cipherbob

This commercial, presumably.

The name Freeman itself is not a distinctive one (no more than Kane for example), but I get your point: his name does carry significance, and I suppose it is one of many good reasons why the name is memorable. But that significance is somewhat subtle, unlike Max Payne. (And I'd like to point out, before I'm accused of being some kind of heretical Remedy-hater, I loved Max Payne)

It's not just the name. "Gordon Freeman" is not a particularly distinctive name, but it's probably saying a lot about the development of and attachment to your character in Half Life versus Quake 4 that it sticks in everybody's memory. If Gordon had instead been called Frederick P. Scientist it would have been even more memorable, but for the wrong reasons.

Perhaps. My problem is that it seems like such an obvious pun. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that it doesn't seem a suitable match for a game which, as far as I can tell, is not intended to be humorous.

I must admit I'm solely basing that comment on what Markus says in the video from around the 1:10 mark, which immediately made me think of the film. The main similarity is clearly that both Alan Wake and Al Pacino's character suffer from insomnia, but the small town in a remote location also stood out as something the game and film have in common. I suppose 'premise' was a poor choice of word. In my mind I also linked the "nightmares coming to life" with the 'nightmares' that Pacino's character suffers during his guilt-ridden insomnia, but that's a bit of a stretch to link the two. I hadn't heard much about the game before this video so it's entirely possible I've misunderstood something.

Not that I wish to sound overly negative, but I have two concerns: The name. Granted, 'Max Payne' was pretty cheesy also, but the game looks to take itself pretty seriously, so why are they going for the whole "A. Wake, awake, LOLz" joke? I can only guess that this is a 'lost in translation' thing for Remedy. The premise of the game seems to share a strong similarity with the Al Pacino/Robin Williams film 'Insomnia'. I presume I'm not the first to notice this, but have the devs made any mention of this?