CD Projekt RED has just announced its plans to release a next-gen version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. According to the team, this next-gen version will be available on the PC, will be free to all owners of the base game, and will support Ray Tracing.
The Witcher 3 is coming to the next generation!
A visually and technically enhanced version of the game will be available for purchase for PC and next-gen consoles & as a free update for owners of the game on PC, @Xbox One and @PlayStation 4.
More: https://t.co/JclubxpJim pic.twitter.com/gWCJzST3vr
— The Witcher (@witchergame) September 4, 2020
The Witcher 3 Next-Gen will feature a range of visual and technical improvements — including ray tracing and faster loading times. These improvements will be present across the base game, both expansions, and all extra content.
In short, PC gamers will receive this enhanced version of The Witcher 3 via a future update.
CD Projekt RED has not revealed when this next-gen version of The Witcher 3 will come out.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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That came out of nowhere. Hope we see some comparison screenshots soon.
and here i was thinking “how come there is no witcher 3 enhanced edition but 1 and 2 had one?
Well i guess its witcher 3 gaytracing edition.
Witcher 3 lighting and shaders needed work, apparently the solution is to slap ray tracing on it.
Ohk, it has to be if you are targeting the next-gen console gamers. Ethically you cant just charge money for some product which has been already ‘next-gened’ by the PC community. Probably even look dull compared to the modded Witcher 3 as well. So smart move CD Projekt because unlike Crytek they dont want to damage their existing brand image for some petty cash.
Nice. Hopefully this kills the pretentious texture “enhancement” modders who wasted their time doing lame sh*t for almost no visual gain and heavy performance hit.
CDPR gonna show how it’s done. Properly.
HalkHogans TW3 Reworked texture pack doesn’t cripple performance and looks very good imo.
He’s presumably alluding to other lesser quality mods because the mod you’ve mentioned is indeed extremely impressive. CDPR’s own models and textures that it covers are often laughably poor in comparison.
How strange. An opticians appointment should be his priority!
Dude, STLM was fantastic. I only played The Witcher with STLM turned on.
STLM was indeed a great mod, mainly because it wasn’t a cheap texture “enhancer”, but a lighting rework.
Man, call your mom, tell her you love her. When it’s the last time you’ve been outside? Are you ok? Is the weather bad in your village?
Hah jokes on you, he doesn’t live in a village he lives on the Internet!
The number of people downvoting this is telling. Even a humorously positive message is frowned upon here.
idiots are frowned upon and there is too many of you lately.
You of all people are in no position to call anyone an idiot lmao. You’re one of the biggest clowns on this site.
Nice to see you’re having fun replying to all my comments for some reason though.
go own tell me why i am a clown , i wanted to have this one on one discussion for a long time.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cecde0cb182c53c77b1a2c589c37c69b6eb4dd3f0be335c3540fd8f2daa89051.jpg
Oh no he’s feisty.
If you want a one on one go ask your boyfriends.
Anyways, your comment history speaks for itself lmao.
so you say i am a clown and awful but you dont want to tell me why. Seems to me you are a triggered snowflake who likes to whine.
At least i got a comment history dipsht you barely ever express an opinion.
OMG YOUR POSTING HISTORY YIKES, go back to reddit.
Man, call your mom, tell her you love her. When is the last time you’ve been outside? Are you ok? Is the weather bad in your village?
well, i called your mom last night.
Also go on and tell me how living in a city is better than living in a village at this point. Riots and violence and fires everywhere.
> When you keep taking the bait ?
“ahhahahah i wa only pretending to be r3tard3d.”
Thank you for finally admitting.
It’s ok that you’re r3tard3d, we’ve all known that for a long time 🙂
its a quote stupid , i was quoting you. You trully are r3tard3d arent you?
You know when i typed that i didnt expect you will fall so low, but here we are. You cant even trash talk properly.
My mistake, I thought it was your quote since you say r3tard3d things so often
But yes, you are certainly the victor when it comes to talking trash because the only things you say are idiotic trash :p
which things i say are idiotic trash?
“Village” https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/65b3924eb1dce19791dca9000433728822b6d92a931da7eead52ee51bb4782c4.jpg
PS4/XBOXONE contract wouldnt let them release better version lol so that is that
They actively go against all the AAA garbage we see week after week, no microtransactions, no lootboxes, no day 1 30$ dlc packs for costumes, free next gen upgrades with no FAQ chart to see how and when youre “allowed to upgrade” free next gen features also given for free for original owners, HUGE expansions at the price of some other greedy companies weapon skins. So f-ck off with “but but dey downgwaded da gwaficks….wahhhhh” it still looked great when it released and the game itself was awesome. GRAPHICS DONT MAKE A GAME GOOD OR BAD, YOU DROOLING APE!
