According to Lake, the character of Alan Wake was also intended to be the opposite of Max Payne. While Max was a cop and thus suited to an action game, Remedy wanted Alan to be atypical of an action hero, making him a writer, partially influenced by King, that became involved in the events and forced into action. Near the end of the game's development, Alan's story started to become a metaphor for Remedy's work on the game itself, according to Lake: Alan's past work as a novelist was based on a fictional police detective (mirroring Remedy's "Max Payne"), but now struggled with writing something different (representing their troubles in finding the vision for "Alan Wake").