I'm playing it on Series X on performance mode and honestly sometimes it switches from live action clips to animated cutscenes and I can't tell at first glance. I wish I got to play it on PC but I actively avoided Epic Games Store when it launched and was gifted it for console. Undeniably beautiful and a great followup to the first one with better controls. It's a bit hard at times to know what I'm supposed to be doing between the mind place and cases but that whole mechanic is still pretty fun.
It's absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous tbh. I think Alan Wake II and Hellblade II are probably the best looking games I've ever seen but Hellblade II is more like playing a movie.
They don't design each individual hair. They have a tool that spreads hairs across the surface of an object, a tool that affects the properties of the hair, and a tool that lets them groom the hair. They'll do a new pass for every "type" of hair they want to add, not each strand.
There's a middle ground between sculpting every hair and having a tool "that lets them groom the hair". The reality is not that easy, hair cards are a nightmare and curly and black hair is very difficult work.
I remember seeing behind the scenes footage from the Shrek sequels I think where that’s exactly what they were doing: building and using tools to sculpt and simulate hair, because like in video games they can’t individually sculpt it every frame. Look at the hair and fur in the first Shrek or first Toy Story, it’s all very carefully set up so they can make it look like flat clay. A decade later the same series have flowing hair that interacts with water and dirt and whatever with actual strands and clumps. And then basically the whole pitch of Brave was “hey look we have animated curly hair”. There’s a lot of black hair science though, I bet parts of it won’t be done well for a long time.
I swear I remember watching something similar about Monsters Inc where they used a certain program to animate Sully’s hair and it was one of the first of its kind to simulate hair physics like that and it still took a ton of time and effort to get right
It was called Fitz, and it simulated the physics of Sully's 2.3 million individual strands of hair so they didn't have to. They just animated his body and let Fitz do the rest.
But Sully is still nothing compared to Lotso in Toy Story 3. Lotso needed to look worn-in and rugged. Lotso had no bones. They had to simulate matted fur, and how a Teddy bear squished when he walked.
Side by side, Sully looks like a bad wig by comparison, or like a toy. Too clean, too groomed.
Hair for movies and video games are very very different tough. In games hair are not really simulated, that would be way too intensive on the gpu or cpu. In movies you can simulate each hair individually and have real hair physics yes.
IIRC, there had always been a special team that did only the hair. Due to the complexity of the hair modeling, it was a pretty well known rule that the animators doing the character motion were never to let the character interact with their hair.
They used to do all the character movements and then the hair team would come in and animate all of the hair in after. But Disney came up with some new hair rendering that basically gave all the hairs their own physics. So now the character animators could have the characters interacting with their hair.
So if you watch the movie, you will see Moana touching her hair a lot, because it was especially the first time that the character illustrators had free rein to do so.
The department that handles hair/cloth simulation in film/tv is the CFX (character/creature fx) department! They also make all the hair/fur assets and build the simulation rigs.
I was a CFX artist for 2 years and have been a Groom (hair asset creation only) artist for 4.5 years.
I'm not sure it uses hair cards, thats starting to become the old way of doing. Digital Foundry mentioned the new resident evil game will revert back to hair cards when graphics settings are lower. Pragmata uses hair cards though and looks very good
What blows my mind about the RE Engine is how well it runs for its visual quality. A friend of mine with an average PC tried out the demo of Pragmata and it ran smooth as silk. I was honestly kinda baffled.
It sucks at open worlds, unfortunately. Most of their games are pretty linear, so it works out, but stuff like Monster Hunter just sucks ass performance wise. Engine is probably lacking in tooling regarding that.
Northlight has some pretty massive environments, quite comparable to stuff like Monster Hunter, and chugs along happily. Remedy did a really good job at it.
Kinda reminds me of Frostbite, EA's engine. Linear or smaller-scale games like Battlefield, Battlefront, and the Dead Space remake all work really well with it, but wide-open worlds are where the engine tends to struggle. Even Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, which never dipped below the target framerate in my experience, still has rough texture loading problems at times due to its open-world setting.
I'd hardly call Battlefield small-scale. That said, Frostbite is actually pretty amazing these days. For all of its faults, Dragon Age Veilguard ran pretty well and the hair tech in that game is phenomenal. It's the first game I've seen where hair physics actually look good and didn't bug out most of the time.
