Talk:Alan Wake II

I tried running the game with the EGS in offline mode and my NIC disabled in Device Manager, just out of curiosity. I get a message (from the game not the EGS) when I launch it saying "The game failed to connect or authenticate with your Epic account. Third-party overlays may prevent the game from resolving this issue. Please try disabling third-party overlays temporarily and restart the game.".

This isn't on first launch or anything either (got like ~18 hours playtime). So dose the game have some kind of DRM that requires a internet connection to play the game?

I tried disabling Afterburner and RTSS to be sure. Same thing. It shows the Remedy logo and then that pops up and it closes the game.

I fully admit I could be missing something, which is why I wanted to ask you guys.

You have to launch the game with the -EpicPortal command, otherwise it won't run without the Epic launcher. There are caveats to doing that, though, so make sure you check the notes.

The game can be launched without the Epic Launcher with the "-EpicPortal" commandline argument, but with caveats. See the game page for more info.

Yea I saw that. Was wondering if that was the only option for offline play or just a unofficial way to run the game without running the launcher. Because it is nice to have that workaround but the weird things that don't work, mainly not being able to use a controller are def a bummer if you are in a situation where your internet is out or whatever. The official marketing etc. never mentions a internet connection being required to play. I get and understand why it's needed for the first launch of the game.

Huh. So do you think it's fair to say this game requires a internet connection? Just curious what people think. Usually people get pretty upset about "always online" DRM. I saw a post from a Xbox user who said they were playing when their internet went out because Verizon was doing some maintenance on the Fios service in his area. He said

"I was playing the game then it cut off saying I need to be online to play. Then Verizon told me that Fios internet is out in my area for the next 5 hours because of updates or something. Why do I need to be online to play a single player game that is downloaded to my console?"

But newest console I have is a PS3 so IDK if that's normal on console or not.

Always online DRM is rare for consoles, there's one game I know of. Star Trek Bridge Crew on PS4 requires internet to play single player.

I think once you activate online - link the game to your EPIC account you could play offline. The only question that remains for how long will it work offline? There certainly must be a time limit to authenticate against EPIC servers again, I guess.

Mouse input makes the game appear like there's a lot of judder when looking around, even when panning slowly with a lower mouse sensitivity, despite having perfectly stable frame times and frame rate using Gsync + a framerate limiter like RTSS for 100% consistency.

It seems more pronounced the lower the framerate is within the variable refresh window, makes it look and feel like Gsync isn't working, but when using the analog stick of a gamepad or just moving the character and view with the keyboard alone shows things are perfectly smooth and Gsync is obviously active. It's only the mouse input that's funky and creating this judder.

Anyone experiencing this behavior or have a possible solution? Very strange, I can't remember anything behaving quite like this with its mouse input in recent memory. Pretty much have to use a gamepad if I want to play it now, which isn't that big of a deal for this style of game, but I would still prefer to sit up close with mouse+keyboard.

Huh weird. I have ~5 hours and honestly never used M&K. Booted up the game just now to test, mouse movement/panning etc is just as smooth as using my xbox one controller.

I have a VRR monitor ("G-sync compatible") and VRR turned on (using a 3080).

What mouse do you have?

I have a Razer deathadder elite set to 1000Hz polling and 3500 DPI.

I'm using a Logitech G Pro @ 1000hz, tried various rates and dpis and no difference in this juddery mouse input behavior. Even tried plugging in and old wired USB mouse that's running at 125hz by default, same deal.

If you're willing to test one more thing, how does the mouse behave at a lower framerate within your monitor's variable refresh range? Since my performance isn't great, I can really only get close to the high end in a small interior location like the mind place, and trying that out just now, I see that mouse input is absolutely smoother up there.

When I cap the fps lower for total frametime consistency, the obvious judder on the mouse is in full effect, currently 50fps for example. All the other demanding games I've done this with do not judder using the mouse to look with a lower framerate in the Gsync window. It's almost like the mouse input alone is being affected by the framerate/refresh rate mismatch despite Gsync still being in effect and it not happening at all on the keyboard or gamepad input, zero judder there. Truly baffling to me.

Yes exactly, why nobody is talking about that, it's so fucking annoying!! It forces me to constantly switch from mouse to controller... I also have a deathadder at 1000hz and 1800dpi. Mouse sensitivity in-game is at 32

vsync is on btw

I noticed it too. Also had this problem with Control.

I *thought* i found a solution by limiting my refresh rate to half my native refresh rate but ultimately the results weren't great.

This should be fixed in the latest patch

Alan Wake 2 is performing very well for me but i noticed two annoying problems:

I get some stutters during the subliminal flashes (you know, the ones at the very beginning of the game) and also the map textures load a bit slow (about a second after i open it).

Does anybody else has experienced something similar? Any solution?

The map textures taking a sec to load in every time is a known thing. I've seen it happen the exact same way on streams where the streamer has a extremely high end PC, or any gameplay I've watched of the PC version. All of them have that thing where the map textures take a sec to load in. IDK if it dose the same thing on PS5 or Xbox, but the map textures don't load any quicker those higher end PC's than on mine (8700K, RTX 3080, PCI-E 3.0 NVME SSD). It's not awful but def a noticeable thing.

I know sometimes, not always but sometimes those flashes are to mask loading, it will basically keep looping/playing until its done loading. And yea when it's doing it for that reason and basically not as a jump scare it will stutter, for me it's very minor, like a split second. Doesn't effect gameply because it happens while the video is playing. So far it seems they only use it for that to load small areas since obv it will prob be quick. Keep an eye out for the spinning circle thing in the top right when it happens.

You could try playing with the Texture Quality setting. It should just represent the memory pool and maybe you have it set high so the textures get swapped in/out. What GPU do you have? How much VRAM it has?

4090/13700K. I think VRAM shouldn't be an issue. :)

I also tried playing on the lowest possible settings (just for science) - the texture problem still persist.

I also had issues near the game's end where the map and the whole mind space was acting weird at times... In that case, you've probably found the answer. It's not your HW but game and the future game updates may fix these issues.

There is a way to disable AA via the INI FILE.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fu**TAA/comments/17h2p25/alan_wake_ii_does_not_have_forced_taabut_forced/

(** = ck) - change to get the url correct.

Credit to loonelywolf

"if anyone whants to get rid of the taa just edit the

"m_eSSAAMethod": 0,

"m_fSSAASharpening": 0.0,

in AppData/Local/Remedy/Alan wake 2 Renderer,leave it like mine

the game runs much better and looks better."

I have tested it and it does work. DLSS and FSR will both be disabled if activated.

Looks like it was added anyways just now. Thanks for whoever did it.

You're welcome.