Alan Wake 2 is built around a game-within-a-game structure: Alan, trapped in the Dark Place, is writing a horror story called Return whose events manifest in reality around Saga Anderson. The manuscript pages that appear in Saga’s investigation are not just collectibles — they are a live script being written by a character inside the game, describing events that have not yet happened.
Finding a manuscript page before its described event occurs shows Saga a scene from her own future. Finding one after the event has occurred shows her something slightly different — the page’s text has changed, updated by Alan to reflect what actually happened instead of what he had planned.
This requires reading every page twice: once when found, once after the described scene concludes. The pages that changed most significantly are the ones where Alan’s intention diverged from what Saga actually chose to do. The game is tracking player decisions and reflecting them back through Alan’s authorial revisions.
Remedy built this to make Alan’s authorship feel real rather than metaphorical. He is not just described as writing the story; the evidence of his editing is visible in the collectibles.
The detail work the devs put into areas most players never visit is what separates great games from good ones.
I’ve put 200 hours into this game and never caught this. The developers really reward the obsessive players.