InAlan Wake 2, Alan and Saga’s stories areintertwined with each other, with Alan appearing at regular intervals during each ofSaga’s chapters, giving her hints to follow and clues to investigate. At multiple points during Saga’s story, Alan’s echo appears in front of her, allowing the two to partially communicate through a hazy connection.
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Shift over to Alan’s story, and at some point in every chapter, he will see Saga’s echo in the Dark Place and talk to her, this time Saga being the one whose words don’t make it all the way to Alan. Just like Alan’s words didn’t make it all the way to Saga. With the two stores so interconnected, players might get confused about which order to play the game in to get the most out of it.
Alan Wake 2
Updated by Cristian Macias on August 09, 2025:This guide has been updated to include a video version (featured above.)
Best Order To Play Chapters
Alan’s story has a hard stop after Chapter 8 (Initiation 8 - Zane’s Film), after which you will be forced to play through Saga’s story to catch up on what’s happening in the real worlduntil you reach Return 5 - Old Gods. Completing this chapter will allow Alan’s story to progress further. Before reaching these two milestones in either story (Initiation 8 and Return 5), you can play the story in any order you want and things will always make sense.
I’ve created a simple table with the optimal order to play the story in to give you something to reference back to once you’re deep into the story.
Return 0 - The Cult
Nightingale
Return 1 - Invitation
Return 2 - The Heart
Initiation 1 - Late Night
Initiation 2 - Casey
Initiation 3 - Haunting
Return 3 - Local Girl
Return 4 - No Chance
Initiation 4 - We Sing
Return 5 - Old Gods
Initiation 5 - Room 665
Initiation 6 - Return
Initiation 7 - Masks
Initiation 8 - Zane’s Film
Return 6 - Scratch
Return 7 - Summoning
Initiation 9 - Gone
Return 7 - Summoning (continued)
Return 8 - Deerfest
Return 9 - Come Home
The reality—as far as I can tell—is that thecommunication between Saga and Alan is happening at the same time, just from different perspectives. When Saga is talking to Alan’s echo in the real world, Alan is talking to Saga in the Dark Place at the same time. Meaning thattherealorder of the story is that both Alan’s and Saga’s stories are happening at the same exact time.
Think of it like aGame of Thronesepisode where we see the Starks go through a battle in one scene and Daenerys riding her dragons in the next one. Both scenes ostensibly happen at the same time, only at opposite ends of the world. The Stark story will have some mention of Daenerys in some oblique way occasionally,references you wouldn’t really understandwithout watching the Daenerys sections of the story afterward. But understanding and enjoying the Stark story is not dependent on keeping up with the Daenerys one.
The Alan Wake 2 story is similar to that in this sense.You don’tneedto alternate between Saga and Alan’s chapters to enjoy the story, but doing it frequently will give you the most complete picture.
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