In preparation for “Songs of the Previous,” the hit role-playing recreation is getting a complete technical replace. The assessment reveals: The Witcher 3 continues to be excellent, however even the remaster can’t eradicate all its weaknesses.
The king of the role-playing style is again! Upon its launch in 2015, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt raked in record-breaking scores from the worldwide press. Due to the 2022 next-gen replace, Geralt the Witcher’s newest journey so far holds one of many highest scores in GameStar historical past with a 94. Within the eyes of many followers—and our writer Jesko as properly—The Witcher 3 is without doubt one of the finest video video games of all time.
Now, 11 years later, developer CD Projekt needs to revamp the sport for one more DLC and is treating the third installment within the sequence to a significant remaster. The Hungarian group at Yigsoft, consisting of many former Witcher modders, is answerable for this mission. However how precisely do you make probably the greatest role-playing video games on the planet even higher?
Amongst different issues, the remaster tweaks the graphics, fight, and talent techniques of The Witcher 3 and refines many small particulars. However the very best half is: You received’t must pay a single Novigrad crown for it—the replace to the remastered model is totally free for all homeowners of The Witcher 3. The 2 earlier expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, are included without cost as properly.
You need to already discover the brand new Full Version in your Steam and GOG libraries; on September 29, it would mechanically get replaced with the remaster.
Geralt, Ciri, and Co.
The most recent Witcher remaster is primarily meant as a visible enhancement of the bottom recreation, with a couple of delicate gameplay changes to fight, the talent system, and the controls. Nonetheless, it doesn’t change a factor in regards to the already excellent story of The Witcher 3. You’re nonetheless taking part in as monster hunter Geralt, trying to find your adopted daughter Ciri, making troublesome ethical choices, and crossing swords with the riders of the Wild Hunt.
For a totally new story, you’ll have to attend till 2027; that’s when Songs of the Previous will likely be launched, marking the ultimate conclusion to Geralt’s adventures. Actually helpful: For those who nonetheless have previous save information, you may simply carry them over to the remaster—even very previous saves from 2015 nonetheless work. You don’t essentially have to begin from the start within the remaster. However we’ll get to why that may nonetheless make sense in a second.
Within the recreation world, too, every thing stays the identical: Every space retains precisely the identical appeal as within the unique major recreation: Velen is gloomy and desolate, Skellige is rugged and delightful, and Toussaint is heat and invitingly Mediterranean.
The Witcher in its most lovely type but
And that brings us proper to the brand new options. Even at first look, it’s placing simply how lovely The Witcher 3 nonetheless is, even after 11 years. The sport was a visible stunner proper from its launch—and it stays so with this remaster. Greater-resolution textures, denser vegetation, and an total sharper—albeit barely desaturated—picture: A number of work has gone into tweaking the graphics to carry the sport as much as fashionable technical requirements.
You actually discover that there’s one other important visible leap between the remaster and the 2022 next-gen replace while you examine the 2 variations facet by facet. I couldn’t have stated that simply from reminiscence—in my thoughts, The Witcher 3 has all the time regarded unbelievable.
What actually stands out in regards to the remaster, nevertheless, is its assist for superior ray tracing and path tracing, which permit for extra correct calculations of sunshine reflections and mirror results. However this comes at a excessive efficiency value. With path tracing enabled, the body charge can drop by as a lot as 60 p.c in some circumstances.
With out body era to compensate, the body charge on an RTX 4070 Ti with 32 GB of RAM hovers round 45 FPS with occasional stuttering. For anybody who needs to make use of path tracing, an especially highly effective graphics card and body era are virtually a should.
Nonetheless, it’s clear that the sport wasn’t initially developed with ray tracing in thoughts. Whereas this creates a very atmospheric lighting ambiance—particularly in out of doors areas—and represents an actual enchancment over the unique, indoor areas with solely a single gentle supply are sometimes far too darkish. The background and room furnishings are utterly misplaced within the shadows, which is why we are able to solely suggest utilizing ray tracing to a restricted extent.
On PC, the ray-tracing mode with ray-traced reflections presently affords the very best stability between efficiency and graphics.
On the Swap 2, the remaster runs equally to Cyberpunk 2077, at 30 FPS on 60-hertz TVs and 40 FPS on 120-hertz TVs. Nonetheless, the 40 frames per second can not all the time be maintained, particularly in busy areas like Novigrad. Moreover, the picture seems blurry in a direct comparability. We can not touch upon the technical state of the Xbox and PlayStation variations at the moment, as CD Projekt was unable to offer us with entry to them prematurely.
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Cyberpunk, is that you simply?
Among the many few criticisms of the unique Wild Hunt have been the expertise and fight techniques. Within the unique Witcher 3, abilities have been, so to talk, unsorted in a five-tier grid in your character tab. You would begin unlocking them wherever you needed.
Nonetheless, to achieve increased expertise ranges, you needed to make investments a sure variety of factors into the respective block—that’s, Fight, Indicators, Alchemy, or Normal. This meant that many superior abilities couldn’t be unlocked till very late within the recreation. Moreover, you have been restricted to a most of 12 energetic abilities at any given time.
The remaster retains the restrict on energetic abilities. You continue to mix them with applicable mutagens on the suitable facet of the talent window. Nonetheless, with recreation model 5.0, there’s now a correct talent tree. All talents have a set unlock sequence and are logically interconnected. This lets you develop Geralt in a way more focused method towards a selected course—resembling specializing in bleeding injury—and unlock the specified abilities a lot earlier within the recreation. This makes constructing your character much more significant.
(The skills within the talent tree now have a hard and fast order and are linked to one another in a significant manner.)
