side character from the previous game, and you’d be missing a layer of the narrative by not having that past experience. Similarly, having a reference point to the town of Bright Falls, WA as it was, versus how it currently is in Alan Wake II will give you some insight that a new player might not have.

To explain, in the first game, Bright Falls was a less menacing version of Twin Peaks–there was something sinister going on in the background, sure, but the townsfolk, themselves, all seemed like genuinely okay people. If a bit odd. But in Alan Wake II? Something just feels…wrong in the town. It goes beyond some characters not fully recovering from what happened to them in the previous game, though that’s a factor too. But even in this early stage, walking through the town (as a new character, I might add: an FBI agent named Saga Anderson), I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a rot spreading just below the surface, and these people might not be the weird-but-trustworthy folks they once were. It’s a good start, and I look forward to seeing where it goes. High-pitched noises and all.