Tech Analysis: Alan Wake

The emergence of Halo: Reach and Alan Wake looks set to change things. We took a look at Bungie's latest beta test last week, and today our gaze shifts towards Remedy's five-years-in-the-making survival horror epic, Alan Wake. Digital Foundry's love for Nordic games and their developers is well documented and an initial look at the Remedy game merely reinforces our belief that game-makers in this part of the world seem uniquely equipped to produce stunning titles, each with their own distinctive, impressive tech.

[SonySoldiers]

this kind of tech will be a thing of the past.

[ProjectVulcan]

I think the problem here is extended development time. Who didnt gasp and rub their eyes when they first saw the realtime engine demonstration of this game five years ago? Five years is a long time in this industry. Those five years were never going to be completely kind, and the protracted development and switch to 360 from an engine built up with heavy PC multithreading took its toll. After all, this game originally boasted about quad core support at an intel expo, and dedicating a core for physics and such.

The end result is an engine that was designed for open spaces, heavy geometry, heavy CPU threading on monstrous Pc quad cores.....delivering a low resolution geometry framebuffer on xenon. The game is clearly not bad looking, but its not on the bleeding edge of games developed and released recently, exclusively from the start with console specific hardware in mind.

[thor]

Yeah I remember that tech demo where they were showing off the "power of quad-core technology." It's obvious that it had to be stripped down from that because, well, the 360 doesn't have 4 cores! It could have been great on PC.

[Redrum059]

i think this game should be givin a break, they took 5 years to develope this game which shows to the dedication that the devs took on this game, which is the reason why i own a PS3.
I know i may get many disagrees and im honestly not trying to bash, but my impression on 360 games are that of "rushed and gimped unfinished" due to microsofts greed(not confirming that its true).
so seeing a dev take this long on a game only makes me feel more respect for them, thats exactly what i want a dev to do; think more about the quality then the fast cash.
i actualy might give this game a try, one thing i do hate is a rushed game only to make quick cash.
I have no problem waiting for GT5 so i think some ppl need to chill out on this game.
And as far as my impression on microsoft, im sure im not the only one who thinks this of them.

Edit: im sure that some great 360 games would have been better if Microsoft wouldnt have interfered.

[IdleLeeSiuLung]

That is funny, because Alan Wake which Remedy spent 5-6 years on is funded by MS.

[Redrum059]

yes i can believe that, but they funded the project and stepped the hell out of the way. remember, if microsoft wants to, thay couldve had this game out 2 years ago. but the graphics wouldnt be as good and many other thing wouldve been missing if microsoft were to do such thing.

[Traveler]

Well, I still think it looks great. I agree not as good as some of the better PS3 exclusives like Uncharted 2, Killzone 2 and God of War 3, but still very nice to look at. Plus the whole atmosphere and gameplay seem fun and kind of fresh.

[jalen247]

You were singing a different tune months ago.

Its good to see you come back to reality. LOL.

[raztad]

I read the full "analysis". The tone is praising the atmosphere, although the technical aspects of the game are clearly disappointing for such a hyped game, come on: 540p with screen tearing. Typical DF. I wonder if the upcoming UC3 was 540p and no v-synced it would get the same kind treatment due to its "atmosphere", or the PS3 hardware will be to blame.

[Biggest]

It's funny to me how atmosphere is to gaming what congeniality is to ugly women.

[IHateYouFanboys]

lol.

the technical aspects of the game are clearly NOT the disappointing parts. did you *really* read the full analysis? if thats the impression that you got from it then you have some comprehension problems. the technical side of the engine is the games strong point - the lighting, the draw distance, the 4xMSAA....the way it all works together to make the lower resolution virtually unnoticable, and to make it look better than nearly all the current natively 720p games.

did you even watch the video? you can barely even tell when a frame is torn. they even specifically stated this lol:

"Where Remedy does deserve kudos is in the fact the game maintains 30FPS to the point where dropped frames are mostly unobservable to the human eye. This gives the game a smoothness and uniform response rate that can only work to the player's advantage. It's also interesting to note that the darkness and muted colour scheme in Alan Wake also serves to diminish the impact of screen-tearing. The effect vanishes in the vast majority of the daytime scenes, as you would expect when engine load diminishes - the requirements of that astonishing volumetric fog system, for example, aren't so much of an issue in these scenes."

showing your true fanboy colours yet again.

[Inside_out]

Alan Amazing...the sign of a great game...when all the critics try to yell over the vast majority of good reviews ...Alan Wake is untouchable...No game this gen of gaming even comes close...Look at all the PS3 crowd on every AW thread showing there ignorance over and over...it's bad, trust me...lol...