You people have made the word “woke” legit meaningless with how badly its overused for every little thing. How are they woke? They got backlash from radical leftists for them NOT having enough “representation” shoved in. They then stood up for themselves by stating that other people dont have the right to tell them how to tell their cutlure’s lore. That’s anti-woke. Also if you used your brain for a second, you would have seen that PC gets the enhanced version for free as well so I have no idea why you continue screeching like a 10yr old when someone criticizes nintendo in front of you.
Lmao the guy citing literally all his sources from exactly one outlet (which also happens to be one of the most biased) is calling someone else a braindead shill. Get a grip. Life’s better when you think for yourself instead of regurgitating pre-processed opinions from others like a trained parakeet.
everything one angry gamer says is sourced, you may not liked it but he didnt make that stuff up, the devs said those things in other sites and on twitter you can see the links in the site.
i dont know how to break this to you but sjws have already infiltrated cdprojekt and cyberpunk is affected
What would we mere mortals do without your galaxy brain?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6fbcbe1b58bbd9533d471196be82a4e50053bb8d2867d46569e521ee7f968bf0.png Cool projections kid
What an a*shole.
Are you serious? The Witcher 3 HD rework or whatever it’s called is amazing work and stands out lol.
You got mental issues.
Instead to cry rivers, get a job,and start buying games,instead to be a lame cheap pirate.
Simply excellent news. ?
Does anyone know if this guy has an off button?
Just put him on ignore if you want to make him go away. I’ve never put anyone on ignore ever. I just use the old fashioned way of ignore. The scroll wheel : )
He’s hilarious though, best troll on this website.
Finally finished this for the first time just last week and started a second playthrough, but I guess I’ll now wait for this.
Hopefully we get HDR support too. They said in the past they were never going to implement it into the current game so perhaps this was why.
It’s included in this.
I approve
CD Projekt Red are a class act, best PC developer, ever.
And just a week ago or so some people on this forums accused them of acting greedy.
Sure they look at profitability, every company does.
How? Bad controls and console streamlined combat
LOL!
‘Free to all previous owners’ was cleverly left out of the title.
Meh. I have yet to see RTX impress to say it makes a huge difference.
Maybe when VR games use RTX it will matter.
From what I can tell it won’t be using RTX for Ray tracing they will be using Microsoft DXR when Direct X 12_2 hits for Xbox Series X and gets released in an update for Windows 10 PCs. Sony PS5 will probably use some other API for RT, maybe something co developed with AMD.
When DXR becomes a part of mainline Windows 10 I’m hoping developers step up in a big way. I mean having decent HDR support on Windows would make mediocre DXR look amazing, high end RT at 8bits and mastered at 100 nits is just silly.
well i wont spit on free but i already played more than enough of the witcher 3 i dont see myself returning for another playthrough
trash game.
Game is good but clunky geralt movement & repettitve clunky combat, just press left mouse button all the time & q other than that good game , but still one of my no.1 favourite rpg is Dragon Age Inquisition (Inquisition world is something unique the places combat skills adventure was something special & so much better than witcher 3) second Skyrim then witcher.
This is why i could not enjoy the game. Also the main character is really boring
DAI was straight up garbage ?. I would take TW3 any day over that dumpster trash.
Every RTX game is built on DXR or VulkanRay,,,RTX is the Nvidia API for hardware acceleration on their GPUs, nothing more.
I learned something new today, thank you. I had no idea RTX was built on an existing foundation.
It’s an API to make use of the RTX hardware.
well kinda both actually
Even though I have the game i will buy it again.
If you already own the game then it will be a free update. Unless you just want to reward CDPR, no need to buy it again. I have bought some games when they came out on GOG though that I already owned on Steam just because it’s the only way to really own a game and I respect their stance on no DRM.
Buy it on gog
I already did years ago.
Amazing, epic games can suck a huge C@@K,
What?? Lol.
I hope they fix the lighting in Toussaint Houses. The city is so Luminous and one you enter the house is Dark AF. I don’t know what happened or why they let this go.
Once you stop being a commie and a shameless alt-leftist, you can start talking about others. The one pointing the finger has three fingers pointing back at them.
