Alan Wake Remastered just received a new update that adds HDR compatibility to the game, which is sure to bring a major boost to its visual fidelity on PCs. Furthermore, if the news has you thinking about starting another playthrough, yet you’re hesitant because you don’t want to replay the tutorials, there’s an option to skip it altogether, getting you into the thick of things much faster.

There are also improvements to its DLSS support, scaling fixes to its FOV, fixes to buffering and rendering, and a new frame rate cap of 240 FPS for systems that can hit that number. It’s quite a list of additions to a game that was launched in 2021.

If that wasn’t enough, Filippo Tarpini, a graphics programmer at Remedy and a long-standing supporter of HDR implementations in video games, has worked on the patch, so you know it’s going to be good. For more details on Alan Wake Remastered, check out our review.

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Alan Wake Remastered, which launched for modern hardware in the lead-up to the survival horror sequel’s launch, is seemingly continuing to sell well. In a recently published quarterly fiscal report, Remedy confirmed that over the course of the previous quarter of the year (July-September), the remaster was able to recoup its development and marketing costs, driving a year-on-year growth in royalties for the Finnish studio. Doubtless, the excitement surrounding Alan Wake 2 will have driven sales for the original game’s remaster.

In our review of the remaster upon its launch in 2021, we awarded it a score of 8/10, saying, “Alan Wake Remastered easily stands on its own among modern, similar games due to its exceptional design, tight execution, and handful of technical improvements.” Read the full review through here.

You can also read our review of Alan Wake 2 through here. The survival horror title will get two paid expansions in 2024.

Let’s look at 15 of the biggest differences between Alan Wake 1 and 2, from their gameplay and story-telling mechanics to the overall scale and development time.

Psychological Thriller vs Survival Horror

Alan Wake has elements of horror as the writer extraordinaire was involved in various supernatural affairs, but it felt closer to a psychological thriller and mystery. There’s nothing wrong with that, but with Alan Wake 2, Remedy is leaning much more into survival horror and even adding body horror into the mix (no dismemberment, though). It touts the sequel as being its scariest game to date – interesting, given the bar thus far, but we’ll wait and see how it pans out.

Playable Characters

The first game only had Alan Wake, as he ventured through Bright Falls trying to make sense of what was happening. There were allies and other characters, but you only controlled Wake. The sequel upends that by having two protagonists – Wake and newcomer Saga Anderson, an FBI agent who arrives in Bright Falls to investigate some murders.

Inevitably, she gets caught up in a story that Wake is writing. After a certain point, players can switch between the two characters at any time during the story to experience their perspective. As for how the game is split between Saga and Wake, game director Kyle Rowley says it’s about “50/50.”

New and Returning Characters

Some characters like Alex Casey, who was only referenced in the first game and voiced pages from The Sudden Stop, one of the manuscripts, will appear in Alan Wake 2. Remedy teased other characters in The Dark Place, but it’s unknown if Alice Wake will appear. One thing is for sure: Robert Nightingale, who pursued Wake in the previous game as an FBI agent, returns, but he’s now a monster and an “agent” of The Dark Presence.

The Dark Place

As an alternate dimension and the “ocean” in which the real world is but an island, The Dark Place has existed for a long time. It’s a massive, constantly shifting location and can manifest concepts, ideas and characters. Wake accesses The Dark Place at various points in the first game before ending up trapped in the dimension to save his wife, Alice. The Signal and The Writer DLC sees him dealing with an irrational version of himself throughout an alternate version of Bright Falls, eventually reconciling and writing a new story to try and escape The Dark Place.

By contrast, The Dark Place in Alan Wake 2 is a surreal version of New York City, where Wake wanders around and meets characters from his books (including Alex Casey). While gorgeous in its lighting and shadows, this version of The Dark Place still has several dangers to beware of.

Inspirations and Influences

It’s no secret that the first Alan Wake took inspiration from many games. While many of those influences are apparent in the sequel, Alan Wake 2 also looked at Resident Evil 2 Remake. There are also influences from Silent Hill, per Rowley in an interview with VGC.

Gameplay Changes

The first game’s core mechanic involved using light, usually flashlights, to break down the darkness shielding the Taken, the main enemies. By focusing the flashlight’s beam, enemy shields would break faster, but its energy would deplete quickly. Collecting batteries would keep the flashlight topped off.

These mechanics return in Alan Wake 2, and you’re still aiming and dodging in the third person. However, there are fewer combat encounters, per Sam Lake, with a focus on more variety. Speaking to IGN First, he said, “We just realized that in survival horror, the pacing is slower. [Alan Wake 2] leans much more on building up to an encounter and then having more strategic resource management and all.

“So, we chose to give more variety in combat but also have less combat. Instead, we’ll have more moments to do things with the story.” The focus, instead, is on paranoia – some enemies may appear but not attack right away, for instance.

