"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." This advice from Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes, would prove useful to anyone in the business of storytelling -- anyone but Alan Wake. A sip of reality would do the ill-tempered writer some good, now that he finds himself in a drunk stumble towards the end of a story that began in May.

In "The Writer," the final downloadable episode for Alan Wake, developer Remedy faces a problem that creeps in at the climax of any thriller. With the air cleared of mystery, there's much less impetus to march through the forests of Bright Falls in search of obscured answers. Remedy reaches for the carpet now, taking hold of its reality-with-a-twist setting before twisting it some more, until the world hangs upside-down.