Alan Wake 2 is one among the sixteen PlayStation 5 Pro-enhanced games list announced by Sony recently. Some of the other games added to this list include Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Demon’s Sauls, God of War: Ragnarok, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and Diablo 4.
Along with gaining the “PS5 Pro Enhanced” label, these games will be able to take full advantage of PS5 Pro’s newly introduced features on the upcoming console, through a free software update.
There is a lot to talk about each of these games on the list and the improvements that will be featured after the update, but for now, let us focus on Alan Wake 2 and details on its new features and performance mode.
Alan Wake 2: Gameplay
Developed and launched by Remedy Entertainment, Alan Wake is a survival-action-adventure game featuring a best-selling writer trapped in a nightmare prison for thirteen years, who is attempting an escape by writing a horror story to shape reality to its will.
Another major character the game features is Saga Anderson, an FBI agent who is there to help Wake find his way out of this alternative dimension. While the first game was released in 2010, designed exclusively for the Xbox 360 video game console, Alan Wake 2 was launched in October 2023 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows.
Alan Wake 2, compared to its prequel, gives more significance to the horror and detective elements and is played from a third-person perspective. Unlike Alan Wake which only allowed the users to take upon the title role, Alan Wake 2 allows users to step into the role of any one of the two protagonists the game features.
With the sequel, one can participate in two separate single-player stories, the order of which can be decided by the player.
The dual protagonists of the game make their way across the unknown realm with a specific set of tools including a flashlight and various firearms with limited batteries and ammunition.
Wake and Anderson can strategically use these weapons to render their enemies vulnerable and attack to get past the obstacles and get back to the real world. The game features more engaging elements such as the “Mind Place”, which is an enemy-free space representing the detective’s thoughts, and the “Writer’s Room” which displays the outline of Alan’s story, both of which the players can access.
The game with a gripping storyline has a linear opening and final sequence with an unexpected ending that one would probably find riveting.
Alan Wake 2 on PlayStation5 Pro: Details of Upgrades
According to what is revealed by Remedy Entertainments, Alan Wake 2 has got some pretty interesting upgrades with its newly acquired PS5 Pro Enhanced title.
Quality Mode
PS5 Pro Quality Mode features ray tracing, a technology that helps create realistic images by tracing and stimulating light to control how it behaves in the real world. With ray tracing, Alan Wake 2 will see an output resolution of 4k and the Quliaty Mode will be running at 30 FPS (Frames Per Second), which was not available on the PlayStation 5 version.
Ray tracing will make the images more accurate and stable, especially in complex lighting, while enabling reflections on transparent and opaque surfaces.
Although incorporating the technology was difficult with the detailed and rich visualization that the game features, the final output seems to have balanced the visual quality and frame rate well.
Performance Mode
Alongside the improvement in Quality Mode, the Performance Mode of Alan Wake 2 is also getting a boost with 60 frames per second, but without ray tracing. This technique will fairly improve the image quality, fog & shadow accuracy, and volumetric lighting on the upcoming console.
Like the Quality Mode, Performance Mode boasts more visual detail than the original PS5 model and a 4k output resolution.
Also, Read: Top 10 Multiplayer PS5 Games: What Makes Them Special?
Conclusion
Alan Wake 2, besides ray tracing and an enhancement in its Performance Mode, also incorporates PSSR, Sony’s new AI-driven upscaling method to improve image crispness, clarity, and stability.
Although the improvements are quite attractive, one thing that concerns the players is the price tag attached to the new PS5 Pro Enhanced version. Remedy attempts to justify this hefty price with the details of expenses incurred to trace, evaluate, and shade multiple rays in a visually complicated and detailed game.
As per the statements released, the process of denoising noisy images and enhancing environments and the complex light-material interactions of this geometrically dense game has cost them a fortune, which made the price go higher than anticipated.
In addition to these updates, Remedy has released the second expansion for the game with a set of highly demanded quality-of-life updates, known as The Lake House, today on 22 October 2024.