New Mechanics

In terms of new mechanics, Alan Wake 2 takes a more investigative approach to its gameplay, best seen in Saga’s Mind Place. It’s an entirely separate space consisting of her thoughts, deductions, clues, character profiles and a board linking everything together that can help players as they investigate the mystery.

Wake has the Writer’s Room and a Plot Board, discerning the plot of each chapter into a sequence of events and adjusting things accordingly to progress. While the manuscript pages return, sections have been edited or scratched out. Who did this and why? You have to keep playing to find out.

More Open Areas

Alan Wake 1 is a pretty linear experience. You could collect manuscript pages, often foreshadowing upcoming events, collect thermos flasks and discover TV and radio shows that provide more information on the town. However, from beginning to end, there isn’t much freedom when exploring Bright Falls.

Alan Wake 2 offers “slightly more open” areas per game director Kyle Rowley, but you can now freely explore them, like the forests around Cauldron Lake or the Diner in Bright Falls, discovering more of the world in the process. It’s also possible to revisit locations in a playthrough. Again, this doesn’t seem like a massive open world, but there are at least options to go off the beaten path.

Development Time

Measuring the “development time” for the first Alan Wake is difficult because it wasn’t originally the game we see today. All the inspirations were there when Remedy started making concepts after Max Payne 2’s release in 2003. However, the plan was for a sandbox-style open world with a dynamic day and night cycle and survival mechanics where players fought for their lives when the sun went down. It was showcased at E3 2005, but plans didn’t pan out for various reasons. When it was finally released in May 2010, Alan Wake 1 was a far different game than initially planned.

Alan Wake 2, by comparison, is a game that went through several concepts. It was originally pitched to Microsoft, who didn’t want to make a sequel and eventually turned into Quantum Break. Remedy returned to work on the property around 2017, but plans didn’t pan out, and it was ultimately busy with other projects like Control (we’ll pretend that Crossfire FPS on Xbox doesn’t exist).

Creator Sam Lake and his team continued working on ideas, dubbing it “Project Big Fish.” The total development time for the current version is around four years, and, as Lake has stated, it’s the concept that he was most happy to have gone with.

Remedy’s Biggest Project to Date

Alan Wake wasn’t a small game per se, but its overall scope and scale are fairly contained compared to the likes of Control. Alan Wake 2 is Remedy’s biggest project yet, per Sam Lake. It’s in keeping with his previous declaration about the story being a “monster” with more pages written than any other title under the developer. Given that this was in July 2022, the script has likely grown even larger in the interim.

Ray Tracing

Alan Wake 1 and 2 both use Remedy’s Northlight Engine and just as the sequel looks stunning by today’s standards, so did the first game when it was released in 2010 for Xbox 360. That difference in generations and available technology also means that Alan Wake 2 will feature ray tracing support.

It’s not like this is a first for the developer’s games – Control used ray tracing to excellent effect. With Alan Wake 2, it should be interesting to see how the developer applies its learning (while hopefully still maintaining strong performance on Xbox Series X/S and PS5).

Digital-Only

While Alan Wake 1 had the benefit of digital and physical versions, Alan Wake 2 is digital-only, which means it will retail for $60 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S (as opposed to the $70 tag many big titles are embracing) and $50 on PC. Remedy opted not to release a physical version since that would require a download and would not “make for a great experience.”

Later, game director Kyle Rowley told Eurogamer that going digital only allowed for more “time to polish the game. Like, a significant amount of weeks, actually. Because otherwise, the game that goes on the disc obviously has to be playable without a patch. We didn’t want to release something we weren’t proud of, basically, and we didn’t want players to play. So hopefully, this way, we can give you a better version of the game.”

Playtime

When it comes to playtime, Alan Wake is in line with most linear Xbox 360 titles at the time. You could finish it in about 11 hours when focusing on the story (14 hours or so when doing extra content) but going on a completionist run and finding everything could take around 27 hours. Remedy has expanded on the length of its games since then, with Control being its longest experience yet, requiring almost 12 hours for the story and roughly 19 hours with side content. Going on a completionist run bumps that up to 29 hours or so.

With Alan Wake 2, Remedy aims to go even longer than Control, with Sam Lake saying it would be over 20 hours long when speaking to PCGamesN. That could include the story and side content, but how much longer remains to be seen.

Connections to the Remedy-verse vs a Standalone Experience

While Remedy has embraced the idea of a connected universe between its franchises, it wasn’t always like this back. Alan Wake 1 had several references to Max Payne, including Alex Casey, a fictional character created by Wake who was eventually killed off (in a not-so-subtle nod to Remedy wanting to move on from the third-person shooter series). However, it was still a self-contained story, with no direct connections to the developer’s other works.

That was before Remedy acquired the rights to Alan Wake and began tying it in with its supernatural shooter Control, as seen in AWE. As a result, Alan Wake 2 is part of the Remedy-verse and will even help set up the story for Control 2.

