Alan Wake 2 PC Version Makes Unexpected Change

06.03.2024 - 20:50 / gamerant.com / Saga Anderson / Alan Wake / Dominik Bo

In a rare move, Remedy Entertainment has lowered the minimum PC system requirements for Alan Wake 2. The unexpected change arrived as part of the game's latest patch that Alan Wake 2 players can download as of March 6.

The original PC system requirements for Alan Wake 2 mandated 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 ARPG Steelrising already 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.

What is even less common is to have games lower their hardware requirements post-release. But that's exactly what Remedy did with Alan Wake 2 now, 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 new Alan Wake 2 update that 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 to Alan Wake 2 update 1.0.16, which rolled out in early February.

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 render Alan Wake 2 without 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 also planning to add a photo mode to Alan Wake 2 come spring.

Alan Wake 2 debuted in October 2023, nearly fifteen years after its predecessor first hit stores. Remedy's survival-horror game tells a dual-protagonist story, with one part following the eponymous writer while the other revolving around an agent named Saga Anderson.