A 4K overhaul of Remedy's cult flashlight game Alan Wake was announced earlier this month, promising to bring a whole new level of visual fidelity to the strange world of Bright Falls. Now, courtesy of the Alan Wake Remastered FAQ, we know what we'll need to run it.
Straight to it, then!
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-bit
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
The PC version of Alan Wake Remastered requires x64 architecture and DirectX 12, and will support Nvidia DLSS but not ray tracing or HDR, which I think is interesting given that just a few days ago we declared that DLSS, and not ray tracing, is the "true legacy" of Nvidia's RTX cards. But also noteworthy is the fact that the GTX 1060 in the recommended spec does not support DLSS: If you want all the bells and whistles you'll need to up that to an Nvidia RTX GPU.
Alan Wake Remastered will support ultra-wide displays (although pre-rendered cut scenes will still be rendered at 16:9 rather than 21:9), and framerates will be unlocked. And here are all the various settings and options you'll be able to play with:
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 FAQ also addresses Remedy's reasons for remastering rather than remaking Alan Wake, which aside from the big visual upgrade will be left completely untouched.
"The plan has always been more about introducing Alan Wake to new audiences rather than remaking the game," it states. "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."
It's still possible that Alan Wake fans longing for a sequel will get some good news down the road at some point: Remedy is also working on an unannounced project in partnership with Epic Games that some people believe is Alan Wake 2.