There are additionally a couple of brand-new abilities that change previous ones—resembling armor bonuses for nearly each identified college of sorcery or enhanced elemental injury. The brand new system locations a lot higher emphasis on strategically chaining assaults reasonably than merely boosting particular person assaults as within the unique recreation. General, the brand new expertise tree features equally to the revamped character system from Cyberpunk 2077 2.0.
Nonetheless, in case you load an previous Witcher save file into the remaster, you’ll hardly discover the brand new system, as a result of proper after loading, you’ll be given a bunch of talent factors that you should utilize to instantly re-learn
your previous talent degree. So in case you actually wish to develop Geralt in a manner that makes a noticeable distinction, it’s best to begin from scratch with the remaster. You would possibly wish to maintain your previous save information helpful, although, in case of “Songs of the Previous.”
(When path tracing is activated, interiors are sometimes far too darkish. On some edges, it has a bluish shimmer.)
Missed Alternative: Fight System
The enhancements to the fight system primarily concern the animations. Geralt now strikes way more fluidly round enemies, assaults movement higher collectively, and there’s a complete vary of latest, bloody ending strikes. Within the vanilla model of the third Witcher recreation, the assaults usually nonetheless felt disjointed and sluggish. The remaster does a a lot better job of making a real sword-fighting environment.
Nonetheless, the remaster doesn’t change the elemental simplicity of the fight system. Geralt likes to get straight to the motion. Duels are nonetheless primarily restricted to alternating between gentle and heavy assaults, utilizing Indicators, and frequent dodging. In 2026, we might have appreciated to see a bit extra right here—for instance, The Witcher 3 nonetheless doesn’t supply correct hit animations for enemies. And the brand new Silver Chain received’t be added to the sport till subsequent 12 months with “Songs of the Previous.”
(Geralt (right here with Nvidia HairWorks) and Yennefer (with out) are nonetheless the guts and soul of the remaster.)
The readability of the fight has additionally been tweaked. The digicam now zooms out additional relying on the variety of enemies to present us a greater total view. Nonetheless, not like the previous commonplace perspective, this makes it tougher—particularly initially—to focus on an enemy with out activating lock-on. Geralt usually finally ends up swinging at skinny air. So even with the remaster, The Witcher 3 hasn’t turn out to be a very intricate fight ballet.
Lastly, meditating in model
However what else is included in The Witcher 3 Remastered? Along with main adjustments to the visuals, abilities, and fight system, the remaster contains many small element enhancements: Geralt now swings extra easily over obstacles and up ladders; whereas meditating, the digital world continues to run within the background in true-to-style fast-forward; and weapon put on—hated by RPG followers—can now be turned on and off within the menu.
(When meditating, we not see a distracting menu within the remaster. Time continues to move within the background.)
Talking of weapons: Now you can lastly transmogrify weapons and armor on the blacksmiths in Novigrad and at Crow’s Nest Fortress. For those who discover a new, stronger piece of armor that’s as ugly as sin in comparison with your earlier plate armor, you may swap its look at Hattori and Yoana’s for a small price. The visuals for casting indicators have additionally been revamped. With Igni, the sparks now shoot out of Geralt’s palms much more superbly. The Yrden signal glyph glows a vibrant purple on the bottom.
What, then again, continues to be totally ridiculous within the remaster is our trusty steed, Plötze. Though the builders had really promised considerably improved controls and pathfinding right here—and we do certainly navigate curves a bit extra easily—the underside line is that the horse nonetheless will get caught far too usually and stands round at odd angles—so in a manner, every thing stays the identical right here.
(The spell circle glyph Yrden and different Witcher marks now shimmer with wealthy element)
That, nevertheless, is exactly one of many recreation’s biggest strengths. Even within the remastered model, The Witcher 3 nonetheless feels precisely the identical because it did again then. Once I load a random save file from someplace in the course of the sport after launching the remaster and discover myself within the wilderness of Skellige, it takes lower than a minute for me to fall beneath the spell of the Witcher world another time.
The music, the huge, rugged panorama—every thing is precisely as I bear in mind it and offers me that comforting feeling of coming house with the remaster. That’s precisely what The Witcher wanted earlier than the launch of a brand new enlargement.
Editor’s Verdict
The Witcher 3 stays true to itself on this remastered model and continues to be rattling good even in 2026. The hit RPG from 2015 seems right here in its most visually interesting type, together with the beforehand paid DLCs “Blood and Wine” and “Hearts of Stone.” On the identical time, nevertheless, the remaster is precisely that and nothing extra—a remaster. Anybody anticipating a form of remake is likely to be disenchanted, as the brand new version refrains from making any profound adjustments.
Moreover, not the entire remaster’s good concepts appear to have been absolutely thought by means of: The brand-new path tracing is all properly and good in and of itself, nevertheless it presently usually makes indoor areas too darkish. Given the present market state of affairs, only a few gamers are more likely to personal a graphics card able to natively operating the sport at 60 FPS or equally clean body charges.
Sure, there’s now a talent tree and a barely revamped fight system—however that doesn’t considerably change the general really feel of the sport in comparison with earlier variations. On the identical time, in fact, one has to wonder if The Witcher 3 even wants this. In spite of everything, for me and lots of different followers, it’s been probably the greatest role-playing video games on the planet for years. It’s possible that nobody on the event group actually needed to tamper with that idea.
The underside line is that this remaster is a stable replace that brings The Witcher 3 as much as the technical requirements of 2026. Is it value taking part in by means of The Witcher 3 once more only for that? Perhaps provided that you have been already within the temper to revisit Geralt the Witcher anyway. In any other case, with this free technical improve, the sport is completely outfitted for the launch of Songs of the Previous subsequent 12 months.
