Summary
In a rare move, Remedy Entertainment has lowered the minimum PC system requirements forAlan Wake 2. The unexpected change arrived as part of the game’s latest patch thatAlan Wake 2players can download as of March 6.
Theoriginal PC system requirements forAlan Wake 2mandated the use of nothing less powerful than the GeForce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600. Remedy’s survival horror wasn’t the first title not to support Nvidia’s GTX 1000 and AMD’s Radeon RX 5000 series, with Nacon’s ARPGSteelrisingalready doing the same a full year earlier. But it is still not common to see 2019 GPUs like the GeForce RTX 2060 being listed under minimum system requirements for new PC releases.
Alan Wake 2 Can Now Run on 8-Year-Old GPUs
What is even less common is to have games lower their hardware requirements post-release. But that’s exactly what Remedy did withAlan Wake 2now, allowing the game to run on GPUs that are up to eight years old. Specifically, its revised minimum system requirements list the GeForce GTX 1070 and Radeon RX 5600 XT, which are one generation older than the previously mandated graphics cards. The developer attributed this surprising change to its recent PC optimization efforts. Those improvements were bundled into a newAlan Wake 2updatethat just became available for download.
While the act of lowering the game’s minimum system requirements is a fairly notable change, this move arrived as part of a patch designated as merely a minor release. Specifically, the latest PC build of the game is identified by version number 1.0.16.1, a designation suggesting it only includes small tweaks relative toAlan Wake 2update 1.0.16, which rolled out in early February.
Alan Wake 2 Lowered PC Requirements With Mesh Shaders Alternatives
As for what exactly Remedy did to lower the game’s hardware requirements, the bulk of its optimization work came down to finding alternate ways to renderAlan Wake 2without relying on mesh shaders. The full extent of the game’s reliance on mesh shaders prior to this patch is unclear, but in theory, these general-purpose shaders can handle a wide variety of tasks, ranging from actual graphics rendering to physics simulations.
The lowered minimum system requirements will be far from the last change to Remedy’s survival horror that’s set to debut in 2024; the Finnish developer has already announced two major expansions for the game that will be coming before the end of the year. The company is alsoplanning to add a photo mode toAlan Wake 2come spring.
Alan Wake 2
WHERE TO PLAY
A string of ritualistic murders threatens Bright Falls, a small-town community surrounded by Pacific Northwest wilderness. Saga Anderson, an accomplished FBI agent with a reputation for solving impossible cases arrives to investigate the murders. Anderson’s case spirals into a nightmare when she discovers pages of a horror story that starts to come true around her.Alan Wake, a lost writer trapped in a nightmare beyond our world, writes a dark story in an attempt to shape the reality around him and escape his prison. With a dark horror hunting him, Wake is trying to retain his sanity and beat the devil at his own game.Anderson and Wake are two heroes on two desperate journeys in two separate realities, connected at heart in ways neither of them can understand: reflecting each other, echoing each other, and affecting the worlds around them.Fueled by the horror story, supernatural darkness invades Bright Falls, corrupting the locals and threatening the loved ones of both Anderson and Wake. Light is their weapon—and their safe haven — against the darkness they face. Trapped in a sinister horror story where there are only victims and monsters, can they break out to be the heroes they need to be?
