Digital Foundry checked Alan Wake 2 and journalists from Great Britain praise the production prepared for current generation consoles and PC. Remedy Entertainment did not disappoint players who had been waiting for the return of this IP for years.
Just after 3 p.m. we presented the first ratings of Alan Wake 2 . The game receives praise from editors from around the world and it is another candidate for the GOTY 2023 title. Remedy has faced a big challenge, but offers an ambitious story.
Many players were concerned about how Alan Wake 2 would work on consoles, and Digital Foundry published the first material confirming the good news for PlayStation 5 owners – ” Alan Wake 2 on consoles is a great way to enjoy the game . ” Fans must take into account some compromises compared to the PC edition, but nobody will complain.
Let’s be clear. Alan Wake 2 is an extremely impressive technical and artistic achievement, and a great showcase of Remedy’s proprietary Northlight engine. Much of this is due to the very high quality of indirect lighting. Each environment has an excellent presentation of global illumination, with light reflecting convincingly in both confined corridors and wooded outdoor areas. The lighting consistency is what really stands out here: I found it very difficult to spot any issues, even in the typical gaming problem areas that we often highlight in our videos. The characters also blend seamlessly with the lighting presentation and never seem to stand out, shine or look awkward.
Digital Foundry also praises the high quality of character models, but there are some problems on consoles – among others, in some situations the shadows are not of the highest quality, and the developers did not decide on RT reflections, which looked good in Control.
When I started working on the PS5 version, more than anything else I wanted to know how much console gamers were missing out on by playing Alan Wake 2 without key ray tracing features. The answer is quite a lot, but less than I expected.
The British editors emphasize that Alan Wake 2 was created to be played at 30 frames and this smoothness is easily achieved on consoles, but we can also check the performance mode to get 60 fps. In this situation, the resolution increases – the authors use the AMD solution:
Alan Wake 2 was designed with 30fps on consoles in mind – and that’s what we get in quality mode. However, towards the end of development of the game, Remedy added a performance option that provides 60 frames per second. The key difference here is resolution, as you might expect. Quality mode uses FSR 2 to output 2160p, with an internal resolution of 1270p. Performance mode uses FSR 2 again, but this time with 1440p output and an internal resolution of 847p.
The game at 30 and 60 frames “achieves the goal” and in most moments we can count on the expected smoothness. At 60 fps there are bigger problems in outdoor sequences, but ultimately the production does not disappoint. However, gamers must take into account some image quality issues.
Unfortunately, the image quality in Alan Wake 2 on PS5 can be a bit disconcerting. Small details are quite distorted, which is noticeable in both visual modes. This is acceptable in most cases, and I think the overall rendering quality more justifies the sometimes spotty upsampling, but it can be annoying. I found aliasing to be a bit more distracting in artificial play areas than in naturalistic outdoor settings.
Source: Eurogamer.net