Alan Wake Remaster: PS5 vs Xbox Series X/S Compared to Xbox 360 Original!

[Music] pick up a flashlight grab a coffee thermos and get your typewriters ready because it's time to return to bright falls the setting for psychological action thriller alan wake now remastered on pc alongside playstation and xbox consoles old and new the remaster comes courtesy of d3t studios in collaboration with original developer remedy entertainment and to stress it is a remaster not a remake comparing to the original xbox 360 release from 2010 the game is reworked in many areas effects lighting and shadow quality are all bumped up character models are reworked with new shaders for skin and hair texture resolution is increased and of course on high-end consoles like xbox series x s and ps5 you get a resolution boost plus 60 frames per second gameplay so how stark is the upgrade over xbox 360 and how do the three next-gen machines compare in settings and can they all truly hold to a solid 60 frames per second let's find out [Music] a quick word on revisiting alan wake a game that made waves on xbox 360 at the time arriving seven years after remedy's work on max payne 2 anticipation was huge for a follow-up the story focuses on mr alan wake himself a famed writer on a lovely vacation in bright falls the paranormal ensues he wakes up to a nightmare not so dissimilar to his own fiction episode by episode wake explores dense woodland environments with a flashlight and gun in each hand dispatching shadowy beings known as the taken fog object physics and dynamic shadows each took unique advantage of xbox 360 hardware all impressive for its time interplay with light is also crucial to survival for weakening the taken and solving puzzles as a kind of precursor to quantum break and control which would follow this was the start of something special for remedy both technically and in its approach to storytelling [Music] so what's in the remaster according to remedy's detailed faq on the project it's very much based on the 2012 pc release with all gameplay intact there's no changes or tweaks in terms of how players balance then the team makes it absolutely clear this is the same game running on the same engine albeit with a suite of visual upgrades as for extras you get all the dlc bundled in as you'd expect you get extras like audio commentary from the director sam lake plus on ps5 you have adaptive trigger integration adding a satisfying snap to gun trigger pulls in the no show category there's no high dynamic range support included and there's no ray tracing the package is pretty straightforward then but in many ways alan wake holds up nicely as is with the visual changes it gets let's look at the remaster upgrade in comparison we're kicking off with the xbox 360 version on left against the xbox series x release on right now it's worth stressing alan wake launched only on xbox 360 to start with pc to follow two years later visuals at the time were stand up for console the fog the lighting effects complex woodlands all create a unique backdrop for its gameplay but still to achieve this the 360 had to use some workarounds the low native resolution of 960x544 is certainly a big one at 544p the game is visibly blurry running on 4k displays of today though the 360's use of four times multi-sample anti-aliasing yes four times msaa does help minimize visual noise on foliage across bright falls another limit the frame rate cap is at 30 fps on 360 with drops blur points too with screen tearing so it's sub 720p at 30fps in summary all pretty expected for the generation and so jumping to the xbox series x remaster makes for quite the leap [Music] let's talk numbers for a second and while we're here let's bring in the other two next-gen machines to compare ps5 and series s for xbox series x and ps5 the native resolution is boosted to a 2560 by 1440 targets again we keep the four times msaa pass on both of these machines many generations on from the xbox 360. now msaa isn't at all common these days especially in this age of post-processing techniques reconstruction and so on but given we're using legacy code where msaa is a crucial part of an engine pipeline for addressing aliasing on waterloo details it makes sense to see it return so yes 1440p on the two top end machines and meanwhile on xbox series s we have 1080p the rest of the comparison points between the three are minimal based on close testing shadows textures lighting upgrades all benefit from the remaster in equal measure and there isn't much to split the three consoles here [Music] the remaster is much more than just a resolution bump of course the biggest upgrade in first playing the game is in the textures and newly added objects across the environment texture map changes are best shown in daytime segments series x an example here has vastly higher resolution materials and likewise across the tables of the bar the hallways the vehicles everything is touched upon to better suit a 4k output the game is veiled in darkness most of the time and so yes honestly the 360 version still holds up pretty well for these early chapters at least so much is hidden by darkness but any shots of bright falls in the light of day flags 360's ram limitations so texture upgrades were a must and as for the added terrain we see it pretty much from the get-go during alan wake's first nightmare new barricades are strewn across the street up front with plenty more subtle tweaks throughout [Music] the remaster also addresses one key limits of alan wake's 360 release the low res buffers for lighting effects and shadows both light and shade are dynamic with cloud scattering overhead too which was impressive for its day the downside is these elements are visibly degraded to support a playable frame rate on 360. so in the woodlands for example you'll see heavy air-listing artifacts on points where light intersects with fog note the giant stair steps across the fog here all of which made the game look low res in these moments than 544p in practice is expected given the age of the xbox 360 but of course series x and ps5 solve all of this with much higher res lighting buffers and fog effects and so it goes for the shadows as well we have dithering