Digital-fraud does an awful lot of ASUMMING in this piece...anybody notice that...lets take a look shall we...

In regards to the resolution..." Not to discount the VERY PERTINENT points Remedy raised in there statement, the frame buffer is put together from a range of different elements, each with their OWN specific technical make-up and resolution and this has a BIG ( HUGE...lol ) bearing on the overall image quality".....Digital-Frau d...that's why Remedy makes games that matter and these fools try and figure it out....They couldn't understand the console busting fog, LIGHTING and shadows so they glossed over it....LMFAO...

Much like all the negative reviews, people want to gloss over the obvious...this game has incredible graphics and knock you off your seat atmosphere and thrilling moments....They ( DF ) spent numerous paragraphs SPECULATING on open world this and that...look for the " It seems " and " chances are" type of introductions to there OPINIONS...opinions BTW that are often wrong...lol...chk the archives...they've been straighten out many times, including by Remedy for those that remember...

Alan Amazing..only on 360...chk out Gamespot review for a INCREDIBLE peek...

[Biggest]

I watched some of the videos and saw something very cool about the "lighting". The Energizer flashlight moves less like a flashlight and more like a light saber. What's up with that, cez? Is Alan Amazing a Jedi warrior?

But don't get my comment twisted. I am still going to play this game. I just love people like cez of rage and their inability to see life.

[Inside_out]

Sad little dude aren't ya...You hate this game, 360 and M$...but you want to play it...is this kid for real...saw your past posts, bought a " used " 360 for this game...LOL...you need to move on kid...this game is gonna ruin you...but, but it's bad...flashlight like a light saber...OOOKaaay...

Alan Amazing...only on 360...genre defining...the best blend of story, game play and graphics this gen on any system...on the planet, in the solar system and around the entire universe...Just ask " biggest "...he bought a 360 just to play it...lol...

[JokesOnYou]

"A combination of high levels of anti-aliasing and high-quality scaling easily cloaks Alan Wake's 960x540 framebuffer. These shots, with their bright and clear polygon edges, should expose any basic 'gotchas', but image quality remains very high. More pixels is always good, but concentrate rendering resources elsewhere and a low framebuffer need not be an issue."

"There's also the fact that the engine itself is capable of rendering some phenomenal draw-distances. Some of the shorter engine-driven cut-scenes (for example, Wake on a rope-bridge, with the view panning out) show some stunning vistas, and there's also a mountaintop look-out complete with telescope that allows you to survey the environments."

"According to Remedy, the engine itself is capable of rendering with a 2km distance. We can well believe it. After the initial action scene at the start of the game, Alan Wake's story switches back to his arrival in Bright Falls via ferry, accompanied by his wife. While many sections within the game give us some idea of just how far this engine can generate beautiful scenery, this small episode - taking place in daytime - with no atmospheric effects obscuring the view, perhaps give some idea of what the tech can do."

-Wow, I really liked this tech analysis, no bull, just the facts for all to see Remedy did an awesome job making Alan Wake one of the most visually stunning games on ANY console to date. It seems Eurogamer's biggest complaint is that they were hoping for more innovative use of the light & dark mechanic because its so beautifully rendered and its odd how they keep bringing up the PC cancellation at every turn -yeah, OK so ANY dev could do more with ANY game on PC. I think they scored the game waay to harshly but great tech analysis none the less.

JOY

[Ju]

Great analysis, indeed. It doesn't hide away that all this is only possible with a SD+ frame buffer (<500k pixels) and frame tearing all over the place. Not worth mentioning, it's on the box, so no need to bring that up, huh ? /s

This was a tech analysis not a review. And no, IMO, it's not the most stunning game. Very atmospheric, good combination of technology and art direction to use artistic composition to max out limited resources with a very good result, non the less.

[Nicholas Cage]

vulcan project you are 100% right bubbles.

[Paradise]

The graphics are probably the best we've seen on the 360. The mouths still freak me out.

[Cratos8780]

"While the developer was implying heavily that the game was running at the standard HD resolution of 1280x720, there was nothing in the text that outright denied what screenshot analysis revealed - that the base resolution of the framebuffer itself was 960x540."

"Therefore, perhaps not surprisingly, our own internal analysis matches what the pixel-counters say: Alan Wake's native resolution is indeed 960x540, with 4x multi-sampling anti-aliasing."

- Eurogamer Tech Analysis

[Cratos8780]

Click the link and read the full story.