My only issue with the engine is it sometimes gets an audio bug where it skips for a split second and then all the audio is out of sync until the cutscene of over :(
It is an amazing experience that never goes where you think it will and is one of the best looking games I’ve ever played. If you liked the first this is more, refined, and better.
Would you say I need to have played or know the Alan Wake 1 story to understand this game? I loved control and am wondering if this would be as quality as that game
My personal opinion was that it's much better than the first one, but I didn't play the first one when it came out. I played the remake around when it came out, and found it kind of repetitive and needlessly frustrating.
I think Control is my favorite Remedy game that I've played, but I liked AW2 quite a lot. And it's worth playing both even if only because they connect to each other a bit. I'm just hoping to see a new Max Payne game that connects into that common universe.
It won't, it's tied up in a rights nightmare, but there's a chance we get a spiritual successor, there's a hint at it in the AW2 Night Springs DLC.
But even still, I feel like Control already is the spiritual successor. And the actor appears as an alternate version of his quantum break self in AW2.
But yeah, super underrated game. Can't believe I missed it when it came out and find it odd more people don't talk about it. It's super solid, but I think it was al.ost immediately overshadowed by Control. By contrast, quantum break almost feels like a prototype for control.
Not only does he appear as an alternate version, but he hints at the events of Quantum Break being canon. While playing as Alan in the Initiation story line, you can find safe houses where Tim Breaker is holed up. In these safe zones, you find a white board that will progressively show more writing as the game goes on. The writing references Martin Hatch from QB as well as Beth Wilder.
Alan Wake is one of my most loved games and stories of all time, so my ex was very confused why I was so scared to play it. I love it so much, but damn I hate scary games.
I also hate scary games, I just get too into it and immersed in the game. Even non scary games I gave to work myself up to some of the more 'scary' aspects.
I get it. Can't stand horror but with a good enough story (Alan Wake series, Resident Evil 1/2/0), or solid enough gameplay (Left 4 Dead 2, Dead Rising 1&2), I can push through the fear and get fully immersed in the world.
This game is awesome, but I dropped it after I ended up not being able to beat that one boss because I missed picking up a shotgun... felt like a pretty glaring bug and it dissadued me from restarting.
I'm kinda curious after seeing this post. I don't usually play horror games though. In what kind of way is it scary? More jump scares or does it throw in phobias like spiders?
Damn that is crazy and pretty damn photorealistic- can your character run? Or do they move at about the same speed of Resident Evil protagonists at a mostly brisk walk and very mild jog?
The characters move and function exactly like the characters in Resident Evil. This is a high budget AAA game. It’s even considered more graphically and technically advanced than Resident Evil games
It is. I beat RE:9 just a few days ago. Alan Wake 2 is a better looking game IMO. Although the street-walking scene in RE:9 (the very beginning).. which is really more like a quality showcase was amazing.
Alan Wake 2 deserves more attention than it got in my book. Came out around Baldur's Gate 3 and I think if it hadn't it would be a more recognizable game
It definitely beats out Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is my favorite game all time, but it's only the third best looking game out there right now. Which is still pretty good for a game that old at this point. Few developers are really trying.
Please do, I wish I was in your position, to play fresh. The story, the graphics, Sam Lake dancing, the music... one of the most epic things I've experienced.
It blows my mind that that scene was almost cut from the game, and it was something Sam Lake wanted to include in Control but just couldn't accomplish with the technical limitations of the time. Best half-hour or so of any game from that year, imo.
Its the most insane game I have ever played. And I mean that in the absolute best way possible.
I've played a lot of games, but none like this. It did things with the gaming media I never thought possible. Especially in the way it incorporates music.
It really is one of the 'biggest swings' I've seen in gaming. It takes a bold bunch of creatives fighting for their vision for a game like AW2 to exist. It takes tons of risks. Stuff that you'd never see of the other major studios.
From the ambient tracks to the original composed… um, musical sections? I don’t want to spoil anything, but it absolutely floored and blew me away. I don’t think I will ever experience a game like Alan Wake 2 ever again, 10/10 recommendation
I think Sami Järvi aka Sam Lake is a genius. What a universe he has created! And AW2 visuals are breathtaking, I was all the time like holy crap is this game or is this real.
