Remedy Games detailed its approach to Alan Wake 2's PS5 Pro update in a new post on its official site, explaining that Quality Mode will add ray tracing at the expense of running at 30 FPS, but that the patch will also include big improvements to Performance Mode.
According to the official post, Alan Wake 2's Quality Mode will run at 30 FPS with ray tracing while outputting at 3840 x 2160 (4K). Its render resolution will be 2176 x 1224. In some ways it's not surprising given Alan Wake 2's hefty PC requirements, which recommend at least an RTX 4080 for good performance with ray tracing turned up.
That said, there are still meaningful improvements to be found in the PS5 Pro version of Alan Wake 2 without sacrifing frame-rate. Among other things, Remedy promises "significantly higher output resolution" roughly on par with the base PS5's Quality mode by pushing the resolution to 4K, aligning it with Sony's overall sales pitch for the console. It also includes overall improvements to "stability, fog, volumetric lighting, and shadow accuracy."
"We did multiple experiments, including upgrading the 60fps Performance mode output from 1440p to 4k and adding PSSR (Sony’s AI-based upscaling method), which positively impacted image crispness and stability under motion," Remedy explained.
"Increasing the internal rendering resolution consumes a lot of processing power, no matter how powerful your hardware is. However, in our experiments, even putting all the added power to increased rendering resolution provided a barely noticeable difference in the output image or its quality. Adding more pixels to gain visual quality is not straightforward with the new AI-based upscaling methods."
Remedy's post goes on to detail the ways that the console version incorporates ray tracing as well as its cost, noting how each ray must be "traced, and its hit evaluated and shaded."
"In a game like Alan Wake 2, its complex light-material interactions and rich environments can make tracing, shading, and denoising even a single ray tracing effect too expensive to justify the cost depending on the hardware," the post says. "Geometrically Alan Wake 2 is a very dense game. The usage of a GPU-driven rendering pipeline and its fine-grained culling with the skinning ran on GPU made it possible to create densely populated forest scenes with layers and layers of foliage and trees encountered during Saga’s gameplay segments taking place in the lush environments of the Pacific North-West."
Ultimately, Alan Wake 2 is one of the best-looking games out there right now, so the results should be impressive no matter which mode you choose. It'll join a handful of other games that are getting major upgrades on the PS5 Pro, including Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and several first-party releases. Go here to check out our full impressions of the PS5 Pro, which launches on November 7.
Kat Bailey is IGN's News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