Eurogamer says Alan Wake is 540p native.

[Arnon]

I wonder when people are going to learn that nobody cares. 540p resolution doesn't dictate the beauty of the game.

[thor]

True, but that's not what it's about when anyone mentions resolution. Resolution is a way of measuring the power of a console and its capability of producing great graphics. In order to produce graphics that aren't as good as Uncharted 2, Alan Wake needs to run in sub-HD.

Also when looking at those screenshots, which digital foundry said show how resolution is not an issue, I could see that they were low res. Like I've turned the settings down to minimum on a PC game. I know what it looks like. When you compare to crisp 720p images, or even 1080p images in, say Wipeout HD or Super Stardust HD, to Alan Wake, it's like the difference between two different generations of consoles.

[IdleLeeSiuLung]

Well you could in theory make a 1080p game on the Wii (assuming there were outputs capable of it) with just a ball on the screen rendered at 1920x1080!

Point being, there are a lot more to a game than just the resolution!

Don't play resolution, play the game and enjoy the story!!!

[Arnon]

"In order to produce graphics that aren't as good as Uncharted 2, Alan Wake needs to run in sub-HD."

Lol, and you know this how, exactly? Or is this an assumption, simply because Alan Wake's resolution is lower than 720p?

[thor]

I don't KNOW that it has worse graphics than Uncharted 2, it's my personal opinion based upon what I've seen. It is also the opinion of many reviewers. You might need to play a game to judge how fun it is, but you only need to watch it to see how good the graphics are.

[ProjectVulcan]

Resolution isnt everything, But it certainly dictates how crisp and defined the fine detail in your game is going to look. It hurts more when you are playing on a 1920 x 1080 screen. Upscaling to 1280 x 720, then its not going to be nearly as noticeable as upscaling massively to 1080p. You are literally quadrupling every pixel the game is outputting, which i dont care what anyone says, is gonna hammer overall image quality.

This isnt necessarily the main problem for a lot of people then, those with 720P screens. The main problem will probably the screen tear. I dislike screen tear immensely, and when the engine gets loaded at the crucial moments of fighting, it all goes to hell in a hand basket with tearing. The game drops vsync completely and doesnt re sync until sometime after the load has reduced.

Maybe these things arent such a big deal either, but Im not particularly happy that remedy essentially told porkies about this whole thing, first scooting around the resolution issue and then secondly dismissing screen tear as capture problems. Just be honest, because you are gonna get caught sooner or later....

[7zark7]

You seem intelligent. What would be the best resolution to play this game on a 1080p screen then? Can I lower the res to 540p on the 360?

[ProjectVulcan]

Just set 360 to your panel's native resolution. 360 will scale the image best it can. Its pretty good at game scaling. However 960 x 540 is just over 500 thousand pixels. a 1920 x 1080 display has over 2 million, in fact exactly four times as many as alan wake renders internally, hence my comment about how every pixel rendered will have to be quadruple upscaled for a 1080p set. To reduce further stretch on the screen make sure you have 1:1 pixel mapping enabled on the HDTV if its available on your set over HDMI/component (my samsung its called 'just scan', other brands may have different named modes) otherwise you can get overscan, which is going to further reduce image quality. Overscan is essentially where the image is ever so slightly zoomed so the edges are cut off, but on games this typically means aliasing is more pronounced.

The game does look quite low resolution on a 1080p HDTV, because well, it is. That isnt flamebait, its just how it is

[IdleLeeSiuLung]

That is not entirely accurate, as you increase the resolution on your screen the pixels get smaller. The resolution of Alan Wake is made to scale well because it is an exact multiple of 1920x1080 i.e. 1080p.

With scaling you will not notice anything on a true Full HD 1080p TV!

In fact, if you made the resolution 720p, you might get some minor artifacts when scaling to 1080p since they are not a multiple of each other. You will also get more detail, but I don't think most people are able to tell the artifact or the detail in the first place!

Heck even a 480p and 1080p Blu-Ray movie is for most people hard to tell apart, let alone 720p.

The kind of person that get hung up on technical details is the guy that buy into all the marketing gimmicks tech companies sell.

I just learned about 600Hz Sub field drive, that is 600Hz refresh rate on your HDTV! Now what does that mean? The same pixel is flashed 10 times as fast as it used to be. I don't think that will improve anything, but perhaps decrease the lifespan of your TV. Yet Panasonic are marketing this and well I know someone who bought one!

With that said there are some benefits to a 120Hz TV though.

Don't stare at the resolution, enjoy the game and the story!

