Alan Wake 2 - PlayStation 5 DF Tech Review - Remedy Raises The Bar Yet Again 

After seeing Sam Lake as a cop at the beginning of this video, I REALLY hope they use him again for the Max Payne remake. It would be criminal not to!

The Sam Lake rendering looks spot on.

Its worth noting, how impressive the positioning of the 3rd person camera is. Seems like its a alteration of fish eye lens, with a flare. I'm used to (and maybe everybody) withnessing a typical 3rd person or 2nd person perspective in games.

Looks awesome on both PS5 and PC! I'd really love to see a 40 fps mode on PS5 for 120 Hz TVs, as a compromise between performance and frame rate. A game like this would be perfect for that.

It's amazing to see what was traditionally only available from offline rendering being offered up in realtime now - technologically and artistically beautiful! Both console and PC look superb regardless of the extras enabled/disabled as you play what you have. That said, seeing the accurate, depth accurate diffused shadows of the the foliage on the PC is kind of incredible! Hats off Remedy..👍👍

So relieved this analysis is available pre launch.

Long time DF viewer- Ollie, love the work you do! - and I'd also really benefit from adding resolution numbers to your videos alongside your reporting of them. That visual component makes it easier to "hear" and process the numbers your delivering. Tom, for instance, does a great job of this in his vids and I think it really helps me entertain the resolution numbers a bit easier. Keep up the great work and I hope you'll consider!

Looks great, but the aliasing seems pretty extreme, image stability has come to be something I’ve really appreciated in this current gen

Such an impressive looking game

I always find funny when people compare a 550$ console with a 2000$ GPU + 300$ CPU. I don't know how is that useful for anybody, of course it looks better.

The art direction and technical realisation is incredible. Amazing job team!

i impressed how ps5 stacked up to pc in terms of graphics and lighting, usually, in the games when the lighting relies heavily on rt, devs forget about rasterized lighting causing it to look much worse, but in this game devs didn't forget about regular players without 2000$ gpus and made rasterized lighting look really good, huge respect

I think something that was missed in this video was how impressive the lighting is from a distance looking into buildings. Most games can treat their lighting like a camera does, over exposing the background so that whatever is in close focus can be well lit. But in Alan Wake 2, it brilliantly shows light inside buildings like how the naked eye would. This results in it feeling way more real. This is hard to explain in text, and so I hope I am making sense!😅 Anyone else notice that?

They raised the bar so fucking high you can't even see yourself in the mirrors 😂

Beasts! Remedy are killing it. Creativity+talent can never fail.

Control was incredible. Cant wait to try this!

I am so excited to play this - the weekend can't come any sooner. What a year for games 2023 has been - still have such a backlog and there's even more to come😅

Beware, as the video contains a few spoilers that can likely change the surprise factor that you might've experienced when playing blind. 11:30 through 11:35 (especially) 4:49 through 4:54 and a little bit in the summary at 13:55 through to 14:27. I think stuff like that probably warranted a warning, but oh well. Thank you DF for the video! Game looks very pretty.

Remedy is by far my favourite western studio, their games are incredible gifts to us Lynch fans!

It's nice to see good optimization across the board. Smooth 60 fps is commendable effort. Though I guess every new game will need FSR2 for 60fps, that's fine but I would prefer playing it at native resolution on quality mode because even on the video artifacts caused by upscaling are visible.

Looking forward to all the nutty things they will do with the visuals

I was sooo waiting for this one. Thanks, DF team

This game looks incredible. Easily one of the best if not the best looking game I’ve ever played so far.

This is such an exciting time for tech and human history. 20 years ago we went from blocks painted to look like characters to photographic CG movie quality characters rendered in real time, as well as fully simulated lighting that is almost as close to bringing in an actual light source straight from the real world. It won’t even be another 20 years before we create worlds indistinguishable from our own. That’s literally right around the corner, and we all get to be here to see it happen. Exciting stuff!

There is nothing bar raising about HD-ready resolutions for anything higher than 30fps nor barely Full-HD resolution for quality mode

Wow! The shadows and visuals on PC maxed out are stunning! Looks great on PS5 too.

It's surreal to me even seeing a sequel to the first game, it's 13 years old now, definitely a pleasant surprise

The shot at 8:51 literally had me pause the video and say "holy sh*t" out loud. That looks downright real.

This game visually looks stunning on both PC and Console! I've never played Alan Wake but recently bought a 4090 and recieved a code for a copy of Alan Wake 2 so I'm looking forward to trying this out.

Considering the crazy PC requirements, a tight lock on 60 fps for the PS5 was just too much to hope for. Looks gorgeous though! Remedy's in-house engine, Northlight, has been one my favorites since Quantum Break. It's great to see they keep building upon it.

If this game connects to Control and the FBC and the oldest place and The Director (or if she appears) I’m literally going to lose it. I became so in love with its Lore.

