Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake 2: The Lake House, the latest expansion of the survival game, is out on Sunday (27 October). And gamers are poring over one specific feature: the reflections.
“The Lake House is definitely winning in the ‘Best Elevator Reflections of the Year’ category,” CD Projekt RED’s Radek Grabowski joked on X referring to the impressive ray racing – presumably on PC.
The new expansion looks like it continues Remedy’s aim to push what it can achieve in photorealism, and ray tracing makes a notable difference from the blurry reflections in console versions of the game until now (see our pick of the best laptops for game development if your working in game design yourself).
The Lake House is definitely winning in the ‘Best Elevator Reflections of the Year’ category. 🤩 pic.twitter.com/jokjIH9DU9October 23, 2024
The original Alan Wake 2 game was released last year and Night Springs expansion in June. The game was developed, no not in Unreal Engine 5, but in Remedy’s proprietary Northlight Engine, which is getting stunning results. We previously interviewed the VFX and art teams about how they crafted the chilling survival horror vision.
Alan Wake 2 is available for PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S. See prices on the best games consoles below.
Ray tracing is a lighting technique used in a variety of rendering algorithms for generating digital images. It’s capable of creating much more realistic looking visuals, in particular reflections, but at a cost in terms of performance compared to traditional rasterised rendering.
Implementation can vary wildly, and it requires modern AMD or Nvidia graphics cards. While Xbox Series X and PS5 support ray tracing, but it has remained inferior to on PC. It should be greatly improved in the new PS5 Pro.
