Witcher 3 Getting a Free Upgrade

I'll let the news speaks for itself. So here you go.

The Witcher 3 getting a free upgrade for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC -The Verge

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is getting a graphical upgrade for next-generation hardware, and current owners of the game on PC, Playstation, and Xbox will get the update for free.

Developers CD Projekt Red announced the news today, saying the updated game will be available on the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC, featuring a “range of visual and technical improvements.” These include faster loading times and ray tracing graphics. The upgrades will apply to the base game, says Projekt Red, as well as to both of its expansions (Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine) and all other “extra content.”

The appeal of this news is testament to The Witcher 3’s lasting greatness. This is a game that came out five years ago but remains incredibly well-regarded and an appealing title for many to pick up and play through all over again. It still regularly appears in the top Steam charts on PC, too.

Nice! I still have my GTX980….which works well enough for non-4K gaming (mostly). I doubt I'll upgrade until the fetaures in these cards become cheaper…

Kudos to CDPR. I'm not a great fan of any of their games, but they seem to be a good publisher.

I can only imagine the kind of system we'll need to run TW3 on max settings with ray tracing.

No need to imagine anything, IIRC WGD already has such a beast.

I think it's a bit misleading the way the Verge phrased it. It won't be using ray-traced graphics as such - it'll have RTX features, which use a bit of fuzzy raytracing to achieve various effects. I'm hoping they're going to use it for global illumination. I loved the world design of W3, but I always thought the lighting was a bit lacking, and often looked unnatural. That could be a major upgrade for me.

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-w…se-in-h2-2021/

Nice. And it seems CDPR is not handling it. Saber Interactive. Interesting. At least they can't be accused of not focusing on CP2077.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-w…se-in-h2-2021/

Nice. And it seems CDPR is not handling it. Saber Interactive. Interesting. At least they can't be accused of not focusing on CP2077.

Smart move as it frees them resources and it doesn't need a lot of work by a third party. It's basically upgraded graphics and sound with the newer version of Red Engine.

Kinda sad that we need to specify that such update is "free".

One good news, one bad.

https://twitter.com/CDPROJEKTRED_IR/…23570287353859

They had difficulties with one, so let's do two in parallel. Unless they significally increase the time they spend per project, I can't see this going well.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
One good news, one bad.

https://twitter.com/CDPROJEKTRED_IR/…23570287353859

They had difficulties with one, so let's do two in parallel. Unless they significally increase the time they spend per project, I can't see this going well.

Ouch, the comments on that tweet…

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-w…se-in-h2-2021/

Nice. And it seems CDPR is not handling it. Saber Interactive. Interesting. At least they can't be accused of not focusing on CP2077.

Hmm I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest. I don't know much about Saber Interactive, but I looked them up, and their project history isn't exactly impressive.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
Ouch, the comments on that tweet…

Kids shouldn't be allowed to use Twitter.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Hmm I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest. I don't know much about Saber Interactive, but I looked them up, and their project history isn't exactly impressive.

I'm hoping for the combination of them having worked on the Switch port of Witcher 3, and the next-gen updates to Witcher 3 not being very extensive, to allow them the chance that it'll be decent. Except for the ray-tracing I'm now sure how much I'm expecting in the next-gen update. At least for PC.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
I'm hoping for the combination of them having worked on the Switch port of Witcher 3, and the next-gen updates to Witcher 3 not being very extensive, to allow them the chance that it'll be decent. Except for the ray-tracing I'm now sure how much I'm expecting in the next-gen update. At least for PC.

I'm with you on not being sure what to expect, but it does say "a range of visual and technical improvements", so I'm hoping that means most of the textures and effects as well.

I'm curious how this will affect mods if at all. Hopefully they won't all have to be updated.

I'm not too worried about the work being done by a third party. Even if a company doesn't demonstrate much of an exciting record, they might well have a decent crew of technical folks who could do this sort of upgrade work competently.

I've yet to really play a game where RT mattered all that much, honestly.

I think Exodus came close, but - sadly - I found the gameplay underwhelming and dreary.

Control looks great as well, but I already completed that one before I upgraded my rig.

Cyberpunk does look pretty good, but my god it's costly in terms of performance.

It's not until the most recent patch that I can get it to run smoothly with RT - and that's only because of DLSS.

Not that I'm going to play it yet, though.

Maybe once they add a few more rudimentary immersion features.

I've been impressed by how the modding scene has already mostly fixed my primary gameplay complaints. Well, so it seems - as it's hard to know without testing them myself.

Anyway, I'll be sure to check out Witcher 3 after this upgrade - but I don't think it will change much, honestly.

As long they don't do it themselves it's a good news. TW3 looks more and more like an awesome industrial "incident" in the middle of a very lackluster production.

Some kind of 'oops' moment but don't worry we are back to the normal with our next production which will be some kind of FMV game with plenty of Z movie actors, a huge marketing department and a full team of writers to create fresh excuses about how sorry we are to have screwed it again.

@Kos

I'm kinda with you on that one.

I never bought into their whole "for-the-consumer" marketing spiel - but I certainly never expected them to be so overtly deceitful and apparently toxic as a place of work.

Then again, a part of the blame should fall on the critics and the most vocal fans of Witcher 3.

That game was never even remotely 10/10 if you actually care about the gameplay part of games.

Well, tastes differ and all that - but people will be extremely hard pressed to claim great things about the progression, itemization, balance, combat and so forth.

Great story and extremely competent production, yes.

But if we reward developers for making hollow open worlds with half-assed systems and balance with essentially the perfect score and endless applause - we can hardly expect them to improve much for their next game.

With all that said, I honestly expected Cyberpunk to be a very good game.

I can't tell you the shit I went through to get the parts I needed for my new rig - and the fact that I reserved my vacation time exclusively for that game didn't exactly help.

But it was certainly a lesson learned. One that I should have learned with games like MoO3 and Outpost.

Guess not

Indeed, with the small caveat than I really loved TW3 because of the quests and the writing and ended up forgetting about the gameplay to just love the experience.

I built a new rig in the middle of a component crisis with the most costly GPU to be found for CP2077 (was the only one available) as well than a Samsung G9 Odyssey to compliment it so yes I can understand what you went through.