Alan Wake 2, the latest game developed by Remedy Entertainment is finally here, and it is no short of a beautiful marvel. And beyond a doubt a lot of it is a wonder that can only be experienced using an NVIDIA GPU, taking its full advantage. 

Alan Wake 2 introduces gamers to a world where fully ray-traced graphics have reached new heights, all thanks to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs. Players embark on a journey to explore two beautifully crafted yet terrifying worlds, seeking to unravel the mysteries of a supernatural darkness that has trapped the titular character in a never-ending nightmare.

The game’s full ray-traced, path-traced visuals are a visual masterpiece, combining ray-traced lighting, reflections, and shadows into a unified, breathtaking solution. The result is an unparalleled level of realism and immersion, creating visuals that redefine the gaming experience.

Even if you don’t have a high-end GeForce RTX PC or laptop, you can still enjoy Alan Wake 2 through NVIDIA GeForce NOW Ultimate. This cloud gaming service allows you to stream the game with the same technologies as GeForce RTX 40-Series owners, including DLSS 3.5 and Reflex. With over 1,700 games available, you can play Alan Wake 2 and many other PC titles on a wide range of devices.

“The new Ray Reconstruction feature in DLSS 3.5 renders our fully ray-traced world more beautifully than ever before, bringing you deeper into the story of Alan Wake 2,” says Tatu Aalto, Lead Graphics Programmer at Remedy Entertainment.

Match made in gaming heaven

Until the introduction of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX GPUs with RT Cores and the AI-powered acceleration of DLSS, real-time full ray tracing in video games was an impossible dream. 

Transparent and opaque reflections meticulously recreate their surroundings at full resolution, immersing players in the game world. Indirect and direct light bounces up to three times, while techniques such as Screen Space Reflections, Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, and rasterized Global Illumination are unified into a single algorithm, resulting in naturally lit environments with exceptional detail and realism.

To provide the definitive gaming experience, Alan Wake 2 incorporates the complete suite of DLSS technologies, designed to maximise frame rates and image quality using AI. Super Resolution accelerates frame rates for all GeForce RTX gamers. Frame Generation boosts performance on GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs by up to 4.5 times.

Cyperpunk 2077 also recently started using DLSS 3.5. Apart from this, other Remedy games such as Quantum Break and Control have also been working flawlessly with the help of previous versions of DLSS.

Reflex minimises system latency, enhancing gameplay responsiveness. And the groundbreaking Ray Reconstruction replaces multiple hand-tuned ray tracing denoisers with a unified AI model, taking ray-traced effects and full ray tracing to new heights.

Activating ray tracing and DLSS in Alan Wake 2 on a GeForce RTX GPU automatically enables Ray Reconstruction. This feature replaces two denoisers with a unified AI model, enhancing the quality of ray tracing and making the game more immersive and realistic. In addition to these benefits, Ray Reconstruction runs up to 14% faster in benchmarks, further boosting performance for GeForce RTX gamers.

Northlight shines 

The development team behind Alan Wake 2, known as Northlight, has introduced several exciting new technologies and tools to enhance the game’s performance and visual quality.

One of them is the Data-Oriented Game Object Model, based on an entity component system (ECS), which optimises memory efficiency and enables efficient parallel execution. 

This change allows the game engine to support a varying number of hardware cores efficiently, resulting in more dynamic and expansive game worlds. ECS also played a crucial role in simplifying the creation of the Scattering tool for mass-authoring vegetation, making the development process more efficient.

Moreover, the game’s non-player characters (NPCs) now utilise animation-driven movement combined with distance-based Motion Matching, a new system that improves movement quality and provides more control over animation usage. This change results in more realistic NPC movements and contributes to the game’s overall immersion.

The wind system is built on Signed Distance Fields (SDF) methods and employs wind boxes to create a realistic and smoothly varying wind strength field between indoor and outdoor areas.

Northlight has transitioned from a proprietary scripting language to Luau, an embeddable scripting language derived from Lua. Luau exposes a comprehensive set of engine functionality and supports live editing, making it a versatile tool for level scripting and gameplay systems. 

The adoption of Luau empowered the game team to prototype and implement various game features and visual effects without requiring assistance from engine programmers.

Leveraging the power of NVIDIA’s RTX 40 Series GPUs, Alan Wake 2 delivers unparalleled visuals, thanks to full ray tracing and DLSS 3.5. Whether you’re playing on a high-end PC or experiencing it through GeForce NOW, Alan Wake 2 offers a captivating and visually stunning adventure that sets new standards in the gaming industry.