Alan Wake 2: Why Is It Such A Huge Visual Leap For Console Graphics?

Allen awake 2 is an absolutely stunning game on both consoles and PC and is up there with the absolute best in the business in real-time rendering it's an extremely impressive Technical and artistic achievement and it's a brilliant showcase for remedies in-house Northlight game engine a lot of that comes down to the game's very high quality indirect lighting every environment has an excellent presentation of global illumination with light bouncing convincingly through constrained hallways and forested outdoor areas alike the consistency of the lighting is really what stands out here I had a very hard time spotting any problems even in typical problem areas for games like these characters also blend seamlessly with the lighting presentation and never seem to stick out or look awkward it looks like we're getting some kind of baked GI here alongside screen space ambient occlusion to deal with indirect lighting and the combination produces excellent results if you do look closely you can spot some minor artifacts in the baked Lighting in the environment but in typical play the results hold up very well this holds true in heavily overcast conditions filling out low contrast scenes with subtle depth it's also the case in these naturally lit Interiors with light from the sun beautifully Illuminating constrained spaces and these Moody artificially lit nighttime scenes also look fantastic volumetrics are used heavily throughout the game like prior remedy efforts which gives lighting a thick heavy look that EXT accentuates Alan awake 2's dark mood materials are accurately differentiated too with a wide range of lighting responses the diffuse Fabrics of Allen's coat here look perfectly accurate as we walk underneath these soft lights the glossy FL and soft leather seats in the diner create a beautiful contrast in this scene and every flavor of wood and pasty flesh in the nursing home looks perfectly true to life at times it looks more like a CG movie than a video game because the materials sit perfectly within each environment and just look very natural Allan awake 2 is absolutely packed with geometric detail as well Assets in the game are universally High poly and look good even at extreme close range Poppin is kept to a minimum although environments do tend to be a bit on the smaller side and remedy loves to throw around all kinds of detrus throughout the game empty beer bottles spare coolers and other remnants of Despair and disuse foliage Outdoors is talk Notch as well with Incredible density and of course a convincing reaction to the player flashlight and to changing environmental conditions the super high quality of the rendering makes a lot of remedy's creative choices land in a way that they wouldn't with more conservative technology the game has some very inventive environments in addition to areas that feel more familiar some of the sequences in Allen wake 2 would come across as awkward with less sophisticated rendering the high quality of the character models helps a lot there too facial detail is exquisite and skin shading looks accurate and correct across a wide range of lighting conditions hair seems to be card-based but looks appropriately complex and animates reasonably well a few cut scene moments do seem a bit uncanny though and facial animation doesn't always match the Fidelity of the facial rendering perhaps the use of separate characterface models and voice actors throws up some production hurdles here though mostly the results look perfectly fine I'd say of course that isn't as much of an issue for the game's liveaction cutcenes of which there are quite a few these seem to emphasize Allan wake's more surreal elements and are often used in some of the bizarre interludes that convey much of the Game's plot video quality is fine though the heavy film grain does create some macro blocking and the encodes appear to be 1080p 30fps is the frame rate here which presents without frame pacing issues though 24 FPS would have lended these sequences a bit more cinematic flare at the cost of uneven frame persistence at 60 HZ output

Channel: DF Clips

Views: 34,114

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Id: 6ReqB30EsGI

Length: 4min 8sec (248 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2023