Digital Foundry has put Alan Wake 2 through the paces on console, and they have come up with some really interesting results.
First things first, Remedy managed to pull off something special with 60 FPS mode. Both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are below the specs that the game needs to run at its best on PC. As a result, Remedy decided to target 30 FPS for both platforms.
However, after the fact, Remedy decided to try and push both consoles on performance. So they made a 60 FPS mode, and then went back in and looked at what things they can cut back and compromise to make 60 FPS feasible.
As explained by Tech4Gamers, Remedy’s solution was to render the game at 847P, and then upscale it back up to 1440p using AMD’s FSR2. So, gamers who choose to play at 60 FPS won’t be playing the game at 847p. However, they will definitely notice that there were visual compromises made so that it could get there.
Other visual changes appear when it comes to textures, shadow quality, foliage density, etc. You can expect that all those little options Remedy added for PC gamers to tinker with are affected on this mode. But then again, Alan Wake 2 is a surreal game even in ‘normal’ mode. So, you can expect a slightly different experience on console at 60 FPS, but some gamers may prefer it that way.
For what it’s worth, the ‘normal’ Quality Mode renders the game at 1270p, and then upscales it to 1440p at 30 FPS, of course also using FSR2.
Moving on, Digital Foundry also compared performance between both consoles. In general, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are perfectly capable of running Alan Wake 2 well. That is impressive, again, considering both have older hardware than what the game was designed for.
But in a closer analysis, Digital Foundry that the PlayStation 5 struggles to match the Xbox Series X when it comes to meeting its performance targets. This results with the PlayStation 5 version feeling unstable at times.
And so, it seems that Remedy is the first game studio to make full use of the Xbox Series X’s capabilities, allowing it to exceed what the PlayStation 5 can do. The PlayStation 5 version is still a perfectly fine port, but in this head to head, its Xbox that has come out ahead.
You can watch the Digital Foundry video to learn more about their testing and results below.