Game looks good and I'm glad to see that consoles get a version that looks nice and runs pretty well. Much better than Control did on all of the PS4/XB1 variants. I was watching a PC benchmark video and going down that side path with Saga seems like an early performance hot spot on all systems. Walking back up it is fine but going down it tanks frame rates every time it happens.

That aliasing looks like dead space prior to patch

the intro should have mentioned quantum breaks real time GI, it was amazing.

Remedy games are so atmospheric...looking forward to this one.

Incredibly gorgeous game. Excited to play tomorrow

This game just reminds me that a mid gen refresh would be nice. Console refreshes need to find a way to have a dedicated RT processor

Im honestly surprised how good it looks on console. Another job well done Remedy.

Oh man Oliver how are you not more stoked on this!? This looks and runs absolutely amazing AND it's good. That's such a rarity.

I have never seen such cohesive lighting in a video game. Wow.

So stoked for this game, absolutely love everything Remedy does, they are top notch at story telling.

I'm a huge David Lynch fan, and I love how this game wears that influence on it's sleeve so to speak.

Looks very promising. Hope the HDR implementation is correct as games this dark tend to have raised blacks in HDR. Great job as always.

Wow they did an outstanding job with both the art style and graphics. There were some shots that I preferred without RT, but it does feel more cohesive with it on.

You guys should review the PS5 vs XBSX in this game, as the Series X supports mesh shaders, while the PS5 only supports primitive shaders. For Science, you know!

Oliver is really hardworking. Thank you.

The town sheriff, isnt that the same guy from quantum break? Am I crazy?

Can't wait to finish up the first game so I can immediately hop on AWII

Looks incredible 😮

Seems like a good game to play on 30fps with live action cutscenes also at 30

The consoles are starting to show their age here.

Grab the popcorn. 🍿

I was expecting a consoles comparison to decide which version to get! Hopefully it will be released later today!

Looks like part of the Volocity architecture is being used on the Series X/S evidently proven by the smaller install size. Less memory to render should help with performance imo.

Does the PC and xbox versions support mesh shaders like the developers mentioned prior to release? Will you be covering it at all? Was surprised to see no mention of it

The long wait is finally over. What an amazing year for games!

Fingers crossed for a 40fps mode in the (near) future.

Can’t wait for tomorrow,it’s been a long way to home 13 years!

I don't really enjoy horror games. I did enjoy Control. Not sure if this would be a good fit for me. Which is a shame because the visuals look great and it'd be neat to see how my GPU would cope. Maybe there will be a Control 2 someday. Another awesome video from DF!

I'm sorry, but it feels like I'm playing another game! Allan wake 2 on my ps5 is extremely blurry, full of grain, the resolution seems extremely low and the blurry aspect bothers me a lot on my 48 c3 oled TV. I don't really mind the fps dropping to 40 or something like that, but an image as blurry as this is really annoying. The characters are weird, the characters' hair has too much grain. The serrated forests and the extremely flat and blurred ground are reminiscent of the original Resident Evil 4. The shadow quality is terrible. I'm still looking for that "great graphic" that you claim, because god of war ragnarok or horizon seem infinitely better and better defined.

Great video - I long for the day a Nintendo hardware can push visuals like this! Mark

Can we just talk about the amount of Max Payne Easter eggs in this haha. The FBI agent, the chap on the sofa....

I feel like FSR is just overall inferior to the old checkerboard way. The latter at least provides a stable and consistent image whereas FSR could look nice in some places, but terrible in the others.

This is what I expected next gen to look like! More cinematic, more realistic lighting, more film like. Too many games are still going for a super clean, polished look where things look plasticy and flat. I’m enjoying Spider-Man 2, but the character models in some cut scenes and gameplay look terrible and washed out, and it pulls me right out of the experience. Bravo Remedy, real looking forward to this game!

There have been 12 patches since release. The latest release notes state there are optimizations specifically to the PS5's performance mode. Can you please re-test? If the performance difference vs the Series X is no longer there, the viewers deserve to know.

I’ll say this, one of the best parts of current day gaming is all the reviews before you make a purchase. This just made me get the game day 1. It makes devs have to make sure their game is great at launch too.

Still waiting the video about Squadron 42 demo and the Star engine demo guys! Please! I know you already did star Citizen videos so it would be nice to have another one after that Epic Citizencon demonstration!

I’ve always loved the lighting in Remedy’s games, ever since the original Alan Wake. That game had great lighting, especially in the remaster. The original wasn’t a perfect game by any means, but it did a lot of things right. The atmosphere was amazing and very self-aware of the tone it was setting. It really felt like an old school horror thing with just the right amount of cheese. The shooting was satisfying. The story was honestly great. Sounds were great. I think the issues with the game were mostly lack of variety gameplay wise throughout the story, and my biggest gripe was throwing in collectibles during moments when you’re supposed to be running away or in a very intense situation. This was bad design and broke the immersion. Also, dying from a 4 foot cliff? Some silly stuff that was overlooked. Alan Wake 2 looks incredible and the reviews speaks for itself. Remedy has learned a lot from Control.

