In brief: Alan Wake fans were overjoyed to discover that a remaster of the spooky survival horror lands on October 5. It was thought that the new version would support ray tracing and HDR, but developer Remedy Games has confirmed this won't be the case. What it will have, however, is support for Nvidia DLSS.
Lighting plays a large part in Alan Wake, so the inclusion of ray tracing and, to a lesser extent, HDR would have been exciting additions. Unfortunately, Remedy Games in an FAQ said that adding the features would have been too time consuming and taken resources away from other critical areas.
"We are confident the game looks great even without ray tracing / HDR support," the company said.
The good news is that Alan Wake Remastered will include support for Nvidia's DLSS, so owners of supported cards will be able to upscale to higher resolutions if they wish. Elsewhere, ultrawide-monitor users can play the game in their display's native 21:9 aspect ratio, though cutscenes will still be 16:9. There's also the usual slew of graphical options exclusive to the PC.
The minimum PC specs for Alan Wake Remastered are generous, but then it is a revamped version of an 11-year-old game:
Minimum specs
- CPU: i5-3340 or equivalent
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Equivalent. 2GB VRAM.
- RAM: 8 GB or higher
- OS: Win 10 64-bit
Recommended specs
- CPU: i7-3770 or equivalent
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Equivalent. 4GB VRAM
- RAM: 16 GB
- OS: Win 10 64-bit
When asked why this is a remaster rather than a remake, Remedy said it wants to introduce the game to new audiences rather than remaking it entirely. Thankfully, we know that the copious amount of product placements in the original game have been removed.
Alan Wake Remastered arrives on October 5 for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One. Those playing on a PS4 Pro will be able to choose between performance mode (60fps) or quality mode (4K at 30fps). The standard PS4 will be limited to 30fps, while the PC has an unlocked framerate.