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What kind of specs will the PC need to run Alan Wake? (UPDATED)

Nothing is certain about the specifications but you will need Windows Vista and a fairly high spec PC. Remedy have showcased Alan Wake running smoothly on an Intel Core 2 Quad system overclocked at 3.73Ghz with GeForce 7900GTX.

Markus from Remedy has said “Alan Wake would pretty much not run on any single core processors, although it may be possible to run on single-core Pentium 4 processors with Hyper Threading enabled, with noticably reduced image quality/experience.”

The game will use a separate processing thread dedicated to physical calculations. Since Remedy is using Havok, there is no support for Ageia PhysX cards, so all the physical calculations are done using the CPU. Markus has explained that a normal Core 2 Quad will use 80% of one core for physical calculations.

Why the name “Alan Wake”?

The game is about a horror writer, he writes his stories based on his nightmares, his nightmares become true, probably that’s the origin of this name!

What is the story about?

Alan Wake is a bestselling horror writer. Early on in his career, his fiancée was his muse. When he’d first met her, he had started to see strange dreams which he used as material for his first book. The book was a big success. It was a dream come true. But then Wake’s fiancée vanished without a trace. Wake was devastated. After that, he couldn’t write anymore. His dreams stopped and he began to suffer from insomnia. At the beginning of the game, Wake travels to a sleep clinic to seek treatment for his condition. The secluded clinic is located near the small town of Bright Falls, Washington, far away from the stressful urban lifestyle. Receiving treatment at the clinic, Wake is able to sleep again. At the clinic, he meets a mysterious woman who is the very image of his missing fiancée, uncannily so. At once, his dreams return, this time as terrible nightmares. Wake begins to write again: a new book based on those nightmares. But something is horribly, horribly wrong. Impossibly, the town of Bright Falls starts to change to something awful that bears a close resemblance to Wake’s new book. Wake ends up fighting for his life with a gun and a flashlight in his hands, trying to understand what’s happening.

Multiplayer?

There will be no multiplayer in this game.

“We have all kinds of ideas related to replayability, but we want to prototype them further before we’ll talk about them.” - Sam Lake

“We’d much rather give the players a great single-player game, than a mediocre single and multiplayer game.” -Petri Järvilehto

How interactive is Bright Falls?

The player can explore buildings and talk with Non Player Characters (NPC’s).

Is the game similar to Grand Theft Auto?

“Alan Wake is more tightly character-driven and story-oriented. Meaning that the player’s goals and missions are closely focused around Alan Wake and his story. Also, the setting, the tone and the game being an action thriller all set it clearly apart from the GTA games.” – Sam Lake “Intense cinematic action is something that we love to do, and Alan Wake features tense combat gameplay as well, but all things considered the game has a lot more emphasis on adventure and exploration that what Max Payne did.” – Petri Järvilehto

“Driving is an integral part of the game” - Petri Järvilehto

Will there be wildlife in the game?

Yes

Max Payne has bullet-time, what will Alan Wake have?

“We believe that our approach with Alan Wake will provide the players with a new take with the combat style and gameplay. We’re not revealing any details yet though.” - Sam Lake “The combat is not purely about gunplay. The use of light plays an important role in the combat, and different light sources provide new gameplay angles there.” - Petri Järvilehto

Alan Wake is a free-roaming game, will there be parts of the map to unlock?

“We’ll open more of the game world as the game progresses. The area is so large, that we want the players to become familiar with a smaller subset of the world, before we introduce new locations and new areas.” - Sam Lake

Are there alternate methods to completing the missions?

“The basic idea with the free-roaming world is that we give the player goals, and then the player can go about achieving those goals in the way he chooses.” - Sam Lake

How does light have an effect on gameplay?

Light will weaken or hurt Wake’s enemies, and creatively taking advantage of any and all light sources within Alan Wake’s grim world ought to be one of the interesting aspects of play.

Loading times? (UPDATED)

Utilising multiple cores, the game will seamlessly generate vast areas of the game world for the graphics card to render.

Where is Bright Falls located?

Washington, USA.

Where did the ideas for Alan Wake come from?

“The TV-series Twin Peaks is one of our sources of inspiration. The location in the game is similar, an idyllic small town in the state of Washington with something threatening waiting under the surface. The TV show also had an excellent nightmarish atmosphere. The works of the author Stephen King is another source of inspiration. He has used the idea of a writer whose life turns to a nightmare in several of his stories.” - Sam Lake

How long will it take to complete Alan Wake?

The story arc of Max 2 was modeled after that of a movie. With Alan Wake our template is a season of a TV-series. Alan Wake, season 1, if you will. Remedy is definately aiming for a longer gameplay duration.

Will Alan Wake use the comic-book style of narrative like Max Payne?

“The graphic novel screens, we feel, were a Max Payne specific thing. With Alan Wake we want to integrate the story more tightly to the gameplay. There will be cinematic in-game cutscenes, but more importantly there will be scripted events, and we want to have the important NPCs around in the game as much as possible while the player is in control. Voice-over narration was a very useful tool that we used in Max Payne, and it’s something we are considering for Alan Wake as well, but done in the style that’s quite different from Max Payne.” - Sam Lake

Will there be any Alan Wake sequels?

Yes Alan Wake is going to be part of a series. Each game is part of a “season” of a TV-series style template.

How large is the game world? (NEW)

36 square miles.

It all sounds great. I'll stick with my dual core CPU though.

PC + 360 pad = WIN.

Running smoothly on an Intel Core 2 quad overclocked at 3.73GHz with a GeForce 7900 lol well damn I would sincerely hope that a game would run smoothly with that hardware..software requirements are starting to look just as beastly as the hardware its running on.

It's all for show . "OMG! U needz teh quad-core for teh ULTIMATE experience"...pffft!

I wish we would get new information on when this is coming out. The wait is so long!

I'm ready to see 36 square miles of free-roaming goodness.

That's insanely huge.

Yeah, but Just Cause was huge and that actually got irritating to travel around in, for me at least.

yeah but a lot of teh just cause world was the same, like 90% trees n' grass. Alan Wake looks much better.maybe theyll put in a fast travel feature like in tes4.

i dont think Alan Wake is gonna look anywhere near as nice on the 360 as it did in that vid...

Its not even coming out at this rate...

Apparantly, you can now use a bicycle, and will allow faster traveling time. you just cant attack while riding

so what guns will be making an appearance? all i have seen is a six shooter so far. would like something like a barretta in there. i bet they have a similar gun loadout as resident evils use to have. a pistol, a shotgun, an automatic rifle and a more powerful pistol. could be wrong, i mean maybe it will only be pistols, after all he needs a hand free to hold the torch