Wednesday, November 23rd 2022
The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Update Adds Higher-res Textures, Ray Traced GI, DLSS and FSR 2
CD Projekt RED announced an unexpected content update for the now-7 year old "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," an immensely popular AAA game that continues to be a favorite among GPU reviewers and PC enthusiasts. The content update, dubbed simply "Next Gen Update," is expected to go live on December 14, 2022. The free update adds several visual enhancements that would normally be marketed as a "Remastered" title, and sold separately.
To begin with, CDPR has increased texture resolutions, and redesigned the foliage to be more realistic. It gets new real-time ray traced global illumination (RT-GI), which should significantly improve the lighting throughout the game. The game also gets super-sampling performance enhancements, namely NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR 2. Thanks to the higher-resolution assets and RT-GI, the graphics settings now include a new preset called "Ultra+," which maxes out everything, including the new assets. The game's UI now offers more camera perspectives. For next-generation consoles, the update adds a new "Performance" mode that runs it at 60 FPS, and a new "Quality" mode that enables RT-GI along with FSR 2.
The trailer for the new content update follows.
To begin with, CDPR has increased texture resolutions, and redesigned the foliage to be more realistic. It gets new real-time ray traced global illumination (RT-GI), which should significantly improve the lighting throughout the game. The game also gets super-sampling performance enhancements, namely NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR 2. Thanks to the higher-resolution assets and RT-GI, the graphics settings now include a new preset called "Ultra+," which maxes out everything, including the new assets. The game's UI now offers more camera perspectives. For next-generation consoles, the update adds a new "Performance" mode that runs it at 60 FPS, and a new "Quality" mode that enables RT-GI along with FSR 2.
138 Comments on The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Update Adds Higher-res Textures, Ray Traced GI, DLSS and FSR 2
Comes with a lot of extras.
www.gog.com/en/game/the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_game_of_the_year_edition
Witcher 1 is at the same time horrible, slow, clunky and frustrating, but it's also an amazing game if you manage to pass act 1 and get into it.
I think i should try again Witcher 2 but for some reason, i felt more odd to me than the 1.
Witcher 3 is still to me a game that is beyond anything else i play. Combats is clunky, but the narrative line, the choice, etc. are just incredible. I have 3 full playthrough (including the 2 DLC) and i plan to have a 4th during the holidays.
i am always like, yeah this time i will make a different choice and not choose Yen, but hey, same time i make the same choice for the same reasons !
But back on Topic, a Free update like that will probably boost the sales of the game further more. I prefer that to all the Skyrim re-release but i am not sure if that is that good for them. Cyberpunk got rushed because the company ran out of cash and they didn't want to raise more. It's better for the fan but not for them.
If that mean their next game is rushed too, not sure that is all that good for players too (and for them). But still CDPR in my opinion redeemed themselves with CP2077. It's not as good a Witcher 3 but it's a great game now and it's very playable. They still working on it and added FSR2.1, DLSS3 and fixed many bugs.
I am glad they also add FSR 2.1 out of the box (and DLSS too for those who go team green). People will have the choice of GPU without thinking about it too much.
thanks cdpr
I also had a warm feeling when I fought that other witcher for the second time. First time, you were low level and it took skill to defeat him. The second time, I was powerful enough to eat him for breakfast. I let him live every playthrough, though.
just the "dumb as drunk goldfish" generic NPC and cops were a bit of a letdown ... but the game itself was, for me, far from being a disaster, never regreted buying it one second.
Between the updates by CDPR and more updates on top of it by modders there is just so much to do and see...
This is why CDPR had/has a very loyal fanbase. Witcher 2 was completely overhauled for the 360 because of that it was also crazily optimized which allowed them to fold all that back into PC. They also changed content to make it better and they changed the combat system too.
Then Witcher 3 comes along and it's simply amazing. They charged a more then fair price for the expansions and unlike other games these days each of those expansions had enough content for an entire game.
They also put out smaller content updates all the time. They added quests, complete storylines, replaced some dialog with better VO. Performance enhancements, ai enhancements, combat tweaks... The list goes on and on.
Then cyberpunk... Yes a stain on a perfect reputation going back more years than people think. I thought it was ridiculous that people "lost faith" in CDPR for 1 game, especially when some of the issues were creations of their own hype and made up in their heads... They never claimed it was cyberpunk GTA 5 with rpg elements but that's clearly what people expected.
Now the game launched badly unless you had an ultra high end PC and even then it was buggy but not nearly as bad as 99% of people experienced.
The thing is they had no choice. They were being forced by investors to not only launch before years end but also launch on the last gen machines and trying to stuff that game onto consoles that were essentially low end 9 year old laptops was a joke. Surely they wasted a vast majority of time on that instead of important things. So every version suffered.
I knew they would fix it. I didn't lose faith. I also knew that in order to play at 4k with settings I wanted my 3080ti FTW3 Ultra wasn't going to cut it but the 4090 I'm about to install in like 15 min will. I'll likely sell it when the 7950xtx launches around July and if not then definitely when the RDNA4 based 8000 series launches since that's the uarch that will surpass nVidia for less money.
Anyway my tangent aside...
We give companies who release much lesser games chance after chance (hello Ubi, ea, Activision) we saw people explode at CDPR for their first game that wasn't good... But here we are now and it's fantastic and they said no more updates until the expansion but they have updated it like 5 times since then and that was like a month and a half ago.
So they deserve gamers faith. Gog is still great, cyberpunk continues to improve and now has with cross platform saves and so will the FREE upgrade to arguably one of the best RPG's in history.
They didn't need to revamp Witcher 3 but they are because that's who THEY are. They are us. They are also remaking the original because it's so clunky from age. Pretty sure they are gonna do 2 as well and both will be UE5. SO let's pray epic fixed the shader compilation issue from ue4 that caused so much stutter. In so many games.The Witcher 2 was not a flop lol. It sold well on PC. Then it was completely revamped for xbox360 and then for PC and both those sold extremely well too...
Witcher 3 was entirely funded by sales of 2
Have you tried The Witcher 1 by any chance? People tend to bash it for its clumsy fighting system, but I think it is the game that is the most true to the books in its atmosphere. It does it even better than The Witcher 3. If you think about it, the books didn't get wide popularity because they're too dark and fragmented in writing. The Witcher 1 did a perfect job of replicating that, so it didn't become widely popular, either. Some tweaking was needed. The Witcher 3 is awesome, but The Witcher 2 did a bit too much of that tweaking, in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great game, just a notch less witchery than the other two.
I agree with you about Cyberpunk: people only cried because it run like crap on the PS4 and because it wasn't actually GTA: Night City, which CDPR never said it would be. I played it on PC, and I'm not a GTA fan anyway, so I quite enjoyed it. It didn't turn my world around, but I think it's a good game. I didn't encounter any game-breaking bugs, either.