This chapter analyses the 2010 videogame Alan Wake, a narrative based videogame that makes frequent use of intertextuality. As well as using contemporary examples, the game also uses traditional international folklore in its narrative, with the antagonist Barbara Jagger being recognisable as the Russian folk tale character Baba Yaga, for example. Using the concepts proposed and elucidated by Vladimir Propp, Joseph Campbell, the chapter will first establish that the videogame offers a remediation of several traditional mythical narratives in one contemporary videogame, before going on to use the classifications found in The Morphology of the Folktale and The Hero with a Thousand Faces to place this videogame within the folklore and mythical tradition. It will also serve to establish whether these classifications are suitable for the narratives found in videogames, and if they depart from them, where the scholar needs to establish new concepts and definitions for these traditional classifications.
Joseph Campbell, Le héros aux mille et un visages