[Computersaysno]

I dont think you understand how scaling works. Of course you will notice scaling from alan wake's resolution. Very little of your comment makes sense. 480P dvd upscaled looks very similar to 1080p bluray??? What the heck have you seen them compared on to think that! The gap is just huge.

''as you increase the resolution on your screen the pixels get smaller'' How do the pixels get smaller on the screen? the pixels are a fixed size on every screen. Upscaling just means taking an image and making it fit full screen on a higher resolution, like zooming a digital photograph and the result is always the same. Loss of image detail the more zooming the more loss, the more upscaling needed the more loss. I dont see the point in that comment at all. Multiples of each other? Not really relevant. 1280*720 is still a 16:9 format, which means it would directly scale upwards without any stretching to 1080P exactly the same as 960*540P does except it has many more pixels defined to make the image look more detailed. I dont see what relevance your example of pseudo refresh rates has on the resolution topic.

Please do more research and think carefully next time you comment

[7zark7]

Thank you vulcanproject, much appreciated. My display is 1080p native and my 360 is set to 1080p and I have 1:1 pixel mapping enabled. I have only seen screen shots of Alan Wake but I'm not sure how it will look on my display in 1080p. Its a shame they didn't leave it at 720p, I'm sure there was a good reason why they had to lower the res. I hope it looks as nice as the videos I have seen on the web. Thanks Again.

[Ju]

IdleLee's argument is valid in the sense you can use fixed point multiplications to expand 960x540 to 1080, 2*x + 2*y, but it's still not true if you run a 720p screen, though. Also, this assumes, no filters are used after the scaling, which is usually not true either.

960x540 is in fact a 16:9 SD format, nothing else (with a bit overscan). The only benefit for the scaler is, to allow for easy 1:1 aspect scaling for widescreen displays.

[Cueil]

you poeple have alot of negetivity in your life no? I think the end was most interesting... they can optimize the engine to use 30 percent less resources... and they are learning from the main game for the DLC... What would be awesome is if they put out 12-13 epsodes (main game included) and called it like a season then put out the second game and added DLC for 12-13 episodes. They could even shorten the next game sell it for like 30 bucks and then do DLC... I also think that they should do what Lionhead did by giving the first episode away for free and selling the rest as parts to people... it would generate extra profit and help fund the DLC as well as the second game. This is definitly something my girlfriend is looking forward to watching me play.

[mirroredderorrim]

I disagree with you. Wtf do devs get off cutting their games into parts?

I want FULL GAMES. Not episodic bullsh!t.
Create some kind of system for used games, and spare us the half-assed attempts at selling us shells, instead of complete experiences.

What happened to this generation? I thought games were supposed to get longer and be more open?
People are making money off us already, do we honestly need to pay more than 60 bucks for a game?

I used to pay 70-80 bucks for my SNES games, but at least those had replay value. Hell one SNES game probably has more replay value than 3 current gen games combined.

Let's not forget, these games were on carts, which were costly to manufacture.
Edited.

[Biggest]

I totally agree with Cueil. I, for one, would LOVE to pay $60 ten times over to get a complete game that should have cost $60 total. I mean, doesn't paying more mean that you're a part of the cool crowd? When I buy milk from Vons I ask them to pour my gallon of milk into 8oz cups and charge me gallon prices for each cup. When I walk out with all those overpriced cups, I know the chicks are staring at me.

[Rhythmattic]

Interesting Read.

[kasasensei]

Well, at least the game offers a solid 30fps framerate, which is a point that a lot of games do not reach. And at the final point, with human eyes, Alan Wake looks beautiful, that's what matter, no?
I continue to think that real gamers do not give a f* about native resolutions. Just take a look at GTA4, the game has bigs graphics problems*, horrible frame-rate*, collisions issues* and it's still f*ing great!
I remember a time when we used to laugh about technicals issues and bugs, dont you people? :)

*on 360 AND ps3.

[yewles1]

I love how certain people talk about the "great" effects it's doing "due" to the low resolution. "Bu bu bu the draw distances"-- IT'S AT 540p!!! I expect to see the back of Alan Wake's head TEN TIMES OVER AROUND THE WORLD!!! XD

[mittwaffen]

I like the atmosphere and art design.

Why do people pick everything apart this gen? Last gen wasnt the case, we all just gamed and enjoyed it.

[kasasensei]

And the gens before too...
Sad gamer world where people are counting pixels to measure fun... :(

[cobpswii3600]

Where are the games that are going to "top" Uncharted 2 on the 360? SC: C & Alan Wake both took around 5 years to make and still the Ps3 reigns supreme. Tisk... Tisk... Tisk...

