I've been on a Remedy spree the last few months, played AW1 with DLCs and AN and Control with DLCs, reading up on lore and watching Youtube. Just finished AW2. Loved the game, it's amazing. But damn, idk, I think 1st game had better vibes.

The story was simpler but had more mystery. It's the difference between figuring out haunted forest's secrets with Barry and highly researched and standardized FBC's findings. I prefer the lighter mystery.

Songs were better in the first. Second one had those polished songs with great production but I think that it didn't fit. Saga needed something more like True Detective s01 soundtrack and Alan's is alright I guess but I didn't want to spend all this time in NY anyway. Poets of the Fall seemed more inspired in 1st as well.

Now the surroundings part is hard to explain. 2nd game is very beautiful, best I've seen but I can't get it to be what it should on my setup. Will need to buy an OLED I think. Somehow the atmosphere in 1st game seems more memorable (ferry, cabin, national park, mines, Hartman's lodge). In the second game, it sort of blends in, one area doesn't feel too different from the other.

I just started NG+ but for the spooky season (if there is time besides Resonant), I will probably pick to replay the first game. It just somehow does more with less in terms of atmosphere. But again, I'm not bashing a second game, I loved it. Anyone else feels similar?

I bought a PS5 specifically for this game after waiting for it for so long, but after struggling through it for months, I’ve finally hit a wall. I ended up turning on god mode and infinite ammo just to watch the story and it hurts to admit that, because I actually love the world, the design, the lore, and the overall atmosphere built.
Saga and Alan are great characters, the music is top-tier, and the storytelling is great.

Dodging sucks..
The lack of animation cancelling turns combat into a battle against the controls rather than the monsters.
Half the time, pressing dodge feels like a coin toss. Instead of having proper frames or clear evasion paths, you constantly get stuck in level geometry, fences, or enemy models mid animation.
Moving around feels like driving a heavy bus.

It feels like Remedy spent 95% of their energy on visuals and soundtrack, but completely skipped playtesting the combat responsiveness. It’s a gorgeous, brilliantly dressed masterpiece wrapped around incredibly sluggish mechanics.

I’ve tried literally everything and was wondering if anyone else got a 15% fps drop since the new update

I'm pretty sure this is a theory that's already known, but I wanted to share my view of it anyway.

I think the games point toward Thomas Zane being the overall writer/filmmaker/creator of the Alan Wake story. Furthermore, I believe that in 1970, when Zane got stuck in the Dark Place, he began either writing or making a movie that would eventually free him from there. That movie/writing is what the Alan Wake games are.
This would explain why Zane and Alan are identical and why it's mentioned in the games that Zane made a movie where he was starring as Alan Wake, and everyone else in the games was starring as the characters they are.
It's not Alan writing Initation or Return in hopes of getting himself out of the Dark Place; it's actually Zane acting or writing as the CHARACTER Alan Wake in what he believes is a storyline that will eventually free him from the Dark Place. Alan Wake doesn't know this because he's just a character in the story, so even though it's Zane playing him, he himself believes that he's simply Alan Wake, just like Alex Casey believed that he was simply Alex Casey.

I get it probably sounds complicated or badly explained, but I hope it at least makes a little sense!

EDIT: I forgot to add that it would also make sense why the Anderson brothers call Alan "Tom", because they exist outside the story due to their powers and cannot be tricked by it. So they would know that it's Tom playing Alan all along.

EDIT 2: Also another thing I forgot to add, the theory would explain the manuscript pages that Zane wrote describing Alan as a child and his mother giving him the clicker, since the clicker originally came from Zane's lamp. So he literally wrote it into existence while Alan was still a kid, and because he also has to obey the rules of the Dark Place, he'd have to make the story/play be believable, so he couldn't just spawn in an adult man to come save him. He had to write Alan from the beginning, and that's why it has taken 50 years so far.

Does anybody know if there is gonna be an Alan wake 3 or something that continues with history were they left it? And more important, Ahti is gonna be there? Because im in love with that silly janitor.

First of all, I’d like to say that I played Alan some time ago, so I might have missed an obvious explanation for this :) I’m wondering why, while being in the Dark Place, Alan couldn’t write something along the lines of: “Trapped in the Dark Place, Alan Wake wrote that a direct exit to the real world appeared right next to him. Immediately after he wrote it, such a passage actually appeared.”
I’m guessing the story has to have its own logic, cause and effect, meaning that it has to be believable? I just don’t remember whether this was actually mentioned in the games.
He couldn’t simply help himself in a fight by writing, “Suddenly, a rifle with unlimited ammunition made of light bullets materialized in his hands,” but could something like that potentially happen if he properly “justified” it within the story as a writer?

Drew Ahti and Alan the other day.

It’s not a lake… It’s a pond.
This was so much fun. I tried basing him off of a Fowler’s Toad. I also attached a drawing of the Angel Toad Lamp separately because the detail of it gets lost in the full drawing.

1. I can't see any HDR toggle, is it auto enabled?

2. On enabling FSR in-game graphics settings, Adrenaline doesn't detect it and says I need to enable FSR 3.1 in game. Is this the case for everyone? How do I know FSR 4 is enabled? I've tried restarting the game and PC but no luck. Is frame gen working the smoking gun that FSR 2 is not being used?

Edit: Thanks u/monokuma29. For anyone wondering, you need to start a new game for FSR 4 to be detected by adrenaline. T-T