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I'm on PC, I'm happy I can set whatever resolution I desire! I can even hook it up to a classic SDTV and play on a really low resolution for shits and giggles! Muahahaha!
Despite all this, it's hard not to feel sorry for Alan Wake. (That is to say, Alan Wake the game - it's easy not to feel sorry for Alan Wake the character, with his melodramatic disposition, endless blathering and silly conviction that the best thing to do when your wife goes missing isn't to just call the police.)
Had Alan Wake been released three years ago, it would have been easy to recommend the game as a solid, polished action-adventure.
The genre has moved on since then. Games such as BioShock have shown how compelling and original storylines can be told in innovative ways. The likes of Uncharted 2 have offered up not just lush visuals but diverse locations and varied gameplay. With Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream broke the rules of game narrative and forced the player not only to think before pulling the trigger, but to feel.
By comparison, Alan Wake is tired and derivative. Everything about it feels dated, from the linear level design to the red-green switch nonsense to the visual stylings (surely not even J Allard has attempted the hoodie-with-jacket combo since 2005). There are plenty of fancy cut-scenes, dramatic voiceovers and cinematic camera angles, but even when Alan Wake does a good job of pretending to be a film you just feel like you're watching a really bad film.
If anything, Alan Wake reminds me of the first Uncharted. It is a great, but flawed work (hello ugly daylight, quirky animations, and a script that mocks the viewer even more than Lost or Twin Peaks) that lays the foundation for what could be an absolutely amazing follow-up. I just hope it doesn't take another five or six years.
"It's ready when it's ready." Developers must love being able to say that. It means they're so rich and successful they don't have to worry about trivialities like release dates. The publisher will wait patiently for them to hand over the finished product, and won't dare bang on about seasonal purchasing trends in the meantime.It suggests they've risen above the situation of most developers, who, on being asked when their game is out, must either lie or reply, "It's ready when the publisher says it's ready / when it's cost so much money we can't afford to buy toilet paper for the office / when the movie's out, even if we haven't finished the final level and none of the cars have wheels."Remedy Entertainment doesn't fall into that category.
RPS: Why release it now?Aki Järvilehto: I think it’s more related to the fact that there are many digital channels we can do use this on now. It wasn’t previously possible. Now that we have the possibility, we just had to go for it.
Is it a coincidence that games published by Microsoft Games Studio (e.g. Gears of War, Fable, etc.) take around two years before they get to the PC?
Steamworks and other details I seem to have stop caring about.
What are the minimum specs for the game?We are still finalising the optimisations and graphics scalability, so some details can still change.This is our current view: OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7 (see below for Windows XP) PROCESSOR: A dual core processor is required: AMD: Athlon X2 2.8GHz Intel: Core 2 Duo 2GHz MEMORY: 2 GB HARD DRIVE: 8 GB VIDEO CARD: DirectX 10 compatible or later with 512MB RAM AMD: ATI Radeon 3650, 4450, 5550, 6450 or higher (per series) NVIDIA: GeForce 8600GT, 9500GT, GT120, GT430, GT520 (per series) SOUND CARD: DirectX 9.0c compatible INPUT: Mouse and keyboard, Xbox360 controller also supportedWhat do I need to run with max settings?For a solid performance Remedy recommends a modern quad-core CPU and a graphics card with around 2000 in 3DMark Graphics Score as seen in here: http://community.futuremark.com/hardware/gpuFor max settings and high resolutions, a top of the line graphics card and CPU is needed.
What graphical customisations will the player be able to make?We are still finalising the options, but the players can naturally adjust resolution, run in full screen or windowed and change numerous graphics quality settings such as anti-aliasing, FXAA, shadow quality, draw distance and so on.The players can also turn off the HUD if they wish. This was a feature many of our fans wanted for Alan Wake Xbox360.
