Review of Alan Wake Remastered – a classic in a new jacket

It’s been a long 11 years since the action psychological thriller Alan Wake was released by the Finnish studio Remedy, which had already successfully launched the Max Payne series. However, the game then had a really unfortunate chosen release date, which in America collided with the expected Red Dead Redemption from Rockstar. The title, which Finnish developers have been working on for about 5 years, has not received the attention it undoubtedly deserves. At the time, it was also an exclusivity for the Xbox 360, and Alan looked at the PC 2 years later. Since then, there has been silence on the footpath, if we do not count the very unsuccessful turn of the American Nightmare.

But a few years ago, Remedy bought the publishing rights back from Microsoft. It was clear that something was going to happen. And it happened. Last summer, the AWE expansion for the game Control was released, which already fully confirmed the interconnectedness of the worlds of Alan Wake and Control, which the developers themselves call Remedy Connected Universe. And now, about a year after the release of the DLC, the original game is back. In a new jacket, with bonus content and for the first time ever on a PlayStation console.

• Platform: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (reviewed version), Xbox One, Xbox Series
• Date of publication: 5. 10. 2021
• Developer: Remedy Entertainment, d3t Ltd
• Publisher: Epic Games Publishing
• Genre: Action adventure, psychological thriller
• Czech localization: Yes, but only on PC
• Multiplayer: Born
• Data to download: 27 to 39 GB (depending on platform)
• Game time: 10 hours
• Sales version: Digital and physical
• Price: 749 CZK (Xzone)

Higher quality remaster

To begin with, the new release of Alan Wake is really a remaster, not a remake. The changes that have taken place in the graphics are definitely not drastic, and you can still see in the game that he has something behind him. Nevertheless, the developers have gone further than usual with remasters, and you will notice some improvements at first glance, whether it is better textures, redesigned cutscenes, new lighting or character models. They stirred up the biggest upheaval at the time of the announcement, because the new face of the main character is quite different from the original one. The developers justify this by saying that they wanted Alan’s appearance to be closer to his real master, which is actor Ilkka Villi.

Some fans didn’t accept the new look very well, but I definitely liked it much more than the original one, and the same can be said for all the other characters. Faces look more believable and much more “human”. At least as far as the static image is concerned, because eye movement and facial animation in general look very unnatural, but this is a problem that the original game and even Control from 2019 already had. players from the original Xbox 360, where the game ran in the now long-surpassed resolution of 544p. The improved version runs on new consoles at 60 FPS and at a resolution of 1440p, which on the other hand is still relatively small given that it is a remaster of an 11-year-old game.

Cursed developers

It could be forgiven if at least the game met its goal, but it doesn’t. On the PlayStation 5, I felt quite noticeable drops in the images in tense situations, which made my experience very uncomfortable. And I’m not even talking about cutscenes, where the declines of FPS are even worse and in some parts there is clearly suffering to look at them at all. In short and well, the optimization failed and it was actually one of the concerns I had before the release. In addition to Remeda, the d3t studio, which has the infamous remaster of Mafia 2, also worked on the improved version. The result in the case of Alan Wake is not so catastrophic, but it is still very unsatisfactory. We can only hope that the optimization will be improved by a possible patch, but the developers did not talk about any.

So Remaster improves the graphics in several respects, but it has not interfered with the gameplay, unless we count the support for the DualSense driver, which I consider relatively successful. The haptic is relatively weak, but the adaptive triggers in the game work for one, especially when using a flashlight. As a result, it is quite a pity that Remedy chose a mere remaster and not a more significant remake, because it is clear that it is an older title. The combat system is still fun, but the character’s movement is strangely choppy, and if you want to jump over an obstacle, you’ll soon start cursing Alan because of his inability to do so. I can also mention the still unresolved stamina, which doesn’t even have a pointer in the remaster, so you have to remember how far Alan will run when sprinting before he gets tired. And it must be said that it is not much, although it is this defect that I am willing to forgive him due to his profession.

We only get to the worst now. This is a camera that unfortunately remained exactly the same as in the original, which means that you can not determine one angle (over the right or left shoulder), but the game constantly changes your view itself, which after a few hours can really drive you crazy. . And given the theme of the whole game, I’m not sure if the developers happened to be thinking about it all the time so that we could get used to Alan’s skin better. Anyway, this is a big flaw that the remaster definitely had to fix.

Extra content or insufficient goods

But enough about the improvements, I would like to focus on one more aspect, which is the bonus content. Unfortunately, he is not very rich. If I don’t count the fairly successful DLC The Signal and The Writer, which were originally released separately after the game’s release, there’s only one extra thing – a comment from desginer Sam Lake, who is behind the story of the whole game. He is really good and you will learn a lot of new information not only in the development and story of the game Alan Wake, but also about Control and how these two titles are connected. But beware, Sam Lake often runs into spoilers here, so turn on the comment only if you have already completed both games.

And finally, I would like to address one more thing that is missing. This is a product placement, which was represented in the original game to a relatively large extent. The flashlights had the Energizer brand, the cars Ford and the ads for the telecommunications company Verizon everywhere. All brands have disappeared in the remaster and although someone may not like it, in my opinion it’s just good, because such a product placement is more to the detriment of the game and spoils the impression a bit.

But that’s practically all that remaster offers, so the question arises: Is it worth buying? If you didn’t play the original game, you definitely did. You’ll probably struggle with control a bit, but it’s definitely worth the story and the whole lore of this game. If you played Alan Wake on the Xbox 360, I would also recommend the remaster, as the shift in graphics is significant. But if you played the game on a PC, it only depends on whether you are interested in additional comment by Sam Lake, because I do not think that the improved graphics will be a sufficient attraction for PC players.

And what next with the Alan Wake brand? I believe that the expansion of AWE for Control and the remaster of the first game is a clear proof that we will really see the coveted second Alan Wake soon. After all, the developers from Remedy make no secret of the fact that another, larger project is being created in cooperation with Epic Games.