This is amazing news. Just 2 days ago i said they are lazy but here you go Next Gen patch 🙂 https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9fbca33717bcab95dfa62067676c1bde2effbd41dcd54c8fb20ed7f425e8bfdd.jpg
I hope they include DLSS
Holy SHIIIT!
This actually lightened up my up until now miserable day.
Thanks CDPR. 🙂 Hopefully This is a big visual upgrade. 🙂
All hail Karl Marx
Damn I’ll be done playing through it by then but maybe after this comes out I can clear through more ? marks on the map lol
Will this replace the original version of the game? I would rather they be separate.
I know on Galaxy/GoG the regular and GOTY are separate entries so this probably will be too.
Why?
I mean you will be able to turn RTX off so it will be the same right?
Nice, surprise they didn’t went with the GTA V double dipping approach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOkP7C0WrkU&t=2s
The game we still won’t get.
Who knows, with RTX it’ll probably look even better than that.
Don’t be so naive…
How is that naive? Raytracing can compute many effects in a much more realistic fashion.
If they use the diffuse GI that they have in CP2077 and RTX AO + shadows I don’t see why it’s ridiculous to suggest that it looks better than the e3 trailer.
It’s all speculation but raytracing can make a huge difference.
Unless they change all the models, shaders and god knows what other bulls*it they put on those previews…there’s no raytracing that will improve the already way too flat lighting (globlal ilumination for this game with the daycycle and scene specific parameteres sounds like a nightmare for raytracing, taxing and they will have to redo a lot of the cutscenes so they look decent again with the new light) for that game. My bet is they will use raytracing for shadows (which in the current game are kinda sh*t) and some materials like armor…things that in that game will be minimal an barely noticeable unlike in…let’s say, Cyberpunk were you have reflections everywhere.
TLDR: raytracing doesnt mean great visuals automatically, specially in a game that has so many different dynamic graphical parameters
so ubisoft is still paying you
Who are you? Ubisoft is a piece of crap company, what are you talking about?
hahah, im joking
Why would they need to change the models to match the e3 look? There was no difference in geometry from the e3 trailer to the final build. The only difference visually was the lighting and clouds and particle *amount* (which has since been fixed with mods).
“there’s no raytracing that will improve the already way too flat lighting”
Lmao what. This is exactly what GI does lol. Even if they don’t use GI, the RTX AO will add a lot more depth to the scene. And it’s OK if it’s taxing, that’s kind of expected with RTX. Obviously if you can’t handle it, it’ll be optional. It’s also not very hard for them to enable/disable rtx based on if the player is in a cutscene or not. Fair point about reflections though, not many places in W3 would benefit from it. TLDR: Raytracing does not mean great visuals automatically, but it does mean better visuals automatically.
Besides, I’ve never seen CDPR shy away from a lot of work. If they’re truly launching the game on next-gen platforms, they’ll probably take the time to do it right. CP2077 is taking up all of their resources right now so this port is probably going to be released long after today’s news.
You clearly never dive into the files of the game, or how the lighting works. It uses presets, i dont know how close they can get with raytracing (i gues is that flexible) to those. Those presets are custom made for each region or even cutscenes,assets are made based on those presets so they look the best way possible under those conditions, and that doesnt even work…just look how much worse -and flat – the game looks when it starts to rain for instance), so they will have to rearrange a lot (and that includes models, and a lot of models from the previews, Geralt included used higher poly models from Witcher 2, the video above shows exactly that, it’s quite obvious).
We are also talking about fairly big maps, imagine how taxing GI would be, when you have plenty of presets for areas and even cutscenes), that’s why i think shadows, AO and some reflections (bodies of water are still big to support proper reflection -just see how Watchdogs Legion is still using SS reflections for water- ) in some surfaces, materials would be a fair assumption for implementation.
TLDR: GI would be ideal, but sounds too complex and taxing for this game due to how the game handles the lighting, making raytracing (in a game where 85% of the map are forests, sea-rivers and mountains) kinda pointless outside of shadows, AO (yay!) and some reflections in metal like swords and armor (but why even botter?)
The port/update was already confirmed for 2021 for consoles (PC could be sooner, who knows). So stop talking out of your as*
I tried to reread your TLDR many times, i still don’t get what are you trying to say…but, i think that you are impliying that having better tools means automatically a better result…when in reality is a matter of how you use and implement those better tools.
You accuse me of talking out of my a*s and then assume I’ve never looked at the files?