Finally these games are pushing things

Leaning toward Quality mode as the 30fps seems pretty stable which is what matters, this game is more about graphics so it seems the logical choice as long as FPS is stable

Some issues here and there visually, but overall a great-looking game. It's also one of the few games where I think keeping film grain on is okay because it clears up any color banding one might have, but also is so fine that it's almost unnoticeable. There are some weird animations on occasion, awkward collision detection for the characters at times, and objects that move unrealistically (like a chair or cup sliding across a room without animating). And although the frame rate is mostly stable (playing in 30fps) the early Saga section of being in combat was pretty unstable. My biggest issue, however, is the lack of reflections in mirrors. I get raytracing was out of the cards here, but still, the lack of reflections in mirrors is bad. And I dislike that there's always been a lot of shimmer on textures/reflections in their Northlight games. Lastly, the number of repeating the same NPC models sticks out it's a bit immersion-breaking. I like the game a lot so far though, and surprised it took so long to get to the part where you can choose between Saga or Wake, which I just got to, and that's ten hours in. No deaths yet, just exploring to make sure I haven't missed anything. In Watery now. I loved the first game, so I'm happy that this game is so engaging. Not as big a fan of Control, but still found it interesting and love how it's all connected.

4:50 Max Payne 1 grin spotted

Im actually surprised by the performance on ps5 given how demanding the game can be on pc hardware. Didnt think they would go for a performance mode at all ^^

So, is pd5 running the game at low PC equivalent settings.?

We used to have nice mirror reflections without RT for decades. Not anymore.

3:46 this guy reminds me so much of the original May Payne

The game looks great!

I must say I am really impressed with how good the visuals are in this game. Reminds me of TLOU2 next gen version. So crisp along with really nice environments! Enjoying the game so far. This has to be the benchmark for these sorts of games going forward!

Eagerly awaiting your ghostrunner 2 video

Thanks for the video DF. Is there a PC specific video coming also?

@8.49 the PS version has shadows on the leaves on the ground but not on pc... I hope that's a bug because that would mean this problem would occur in other places. Also where the ceiling and the wall connects right above the door has this weird white line... maybe some light leakage...

Haven't finished the video yet. But where is the series X version?

Very impressive. Might have to get a copy.

@11:30 it's Ahti the janitor from Control!

Is it possible just to real time cubemaps for reflections, or render to texture planar reflections? They look better than what's on offer. Other than that, a visual splendor with good looking hair, textures, and geometry.

The absolute MADMEN! They managed to get this to hit 60fps on console, that's miraculous. The strong art direction will most likely distract from the loss of finer details, too. Amazing work.

Finally, a REAL next-gen game !!! can't wait for Alex's PC analysis !!!

I didn't like the image stability and image definition at all, nor the low quality of the shadows. I'll wait for the PC version to be fixed before purchasing. The PS5 version didn't please me visually.

But also it's a $500 machine vs what I'm assuming is around. $3-4k machine. V impressive for PS5. Excited to play this 😊

I'm looking forward to AW 2 ps5 so much 😎🤙🏿

11:30 hey, we know that guy! :)

Oliver might be the best new addition to the DF cast. imo.

I always feel like I am playing - and losing - a game of ‘spot the difference’ in these kinds of videos. I wonder if I would really notice any differences when playing…😂

I’m playing on PlayStation five and the graphics are quite bad and I don’t know why

Damn, i wish they used 4k video files, even if the game would've been 160gb. Game size hasn't been an (real) issue since the late 2010s so seeing stuff like that in a game so exceptionally beautiful is kinda weird.

i'll have to say, the SSR artifacts looks right at home for a game like Alan Wake

Nah ah! 9:03 this is the only scene where the ps5 is more realistic. Would the underside of that coffee table look completely black in reality? I think not, my good sir!

I was worried about a Cyberpunk situation as well with the PC thoroughly embarrassing the consoles. But this looks incredible! The crisp ray traced shadows and reflections are nice but I'm happy enough with the console experience

Native resolution may be on the low side, but it's still decent looking on a 4k TV. Performance wise, although not perfect it's not too shabby either. The game holds up well on the PS5 given how demanding the requirements are. I myself, still using the good old 1080 Ti, but it's starting to get long in the tooth for recent games. Many I have to turned the settings down to medium or low and still cannot hit 60fps. GPU prices are ridiculous here in Australia, and having own a PS5, I'll be playing this game on it. My days of trying to keep up with top of the line hardwares are passed at this point in my life.

Would like to know how PlayStation’s shader compares to PC and Xbox mesh shader. Does it effect performance or fidelity?