For a hot second, I thought that AWE might stand for Alan Wake Expansion, because that would’ve been a bit of a laugh. But no, it actually stands for Altered World Event, which is a thing that happens when paranormal forces make their way into the game’s world. I’m still choosing to believe it stands for the Alan Wake thing, though.
In AWE, you’ll need to head into one of the abandoned sectors of the Oldest House: the Investigations Sector. There’s some sort of “mysterious being” there that’s been stalking the place for years, and you’ll need to investigate some of the Altered World Events they had been tracking to figure out what’s going on. It just so happens to be that one of these AWEs is from a little town called Bright Falls, where your boy Alan Wake was last seen 10 years ago. On top of all the exciting story stuff, there are a few more bits and pieces coming along with AWE. There’s a new enemy type and some spooky arcade machines that let you access some different game modes - they’ll even let you replay the Ashtray Maze. While the new expansion is a paid DLC, Control will be getting a free update alongside it bringing in more checkpoints to the more difficult missions, as well as an Assist Mode and other quality of life things. If you just can’t wait until the end of August to hear more, Remedy will be streaming the first 15 minutes of the expansion on their Twitch channel on August 13th at 5pm BST (9am PDT) to give you a taste of what to expect. Control’s AWE comes out on August 27th on the Epic Games Store. Oh, and that’s the same date the game’s Epic exclusivity ends, so it’ll probably be on Steam, too. Hit up Remedy’s blog post for more info.