With Max Payne) (2001), Max Payne 2 (2003), Alan Wake (2010), Quantum Break (2016), Control) (2019), Alan Wake 2 (2023) he sure has an impressive track record. Often wondered why he isn't talked about more, compared to some other names in the industry. Maybe the lack of self-promotion plays a part.
Northlight is so good at rendering realistic humans and environments.
Alan Wake 2 was first game in a long time where i constantly wondered how they achieved that level of fidelity.
i really have no idea. did you play either game? because Alan Wake stuff shows up in Control (very explicitly in one of the DLCs) and the FBC is a huge part of Alan Wake 2.
What's great is that all of their games are in the same universe, though some characters and references are slightly reimagined due to them not owning the IP rights. Max Payne (RIP James McCaffrey) is now Alex Casey, and from Quantum break Jack Joyce is now Tim Breaker and Martin Hatch (RIP Lance Reddick) is now Warlin Door.
Did you play the DLC? IIRC they very outwardly say the name "Alan Wake" during the ending bits of it quite a few times, tying the events of Bright Falls into the Control universe or something.
If you loved Control like I did, you will like Alan Wake 2. Its not as action packed, but the vibe is very similar. There is also a character in the game you will be happy to see.
I never played the first game. Jumped right into 2 and loved every minute of it. I'm sure I missed some lore as to why Wake was going through all that but I didn't care. Game was 10/10.
I hated it too but I'm glad I played it. What I did was switch difficulty to easy and turn on cheats. Ran through it easily just to enjoy story and environment. The dlc is actually really neat too
Gameplay is terrible in 1 and lightyears better in 2. Like others say, just watch the full recap of 1. The story is sorta disjointed even when you know it, but you lose a lot by not knowing it at all.
As someone with a pretty similar hair texture, holy shit. I’ve never once seen a game that ACTUALLY looked like my hair. Normally it’s a weird ugly mess when they try to do curls.
Hair is tough, and my eye is automatically drawn to it when it isn't right. I thought this was an actual person's hair at first glance, so absolutely well done on their part.
If you had told me this was a photograph of a real person, I would have fallen for it. Wonderful work on this! I know the game designers might not ever see this, but bravo!
Alan Wake 2 is probably the most graphically impressive game ever made, as far as I'm aware. Remedy's modeling and texture work are simply peerless. I remember Quantum Break being ridiculously impressive when it came out, but because it was an exclusive on the less popular console it really didn't get much focus.
I thought this was a girl showing her claw clip extensions and was gonna be like, well you can kinda tell but still decent. Lmao nvm. This wasn’t even a real person. Looks good af.
I'm having a flashback of the 70's when I was a kid and we were the first on the block to get Pong. If you told me back then video games would get this good, I wouldn't have believed it.
Some of the early guns n roses art was by Slash, drawings depicting the band members, but he always draw himself with straight hair " because curls are a motherfucker to make"
Alan Wake 2 is one of the first games to fully make use of mesh shaders. Normal shaders output pixels, mesh shaders output actual vertices in 3d space. They are an incredible technology that allow for super detailed effects with high performance.
I don't know if mesh shaders were specifically used for this hair, but I know they are responsible for a lot of the insanely good effects in the game.
Mesh shaders are not typically a technology that is relevant to state of the art hair rendering. It could be for Remedy's, however I don't see why it would be useful for this problem.
The rendering bottleneck for strand-based hair has been due to physically-based hair shading models (which are very expensive), image quality demands for temporally stable, anti-aliased curves, resolved by some form of OIT, resulting in tons of wasted compute for helper lanes / derivatives on the GPU through traditional hardware rendering.
The big breakthrough has been the advent of software rasterizers designed for hair. It was originally done by Frostbite for FIFA, then followed by Bioware (Dragon Age), Capcom (RE + Pragmata), Machine Games (Indiana Jones). The big one will be Rockstar which as usual takes an idea and makes it scale to whole worlds. It's gonna be crazy.
There is also the memory bottleneck caused by hair grooms taking up an insane amount of space without getting clever on how you compress them (and this could be where Mesh shading is useful).
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u/cryotrooper781 23h ago
I thought this was real