Back in 2010, we witnessed the arrival of Alan Wake, a game that made its place in most of our hearts, and now the remastered version of this unique and beloved adventure will finally be here.
However, it remains to be seen as to whether the developers can make the remastered version of this legacy capable of delivering an experience that not only lives up to the original legacy but also presents it to an entirely new audience by elevating the graphics to modern standards.
Folks at Remedy Entertainment have partnered with the talented folks at d3t, which is a team that contained a ton of experience and technical knowledge in terms of remastering modern classics. The core team that created the original Alan Wake at Remedy worked very closely on this remaster with d3t.
The original release version of Alan Wake was developed exclusively for Xbox 360 and was only later ported to PC, meaning that it only supported one rendering API which is DirectX 9. but, DirectX 9 is old news, hence the renderer and supporting engine systems have been upgraded to support modern standards.
There are also some new functionalities to the game such as new controllers, updated audio standards, achievements, saved games, and much more. However, since this is a remastered version, the developers have stuck with the original engine, which has implemented the new modern features very tricky since the engine is over a decade old.
The newly remastered version runs in 4K at 60fps on Xbox Series X, and in 1080p at 60fps on Series S. All the cutscenes are re-worked which is pretty slick and now they come with improved facial animations and lip-syncing, richer environments, and enhanced character models that have updated skin and hair shaders. We will also see materials and texture improvements as well as anti-aliasing, shadows, wind simulation, and increased draw distances.
Since the game is a complete story-focused type, Alan Wake Remastered’s cast of more than 30 characters is a huge part of the overall experience and the developers revealed that this was the part where they focused most of their time. The team of character artists went back to the original reference materials to help them make the characters look more like the actors they were based on.
The developer’s team has brought significant upgrades to facial animations, core gameplay movement, and more. And in recent news, Remedy Entertainment announced the system requirements for the upcoming Alan Wake Remastered game:
Minimum:
- CPU: Intel i5-3340 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 or AMD RX470, 4GB VRAM
- RAM: 8GB or higher
- OS: Win 10 64-bi
Recommended:
- CPU: Inte i7-3770 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD 5600XT, 6GB VRAM
- RAM: 16GB
- OS: Win 10 64-bit
Graphical Settings:
- Ambient occlusion – Yes – (HBAO+ Nvidia Ambient occlusion tech)
- Resolution – Enumerated resolutions
- V-Sync – On/Off
- Console v-sync set to on and with no option to turn off
- HUD – Enabled/Disabled
- Brightness
- Motion Blur – Enabled/Disabled
- Film Grain – Enabled/Disabled
- FOV – Slider
Advanced Options:
- Graphics Quality – Low/Medium/High/Custom
- Render Scale – Slider – default to 100%
- Anisotropic Filtering – Off, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x
- Shadow Quality – Low, Medium, High
- Volumetric Light Quality – Low, Medium, High
- Terrain Quality – Low, High
- Draw Distance – Slider
“The plan has always been more about introducing Alan Wake to new audiences rather than remaking the game. We are still quite happy with the game a decade later. From the outset, we decided that this is a remaster and not a remake. While there were some frustrations with the original game’s gameplay (things like Alan often being out of breath when running), we feel these are part of the original Alan Wake experience and haven’t changed them.”
The game is set to launch on October 5 next week on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
