Alan Wake 2 on PC might run better for you now

Remedy lowered the game’s demanding PC requirements
Alan Wake 2 on PC might run better for you now
Alan Wake 2 on PC might run better for you now /

You might have an easier time running Alan Wake 2 on PC, as Remedy lowered the horror game’s PC requirements after a new round of optimizations. While you’ll still need a beefy PC to hit 60fps at max or even medium settings, older and less powerful computers should manage to get stable performance at lower settings now.

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The change went into effect in Alan Wake 2 version 1.0.16.1, a free update that’s live now.

The specs remain unchanged for everything above the minimum required settings, but considering how demanding those minimums were before, it’s still a pretty big difference. At launch, Remedy said you needed an RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600 just to get the game running, but now, Alan Wake 2’s minimum requirements are a GTX 1070 or Radeon RX 5600 XT.

That’s enough to get you 30 FPS at 1080p, and it also supports “quality” settings for DLSS and FSR 2 upscaling software. You’ll still need 6 GB of VRAM and 16 GB of RAM, along with an Intel i5 processor or AMD equivalent. Ray tracing is still out of reach for folks running the minimum specs.

Higher quality and faster framerate requirements remain the same. If you want 1440p or 60fps, you’ll need an RTX 3060 or higher, and 4K and ray tracing requirements range from an RTX 3070 at low settings to an RTX 4080 at high settings.

It’s pretty unusual to see a PC game’s requirements lowered after launch, though it’s certainly welcome in Alan Wake 2’s case. Remedy didn’t say if it plans on further optimizations to lower the recommended specs for higher settings.

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Josh Broadwell
JOSH BROADWELL

Josh is a freelance writer and reporter who specializes in guides, reviews, and whatever else he can convince someone to commission. You may have seen him on NPR, IGN, Polygon, or Rolling Stone shouting about RPGs. When he isn’t working, you’ll likely find him outside with his Belgian Malinois and Australian Shepherd or leveling yet another job in FFXIV.