Alan Wake PC is almost upon us, but have you ever wondered what has been changed or tweaked between the PC and the X360 version? Naturally, most of you think that the game’s resolution is the only thing changed. Well, you are wrong. There are some additional juicy differences between these two versions and Remedy’s Markus has revealed them. Shadows, SSAO, Volumetric Lights, GodRay and LOD distance have been either improved or added to the PC, so keep reading to find out what has been changed.
As you may have heard, the X360 version of Alan Wake ran with a mix of 960×544 and 1280×720, while some features like fog particles were rendered in half resolution. Moreover, the X360 version featured a “smart vsync” where Vsync was set to on if the frame rate was above 30, and off if it was below 30. PC will feature an option to either enable or disable VSync and will not feature that “smart vsync” and all features will be rendered in full resolution.
Alan Wake X360 featured 4xAA, while the PC will support both MSAA and FXAA. Some textures where it was important had Anisotropic filtering on Xbox (like the road texture with the yellow line), but most were trilinear filtered only. Naturally, PC gamers can select Anisotropic filtering for all textures which will further improve the distant visuals. And as we’ve said in the past, the PC version will feature re-worked textures here and there.
The Shadow Quality and Backdrop Quality on the X360 build were somewhere around the medium settings of the PC version, whereas the Volumetric Light Quality and SSAO Quality where at low settings. This basically means that the PC version will get better lighting and thanks to SSAO, environments and rooms won’t look as flat as in X360. Another cool feature – that has a noticeable performance hit – is the God-Rays that were turned off in X360, except for some specific scenes (with its overall quality being lower than the ‘High’ setting). PC will have this enabled at all times.
Last but not least, PC gamers will be able to adjust LOD and FOV. For your interest, both of those settings were at the middle for the X360. PC version will also have a CTRL modifier that enables walk speed. Oh, and the Draw Distance was set at Full in the X360 version.
Alan Wake PC is currently slated for a February 16th release and there is already a Steam page for it, though you can’t pre-order it.
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.”
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