Game crashes immediately after the intro cutscene

[Dust]

Hello !

So the game crashes right after the intro cutscene, where you take control of Alan and you go through the tutorial. It just gives me this error message : https://i.imgur.com/v5sHL2o.png
If the image goes down some time in the future, it reads "Alan Wake could not initialize your 3D graphics card. [...] Technical: CREATE_RENDER_TARGET_ERROR - An undetermined error occurred".

The weird thing is that the very first time I booted the game, it went fine and I could play normally, but on subsequent boots the game crashes and gives me this error message. No idea why.

I've tried multiple settings and compatibility modes, nothing.

Does anyone have a solution ?

Edit: Forgot to include my config. Drivers are all up to date.

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor

MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard

Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory

Sabrent Rocket 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB Video Card

Corsair SPEC-05 ATX Mid Tower Case

Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply

Edit2: Well, well, well. I actually managed to pinpoint the cause of the problem. AMD Radeon Settings was the culprit here, some kind of automatic enhancement profile or whatnot that it makes up for every game it detects on the system. I got the idea completely randomly by reading a thread on a guy enabling multisampling AA in his nvidia control panel. Works fine now, I can boot into the game itself properly. Tried to boot it multiple times, no problems in view.

For anyone else who might have gotten the same problem as I did and that have the same configuration as I do, or more recent in the future :

1) Go to "AMD Radeon Settings", should normally be open in the taskbar
2) Click the Gaming tab, you should be seeing a list of games
3) Click on the three dots right next to the "Alan Wake" title
4) Disable the profile

Here's an image of what I'm talking about, hopefully it will stay up for a long time. https://i.imgur.com/dq6mrih.png

Thanks @Carinth for helping me out.

[SwamsMonster]

Having the exact same problem...after install played it once and all was great, now it won't start!

[Carinth]

You can try adding this https://www.moddb.com/games/alan-wake/addons/reshade-and-sweetfx-for-alan-wake

Just place the files in your game folder and you should be good.

Quick question are you using any overclocking?

[Dust]

Thanks, I tried that but it didn't work unfortunately.

I'm not overclocking, no.

[Carinth]

Try this.
I know you said you tried multiple settings but if not this, give it a try.

Go in to your Catalyst Control Center and set your Anti-aliasing mode to Adaptive Multi-sample AA or higher

or try resetting your settings to default.

Just wondering is your steam overlay on or off?

[Dust]

Just tried both of these methods, still doesn't work. :(

My overlay is on. I'll try to play the game without it.

Edit: Playing the game with the overlay on or off makes no difference.

[Carinth]

Can you get to the ingame settings?
Goto graphics and advanced, switch it to low and see if the error goes away. If so then look at which settings were set to off, increase each one or re-enable it 1 by 1 and test it to see which setting it may be. Then leave that setting off.
If it's caused by an ingame setting then you should be able to fix it that way.

[Dust]

I can get to the main menu, it's just that when I try to load the game, it crashes right when I'm about to take control of Alan.

Yep, already did that. Set everything to low or off when available, I tried windowed and fullscreen, tried multiple resolutions, nothing works.

[Carinth]

Have you checked the drivers and the catalyst control center are upto date?
The message says it's a render problem.
Also are you sure it's not trying to use the wrong gpu, like if you have an onboard also.
If you do have an onboard and it's not turned off, try disabling it so it will just use the sapphire video card.

[Dust]

Yep, drivers are all up to date. For catalyst control center I didn't even think of installing it before you mentioned it, grabbed the most recent download.

I don't have an onboard gpu either. The 3600 doesn't have that.

[Carinth]

You probably have to goto an older driver then.
Some of the 5700 drivers had an issue with the direct3d ddi in the newer drivers coming up as unknown when you run a directx test and that Direct3D Acceleration is not available. That's probably causing your issue.

Uninstall the drivers and install a different version of the drivers,
https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/amd-radeon-5700-series/amd-radeon-rx-5700-series/amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt

[Dust]

I had no idea there was an issue like that. Still, I uninstalled the optional drivers and installed the recommended drivers, I'm still getting the same issue.

By the way, I really don't think it has anything to do with the GPU or anything of the sort. When I first booted it, the game ran absolutely fine, I was getting 100+ fps with every setting maxed at 1080p. I played for about ten minutes, then shut it down for the day; it's only upon the subsequent boots that the problem rose up. Shouldn't it be a problem with the game files themselves or something, rather than my computer ? Then again, checking the files doesn't help. I'm kinda confused by all this.

[Carinth]

Did you update anything after running it initially? Did you have the video set to auto update anything like that?

And if the recommended drivers are the same version as the other drivers they would have the same issue.
Run the DXDIAG and see if anything comes up as unknown or unavailable.
Goto the windows search bar and type dxdiag, it should list it, run it then check the display tab

[Dust]

Nope, and nope.

https://i.imgur.com/PKvQ7rk.png Everything seems to be A-OK on my end. No problems on the other tabs either.

[Carinth]

Yep it looks fine, your processes seem to be working, so that rules that out.

Try installing dx9 on your windows 10, it could be you're missing some dx files as it is a dx9 game and win10 doesn't have dx9 fully installed. It won't downgrade your directx but will add addition support files.
https://youtu.be/yMNVLoxD8fQ
Links in description for the files.

Trying to eliminate everything to see what's up.

You could also try installing the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4
Download and install both the x86 version and the x64 versions.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30679

[Dust]

Just installed dx9 and both redistribuables. It's not working unfortunately.

I also just tried to uninstall and reinstall the game.