Before Alan Wake 2 came out, Remedy and NVIDIA were advertising it as a game that would feature full Path Tracing. But when the game came out, it appeared to have numerous issues. In our eyes, the game didn’t use full Path Tracing effects. We wrote about this in the past, and some people heavily criticized us. However, in its latest PC video, DigitalFoundry came to the same conclusion. DF found that Alan Wake 2 doesn’t use the full suite of Ray Tracing. So, it seems like we were right all along.
Now before continuing, I want to make it crystal clear that even with its issues, the path-traced version of Alan Wake 2 looks great on PC. However, it’s not as transformative as Portal RTX, Quake 2 RTX or even Cyberpunk 2077 with its PT Overdrive Mode. In short, you won’t be missing much if just stick with Ray Tracing. Hell, the game looks great even without Ray Tracing or Path Tracing.
In the video, Alex did a great job and did not overlook the game’s PT issues. Basically, he talked about all of the issues we raised, like the missing indirect shadows. In many parts of the game, the game seems to use a mix of rasterization and path-tracing effects. These tricks sometimes don’t work well together and can cause visual issues. But the good thing is that this mix makes the game run smoother and faster. That’s why Alan Wake 2 can use path tracing and still be playable, while something like Portal RTX is tough to run with its full path tracing mode.
Alongside the missing shadows, Alan Wake 2 has major shadow radius issues with Ray Tracing and Path Tracing. In short, you’ll see the RT/PT shadows being formed right in front of you while moving. This can be really distracting. A setting to increase the quality of these shadows would have been great.
This is why we called this “Path Tracing Lite.” It’s clear that Remedy had to make some compromises to use path tracing in the game. So, let’s hope that the developers will add an Ultra+ setting for Path Tracing in a future update.
Lastly, be sure to read our PC Performance Analysis. You can also find here our “DLSS 3.5, Ray Tracing and Path Tracing” benchmarks.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email