It's no secret Twin Peaks has served as a key inspiration for the Alan Wake series, but it's not the only piece of pop culture guiding Remedy Entertainment's upcoming sequel. Some are obvious, but less apparent are some of its bigger influences--the work of Marvel--that have factored into the upcoming survival-horror game.

Alan Wake 2's co-director Kyle Rowley told me in an interview that while the game's writer/director Sam Lake and many other members of the team use inspirations like Twin Peaks as motivation, Rowley's interests, on the other hand, aren't quite cut from the same cloth. Which, in turn, serves as a counter-balance to the game's more obtuse Twin Peaks-isms.

"You know I like David Lynch--he's cool. But personally, I'm not a massive Twin Peaks fan," Rowley said. Instead, he considers himself more of a Marvel guy, a benefit that allows him to view the game from a broader lens. "I'm trying to think about how we can bring slightly more--I don't want to say mainstream--but things that aren't such obscure references into the kind of games that we make. I kind of try and balance that a bit with like, 'Hey, I don't get this, this, and this. And if I don't get it, there's other people who aren't going to get it.'" There are still plenty of inspirations Alan Wake 2 is pulling from that tiptoe into the less surreal and obscure, like Coen brothers' Fargo and True Detective, for example.