I’ve made my own mods for the game’s lighting lmao. Yes they use presets. The presets are tweaked per region but a good lighting artist can do about a region a day. And they aren’t re-doing everything from scratch, they’d just have to tweak it a little to fit in rtx. Not to mention that the presets can be scripted so you can apply general changes to all regions at the same time and then add smaller custom tweaks.
If you think Geralt in the e3 trailer looks better than the final build you’re blind.
Also, do you think actually GI performs dramatically worse as maps get bigger? You really have no clue how rendering algorithms and data structures work do you? Bigger maps are streamed in. When devs implement rtx, they first have to construct bvh trees. The models that are furthest away in the tree will not have as many or 0 rays traced into them. That way they can avoid raytracing every object no matter how small and vastly accelerate ray-triangle intersection calculations. GI is not some super difficult thing to do with big maps, it just requires a good data structure, and the devs at CDPR already know this. Also even if the game is mainly forest, GI makes a huge impact on overall fidelity. Take your own advice and stop talking out of your a*s if you don’t even have a basic understanding of CG and rendering.
Lastly, how does a 2021 release date conflict with anything I said? I just said that it would be released a while from now. Jan 2021 is 4 months away and that’s IF they release early 2021.
A) Im saying that they have to redo a lot of the game to implement GI, and that would be the major benefit for this game since the lighting is the worst factor in visual. So they rebuild how lighting works on the game, or they try to adapt those presets with raytracing, you will still have a huge difference between them, hopefully the artistic vision doesnt get lost in the translation, and that means from how you set your characters, light sources, transitions, etc, you are fairly aware that before raytracing they have to thought hard about those things, things that endup impacting in how you create an scene, well, raytracing is no different, even when it adds a lot of automatization to the solution (i think of it as a jump and difference to the levels of the OG Halo and the Anniversary take, guess which i prefer)
B) The Geralt from the previews does look better than the vanilla release, check your eyes.
C) I used Watchdogs Legion as an example because is the only third person open world with a singular huge map that uses raytracing from the get go, if it was that easy and cheap to implement, we would have raytracing in every shit*y indie game out there, but we don’t…why¿? because it doesnt “just works”. To implement it fairly well (instead of just building a game from the get go) they will have to make a lot of changes, i just said some examples…is up to them how much they can change obviously.
D) You think 4 months is not a lot of time for raytracing implementation? you claimed this will be release long after this news…are you sure about that? or is your as* talking more?
A) They don’t have to do anything besides redo the lighting. Everything else can stay the same. And like I said, implementing GI via RTX does not hugely change the mood or artistic direction since the existing lighting is designed to look as realistic as possible (I know this because CDPR said so in their GDC talk on TW3’s terrain & rendering) WITHOUT GI. Yes, you are right that they will need to tweak things to make it look good after adding rtx, and I’m saying that it’s not a lot of work to do given the skill level of their lighting artists and the fact that they already have the art direction down. I.e. They already know what it *should* look like. They don’t have to spend as much time deciding as they did the first time around because they aren’t redoing the lighting from scratch. It’s also convenient that you cherry picked Halo CE anniversary and Halo CE classic. Halo 2 vs Halo 2 remastered is a huge positive difference. Halo CE Anniversary was just a f*** up.
B) yeah ok you’re definitely blind:
e3: iDOTpostimgDOTcc/5tgYvk0L/Screenshot-1DOTpng
retail: iDOTpostimgDOTcc/mDrcSNzq/Screenshot-2DOTpng
Retail clearly has better geometry and seems to be better skin shaders with sss. Can’t be too sure because the lighting conditions are so different but it’s hard to find good footage of e3 geralt in that video.
C) Is this actually your argument?? This is the most ridiculous question I’ve heard all day. “Why don’t we have RTX in every cheap indie game?” First, I never said it was easy for *everyone* to implement. I said it would be easy for CDPR to implement and that’s because they have very talented programmers. Second, here’s why: There’s plenty of very obvious reasons that don’t have to do with the cost of implementing it, but the most obvious one is that there are barely any customers who have rtx hardware right now so there isn’t much market support for it. Second, it’s a very new technology that indie dev’s simply wouldn’t have the time or see the value in implementing it.
D) Are you dense? I said it’s 4 months away IF they release January 1st, 2021. Why do you assume that’s the release date? In fact, where did they even specify which part of 2021 this is coming out? You really should talk out of your a*s less and think with your brain more.
