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Remedy Entertainment is one of the most recognizable names in the industry, thanks to a consistent output of games that push the boundaries of storytelling in new and exciting ways. The veteran developer is also known for creating worlds that feature a higher level of graphical fidelity, whether it’s FBC’s brutalist architecture in Control or the neo-noir drama of Max Payne – Remedy games strive to be at the forefront of modern rendering techniques.
The long awaited Alan Wake 2 just released, and it’s pretty much everything fans would want from such a sequel. Speaking specifically about the graphics part of the game, Alan Wake 2 marks the debut of the Northlight Engine on current-gen consoles (if excl Control Ultimate Edition). So what’s changed this time? With this technical analysis, we will delve into the presentation of alan wake 2, comparing the PS5 version to the PC version and also discussing performance on both platforms.
Game engine overview and comparison to the original
The original Alan Wake launched over a decade ago and used proprietary technology to depict its twisted world of Bright Falls. Although the game looks dated by modern standards, it was a stunning visual showcase with great lighting effects and very detailed character models for its time.
Jump to the present, we have Alan Wake 2 which is powered by Remedy’s Northlight engine. It’s the same engine that’s been used in all of the developer’s games since then Quantum Break, and it works to great effect here as well. The render pipeline has been updated to take advantage of current generation machines and we can see heavy use of ray tracing (PC only) with consistent use of high quality assets in environments and character models.
comparing Alan Wake 2 and the visual presentation of the original, there is a complete night and day difference which is understandable since the two games are generations apart.
Lighting and reflections
Alan Wake 2 is a game about lights and shadows, so it makes sense that the developer has put a lot of care into creating a good lighting and reflection model. The game makes use of ray tracing on the computer for its global lighting, and the lighting looks stunning as a result. The world looks realistic and the light approximation works very well in all conditions and at different times of the day. In terms of indirect lighting, the game uses path tracing to handle indirect lighting on the computer, which works in conjunction with ray tracing to create a consistent realistic look.
As for reflections, we see a generous use of ray-traced reflections, and the reflections themselves also retain a lot of detail in the environment. Take, for example, the section where Sarah gets to explore the town of Bright Falls during the day. The roads are full of puddles, there is reflective glass in the shops and brightly painted cars line the road; they all reflect the environment very accurately and update at a fast rate that makes it look so good. .
Character models, environments and world streaming
The character models a Alan Wake 2 they also show a ton of detail, ranging from detailed ski meshes to clothing and animations. The clothes worn by the characters are made using high-quality materials that react properly to light, and the skin is also composed of dense meshes that give a realistic appearance. Facial expressions continue to be the weakest link in Remedy’s character representation pipeline, and this particular problem is even more apparent when you’re talking to secondary characters throughout the story.
Shift gears in the environment, Alan Wake 2 it does a fantastic job of creating environments that look absolutely realistic. Asset polycounts are high across the board, and there’s a lot of geometric complexity to be found through various set props scattered around the environments. Alan Wake 2 seems to be using some form of photogrammetry for its textures, but that’s more of a guess than a concrete finding. All in all, the environment looks great from the dense vegetation to the skybox and the highly detailed cars.
As for worldwide streaming, Alan Wake 2 it’s a linear game, so the scale of the environments represented is quite small compared to an open world game. So the micro-level fidelity is absolutely fantastic across the board, and the world streaming system does a good job of maintaining that fidelity without any visible LoD changes or animation cuts.
Weather effects and post-processing
Just like the original, Alan Wake 2 it relies heavily on the generous use of fog to convey its ominous atmosphere. The Northlight Engine produces great volumetric fog in game environments and reacts realistically to light giving it a very different feel. Shadows are also crisp and accurate, and are rendered with reasonable levels of detail for objects far from the camera, giving the game world a very even look.
Touching briefly on post-processing, we can see some motion blur per object with what appears to be a high shutter speed, but the implementation is certainly quality. In terms of anti-aliasing, the super-sampling solution does a good job of smoothing out rough edges without showing any visible signs of artifacts.
Test your computer specs and game settings
For comparison purposes with the PS5 version, we opted for a PC version that consists of an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, Nvidia RTX 3080Ti and 32GB of RAM. As you can imagine, this is slightly below the recommended settings for 4K with higher raytracing quality. That said, it’s also important to mention Alan Wake 2 it’s an extremely demanding game, but our purpose here is to compare it to the PS5 version and see what kind of results we can get.
As such, we dropped the screen resolution to 1440p and the render resolution to 720p, and went with all options set to their highest value, including ray tracing and path tracing. We’ve also used DLSS to help with performance (the game also supports AMD’s FSR 2). The settings menu offers a wealth of sliders to choose from, which should allow hobbyists and enthusiasts to get the right balance between performance and fidelity. However, the menu itself is fairly simple in terms of features. There is no representation of memory usage, how the settings affect performance, or useful images to decipher the difference between each of the settings.
In the lake area, the game hovered around 30-38 frames per second, but in more open areas, we had frame rates above 40. Since the game is not really fast, performance parameters in the 30s were acceptable for us. It may vary between different players, but I can’t help but wonder if the game could have been optimized better. Our gaming platform isn’t exactly low-end, and most current-gen games run at maximum settings without any compromises.
Differences between PC and PS5 quality mode and PS5 performance mode
Alan Wake 2 it’s a mostly uniform experience on both platforms, and the main difference between the two versions of the game is how it handles indirect lighting. Unfortunately, ray tracing is not present in the PS5 version of the game and has been replaced by what appears to be some form of baked lighting. It’s definitely not as dynamic and sharp as the PC version, but it looks good thanks to the linear nature of the game and the fixed light sources, so no harm there, I guess.
Other than that, the DLSS implementation does a better job of outputting a sharp image than the console counterparts that use FSR2 for upscaling and anti-aliasing. As a result, the PS5 version looks a bit smoother, but these differences are only visible if you really look at the details. Overall, the game looks really good on both platforms, but PC is obviously the best way to experience it alan wake 2, as long as you have ultra-powerful hardware.
Remedy Entertainment offers PS5 users two graphics modes: a quality mode that targets 30fps at 4K and a performance mode that targets 60fps at 1440p. Initially, Alan Wake 2 it would ship with quality mode only, and performance mode was added later at the behest of fans. Both modes largely achieve their goals, but expect framerate drops here and there.
conclusion
Remedy Entertainment has provided a visual powerhouse with alan wake 2, and everything from the environments to the character models to the lighting looks absolutely gorgeous. The Northlight Engine continues to be at the forefront of rendering technology with its quality implementation of ray tracing and path tracing for high-end PCs. The PS5’s graphics modes mostly achieve their goal, but there are a few issues that we hope can be fixed in the future. Generally, Alan Wake 2 it’s a technical shwocase, which is best performed on a robust computer.
Source: gamingbolt.com