on xbox 360 for shadowed elements but it's cleared up with a high res more diffuse appearance on next year machines excellent stuff so in summary resolutions effects and textures are each tailored to suit today's hardware there's another major pillar to this remaster though which is the characters themselves character models are updated with new shaders for skin and hair and all round their designs now manifest very differently to the 360 original for some cases like alum wake himself it can be stark lighting properties are more exact on the new materials and hair takes on a glossier appearance in some shots clothing materials are also visibly crisper for characters and alan wake even sports a thicker beard in this shot that said some examples might be too far removed for purists for fans of the original designs alan wake's girlfriend for example and the waitress at the bar both see pretty radical changes their lip sync to audio and the head motion in cutscenes also get reworked in fact the change is so stark that the series x version doesn't quite sync with the 360 version anymore it's really strange to see this split the material changes are a clear plus of course but which one is truly best starts to become a bit more subjective when the chord design is so different [Music] there's a lot of change in the remaster but you can see remedy's original framework of course cut scenes are updated too the original alan wake mixed in pre-rendered scenes but with such heavy reworking to characters and environments many of these had to be re-rendered so to speak to stay consistent with gameplay as a result we have all new cutscenes bulking the game install from 7.6 gigabytes on xbox 360 up to 30 to 40 gigabytes on the remaster depending on console these stay at 30 frames per second which on series x and ps5 works fine but can be a little jarring coming from 60 fps gameplay on which note let's see the state of performance for the remaster and how it improves on the 360 code [Music] first up then for perspective let's look at xbox 360. we know it isn't perfect but at 30fps the original game pushed some cutting-edge techniques for the time we saw hold 34 reasonable stretches too especially while exploring solo with a flashlight but inevitably bring in too many flares or fire at too many taken and the frame rate does start to tumble into the 20s add in the adaptive screen tear and it was often quite obvious this was a game firing on all cylinders pushing 360 to its limits the big woodland environments don't help and the fog effects also push the system and as a result we're left with a 22-30 fps game during big action points sometimes with streaming stutters as well again not unexpected for its day moving to the remastered version though starting with series x here it's a whole new ball game there's actually only one mode here 1440p at 60 frames per second and it must be said a majority of the time we are locked on that target [Music] there are some exceptions to the 60fps line series x is mostly in the right place but you will see drops under 68 points and when it does it invokes full screen tearing a glance at a busy environment gives flashes of tearing meanwhile big battles using the flare gun for example pulls performance down to the 50s and very very occasionally under that it's not a total deal breaker but still a surprise that the most powerful console on the market running a native app no less isn't cruising through again it perhaps points to the fact this is an old engine at its core designed for a very different era we see the same issue on series s as well which runs at 1080p native rather than 1440p series s performance is typically great in most chapters a largely 60fps experience in my book but then we have set piece moments pulling it down to the same frame rate lows as series x with tearing almost always involving flares last up is the ps5 release there isn't a huge revelation in this case except for one point unlike the xbox versions ps5 has no screen tearing when it drops its frame rate so the ps5 edition runs at the same 60fps targets when it does drop though expect to see marginally harder hits under 60 given v-sync is engaged throughout with no way for it to render partial elements of the frame in other words there's simply less flexibility for when a frame can be pushed out and as a result frame rate drops are more easy to pick up by eye on the upside it does mean there's no tearing artifacts for ps5 regardless it's a decent showing a majority of the time on all three machines just don't expect a rock-solid lock at 60 here as it currently stands it's also worth noting an unusual bug i found in my ps5 playthrough my game had all these plants rendered with a luminescent green color resetting the console fixed it but it does seem the remaster has a few visual issues that hopefully can be addressed so that's the summary alan wake stands the test of time surprisingly well and as a remaster there's never been a better way to enjoy it remedy storytelling its technology even controls translate well to the modern day a sign of just how forward-thinking it was back in 2010 of course the visual upgrades help smooth over the rough points in lighting textures and more as does the jump to 60fps on modern consoles more divisive perhaps other changes to character models and i look forward to your comments on that one but it's undeniable that it's a better presented package in many ways alan wake set a standard within remedy for what it would later achieve in quantum break and control for those looking to trace the developers legacy back through the years and return to one of the 360 era's all-time greats it's well worth checking out but that's all i have time for today if you did enjoy this video feel free to like or subscribe and don't forget to hit that bell for notifications as any new video lands to get a high quality version of this video check out our patreon at digitalfoundry.net and to get in touch directly just use twitter but from me for now thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 289,992

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Id: nVZzalT2aY0

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021