A) My good example is cherry picking (Halo 2 is also a good example, kinda…but it has prerendered cutscenes for instance so is bulls*hit as an counterexample, cutscenes that the first in engine ones Anniversary’s dealt with to the point of making big changes) right…they will need to tweak a lot, is the lighting we are talking here…the effect that will have a bigger impact in anything else, in a game that handles lighting in a complex and diverse way. You are saying that they dont have to spend much time to implement it, but then you claimed that this will take long after the news…make up your mind. The GDC talking is fascinating, but it meant sh*t after the massive downgrade the game suffered…
B)Talking about cherry picking, the preview used basically THE WITCHER 2 model, and looks better…that’s how much improvement lighthing can do…granted, the lighting situation in the comparison is different, but you are just fuc*ing yourself up with comparisons like that
C) You are asking how is an argument and then you proceed to try to justify my argument with, fairly good reasons i have to say. Marketing aside, i was talking about the implementation, since, you make it seen so easy to use, so i guess my question is appropiate. Seems like we agree on that, it wouldnt be easy to implement.
D)You didnt answer, you think this would be easy and fast to implement or it will be hard and take a lot of time? Make up your mind, you sound crazy. The community manager confirmed on Twitter a 2021 release.
A) I think I get it now. You willfully misinterpret what I’m saying to make the argument seem weaker. When I was talking about Halo 2 Anniversary, I was talking about the GAME not the cutscenes. It’s not BS as a counterexample, you just need to read carefully. I have serious doubts about your reading comprehension. I said it’s not difficult for them to implement rtx and I also said they have an indeterminate amount of time to do the work (at least 4 months, at most 1 yr 4 months). I’m not saying it TAKES a long time to implement, i’m saying they HAVE a lot of time to do whatever they wanna do.
B) Once again, you massively fail at reading comprehension. You said the GEOMETRY was worse in the retail tw3 build than e3. I already agree that the lighting is worse in the retail build. I’m saying the asset itself is higher quality in tw3. The geometry is better. The shader for skin might also be better in the retail than e3 but that’s a separate issue.
C) It wouldn’t be easy to implement DEPENDING on who is implementing it. Why is this so hard to understand? Is everything one or the other for you? It’s easy for CDPR, hard for Indies (an not necessarily technically, just value wise).
D) Addressed in A. They have a lot of time, and rtx doesn’t even take much time for them to implement. Read. Closely.
He does it all the time. Or he has reading comprehension problems, but I doubt it.
It isn’t just RTX. It’s a proper next gen refresh. Many of the models and materials and rendering features in general will probably be modernized.
Raytracing in Control looks like a different game to me. it’s 10x better with Raytracing.
DXR would help, but the other improvements will be nice as well especially that faster load time. I’m so happy to game in an age where most games can utilize NVMe SSD’s properly, will be beautiful when load times are a distant memory, or needs to be explained as a thing to young gamers (like trying to explain dial up).
I just hope that the movement of both geralt and roach are cleaned up a bit so they’re less clunky and navigate the terrain a bit better.
lots of gaytracing fanboys here
Boo hoo
We just might get that finally with RTX!
Something we could’ve gotten with alternative to RTX back in 2017!
We won’t even get the fidelity of 2014 gameplay demo, that’s for sure.
Given that the game was downgraded they can easily now switch effects and asset quality back on, it’s probably just flipping a switch for them.
It won’t look exactly like this trailer but that’s not a bad thing, color grading was better in the final game.
Let’s see if those “technical improvements” include CDPR incorporating the optimisation improvements from the DLC expansion pack into the base game. They previously stated that doing such a thing was too much effort.
Awesome news. Kudos to CDPR for making this a free update for current owners. We all know what other studios (Rockstar) would’ve done.
I’ve been wanting a reason to do another 100% completion playthrough, this is the perfect excuse haha.
This is how you do a remaster.
I’d love if CDPR were to work with Halk, in getting those updated textures into the game
I would rather se them work on 2077 full time
Still waiting on HDR support for the PC version of The Witcher 3. Raytraced everything stands out more with HDR.
That’s included in this update.
I knew it was worth waiting for. I held back on playing W3 because I knew there would be a “Enhanced” edition coming.
Halk Hogan is already going to release texture mod 12.0 ultimate
I bet it still won’t match the 2014 gameplay demo (https://mega.nz/file/oYdiQRjb#LvZS4Bfc7pp4JmcTej1pYpdUjA5A1xcYeHKLK37wCfs – link to gamersyde uncompressed video) as far as lighting and particle effects.
Best developer out there, by far. The standard all should strive for
compared to 2, they already did.