[supaflypriest]

Why ask question such a question? We are all in agreement that the PS3 is more powerful, so graphics wise I would hope that the games look a little better. My issue is that the graphics do not look so much better that I need to sell my 360 immediately and get a PS3. Their are plenty of games on the 360 that satisfy me visually, I do however plan to get a PS3 for some of the heavyweights that it offers...

[cobpswii3600]

Sort of. I think Mass Effect 2 and Gears 2 look very good but again NO WHERE NEAR Uncharted 2, God of War 3, Killzone 2, ect.

[Inside_out]

Really, only a PS3 fanboy could convey such nonsense....Gears is the graphics champ...gears 1 out sold UC 1&2 COMBINED...Gears 2 out sold UC 1&2 COMBINED...here's a hint....why do you think they always try and compare themselves to Gears...lol...Have a vote tomorrow...UC is a non factor....MW2 should of got GOTY award...If gamers were voting, they would have....MW2 out sold UC2 5-6 to 1...lol...case closed...

Gears 3, Rage and KZ will battle at E3...I hope all three have real time gameplay....wait and see...

[cobpswii3600]

Who cares about sales?! That's such a cop out! Your just mad cause I am right! We will wait and see... Killzone 3 will absolutely come out on top.

[AllroundGamer]

i'm almost at the end of the game and honestly the graphics are mediocre (you can also see some pixelation in some distance, probably thx to the subHD resolution), ground textures are low res, some animations of characters aren't fluid, so once again this game graphics were overhyped just like every other xbox360 exclusive... the gameplay feels like slow downed Max Payne, there are also the same gameplay elements like the dodge effect or bullet camera (flare gun), therefor the game felt just too shallow for me and i would give it a 7/10 max.

[AllroundGamer]

:) disagree with the facts all you want, just play the game and if you aren't wearing any fanboy goggles, than you will see and feel it too... (sadly the N4G makeover didn't remove the hardcore fanboys :( )

[AKS]

Max Payne was an awesome game. Few will see that aspect as a negative.

[AllroundGamer]

it definitely was, and i played both many times (also with the kungfu addon which was fun as hell :D ) but in Alan Wake it all feels degraded comparing to Max Payne, which made me feel like what the heck were they doing the 5 years of development when they just recycled all the old gameplay elements...

[DigitalAnalog]

But I'm pretty much ticked off about the improvements on "DLC". I can forsee the really bad arguments coming forth:

Fanboy A: The graphics SUCK.

Fanboy B: OH YEAH, JUST WAIT FOR DLC AND IT WILL UPGRADE THOSE GRAPHICS, YE-AH!

Seriously, 5 years and they still have issues with the final product that they need a DLC to "notch" it up. I really hope none of the other gaming studios follow suit as this will present a whole new level of laziness and greed.

-End statement

[PS360PCROCKS]

dude come on...all the said was "we've learned things and will use some of those techniques for DLC" that's hardly them being lazy. Starting from scratch using techniques to optimize the DLC is a lot different than changing an ENTIRE game.

[kenjix]

Only because gamers and media always picked apart the PS3 for ports and at that time it was considered ok. So now it's on the 360 to step up or continue to be the butt of many arguments.

I love how the new conversation is resolution doesn't matter, that wasn't the case with MW,AC,GTA4,HAZE and many other Multiplatform games that had issues on the PS3. Now 360 exclusives are unable to raise the bar graphically and gamers want to skip that conversation.

You guys are on the run.

This video shows what's happening to the 360 community.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[TheMailman]

"Alan Wake is far from a perfect piece of software, it's definitely not without its faults, but the comparatively low pixel-count has little, if any, negative impact on the final, shipping game - and that has been borne out by the reviews, none of which have mentioned much in the way of visual drawbacks."

That is because media protects Xbox games like there is no tomorrow..

[kenjix]

is that many 360 fans will go out and get this regardless and then forget it after a week. They'll play it and try to talk about it and hype it up but they'll only be confirming/justifying their purchase to themselves. Ahh good times good times, I love how this generation has turned out.

[gamer7804]

Can't wait for this game, amazing what they are able to do with mood and lighting. Best environments i've seen on any game on any console this gen. To top that the animations will be improved in subsequent dlc.

[jalen247]

This article is full of excuses. LMFAO!

[yakuzakazuya]

This DF analysis fails to mention the LOW RES textures in AW. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory on xbox has better textures than AW. Pathetic.