Free DLC

Remedy has already confirmed two expansions for Alan Wake 2, much like with the first game and Control. However, unlike its predecessor, it’s also getting some DLC separate from the expansions that will be free. Speaking at EGX Theater, Same Lake says there will be “pretty significant” with more details set to be revealed after the game’s launch. Will it be something akin to Control’s Expeditions, free for all players after launch, or perhaps New Game Plus? We’ll have to wait for more details.

Resident Evil 2 Remake

Resident Evil 2 Remake is an excellent re-imagining of the survival horror classic, and it stands tall as one of the best remakes of recent memory. The game presents a striking rendition of the familiar Raccoon City, complete with new puzzles and third-person shooting mechanics that make this experience a lot different than the original. While the campaign is definitely on the shorter side, plenty of side content, including but not limited to Ghost Survivors, should keep you occupied for a long time.

Aragami 2

The original Aragami was a surprisingly solid stealth game in a market mostly devoid of such releases, and 2021’s Aragami 2 excellently builds on those foundations to create a sequel that’s both larger and better in more aspects than one. Aragami 2 allows you to take enemies head-on with a brand new combat system, mission objectives are more varied than before, and you can also tackle the many missions with friends thanks to support for co-op – making it a dream come true for stealth game fans.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is the Cross-Gen Bundle, which means you can play it on PS4 and PS5. It offers a new campaign set in the early 1980s during the Cold War with a varied campaign. Zombies is also included for co-op fun, though you may have trouble finding anyone for multiplayer, given the game’s age.

Alan Wake Remastered and Endling – Extinction is Forever are also playable on PS4 and PS5. The former sees writer Alan Wake venturing to Bright Falls and embroiled in a dark mystery based on his own story. It boasts improved visuals with 4K support while offering The Signal and The Writer DLCs. If you’re planning to play Alan Wake 2 when it launches on October 17th, then this is a good place to start (even if it’s not essential).

Endling – Extinction is Forever focuses on a fox who defends her cubs even as pollution ravages the world. While exploring during the day for food, you’ll sneak around during the night. Check out our review for more details.

Serial PS Plus leaker bilbil-kun over on Dealabs is the source of this leak once more, and as per them, offerings for the month of July will include Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (though only the PS4 version), Alan Wake Remastered, and Herobeat Studios’ apocalyptic survival adventure game Endling – Extinction is Forever.

PS4 and PS5 players who are subscribed to any of the three tiers of PlayStation Plus will be able to claim the three games and add them to their libraries throughout the month of July. As per the leaker, they will become available on July 4 and stay up for grabs until August 1.

Stay tuned for the official confirmation from Sony, which should be coming soon.

“There is still a lot of work to be done, but the game is coming together on all fronts. User testing continues, and the feedback from the user research has been encouraging,” said CEO Tero Virtala. He noted, “After seeing how the elements are coming together, I’m confident we will launch an excellent game.”

Revenue was up by seven percent for the third quarter of the year, hitting EUR 7.9 million. Development fees made up 95 percent with Alan Wake 2 and Max Payne 1 and 2 Remake being “key positive contributors.” Royalties for Control, and development fees for Codename Condor (the multiplayer spin-off to Control) and Alan Wake Remastered, decreased.

Interestingly, along with Crossfire, Alan Wake Remastered didn’t generate royalties. In Q1 2022, this was due to Epic Games having yet to, “recoup its development and marketing expenses for the game.”

Alan Wake 2 is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. It’s touted as the “most beautiful Remedy game ever.” After missing the Summer Games Fest showcase, it could have a new reveal at The Game Awards 2022 on December 8th. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

Alan Wake Remastered is now available on the Nintendo Switch. Check out its launch trailer below to see it in action on the platform. As a remaster of a game that’s more than a decade old, the hope is that it will run well on Nintendo’s weaker hardware. If nothing else, this is a game that deserves a well-optimized port.

In our review of Alan Wake Remastered upon its launch last year, we awarded it a score of 8/10, saying, “Alan Wake Remastered easily stands on its own among modern, similar games due to its exceptional design, tight execution, and handful of technical improvements.” Read the full review through here.

Alan Wake Remastered is also available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Remedy Entertainment is also currently working on Alan Wake 2.

“Both of these projects already had a meaningful revenue impact in the last quarter of 2021.” Regarding development on Alan Wake 2 in particular, the report confirmed it’s “in the full production stage. A lot of work remains, but the game is starting to take a more complete form in many areas. As communicated earlier, Alan Wake 2 will be released in 2023.”

This follows creative lead Sam Lake confirming no Summer update for the sequel due to the time needed to create a “proper, polished demo or a trailer,” which could take away from development.

While game royalties continue to roll in from sales of Control (which saw a year-on-year decline), there was no royalty revenue from Alan Wake Remastered in Q1 2022. This is because, “Epic Games Publishing has yet to recoup its development and marketing expenses for the game.” The remaster was recently announced to be coming to Nintendo Switch this Fall.

With The Game Awards 2022 set for December, perhaps we’ll see more of Alan Wake 2 by then. Stay tuned for more details and updates in the meantime.