The Witcher 3 just announced the major changes that will be introduced in its Next-Gen update.

Witcher 3 Next-Gen Update Releases Huge List of Changes and Additions

CDProjekt Red is just one of the few companies that keep on giving. The developers are notorious for giving out free major updates that make sweeping changes to games over a year old. They did it with The Witcher (and are even planning a remake) and The Witcher 2. Larian Studios also did something similar in the past with Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2.

The Witcher 3’s next-gen update though looks to have much, much more in terms of addition. What was initially thought to be just a fresh coat of paint is in actuality new paint, an enhanced canvas, as well as some new detail here and there. Let’s take a look at the offerings coming on December 14th.

The Witcher 3 Coming into the Current Generation

It’s hard to think that The Witcher 3 was released just 7 years ago, in 2015. The title still looks great on PC, even compared to other modern games. However, it does show its age when looking at the previous console generation.

In order to make things more modern, “Patch 4.0” will add ray tracing and ambient occlusion across the board. The PC version will also get ray-traced reflections and shadows, which are sure to bring even a 3080 to its knees. These two changes alone would actually propel the game forward into the current gen. But CDProjekt’s not yet done.

The textures of the main cast, such as Geralt, Yennfer, Triss, and Ciri will be getting upscaled textures, up to 4k in resolution. They will also emit higher-resolution shadows and will no longer be blocky messes.

Environments in The Witcher 3 update will also receive minor facelifts. There will be new sky textures, an entirely new weather type, and updated global lighting (presumably for those who will not make use of RTX).

Technically a Technicality

A new and dedicated Photo Mode will be added in the Witcher 3 Next-Gen Update. This is so that players can take stunningly beautiful images of their favorite locations and characters.

On the technical side of things, AMD FSR 2.1 is now being implemented for all platforms for additional performance. NVIDIA DLSS 3 will be added as well, but only for the PC platform.

While on the topic of PC, a new graphics preset is also now available, called “Ultra+” which is more ultra than ultra. Going onto this preset will change visibility ranges, texture quality, as well as number of background characters, among other things.

Going back to consoles, they will have tons of the graphical updates outlined above. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will both have choices whether to play in Ray Tracing or Performance Modes. The Series S on the other hand will only have Quality and Performance Modes, both of which will have no RTX.

All platforms will also support cross-progression for The Witcher 3 if you happen to own multiple copies. Save files will be uploaded into the cloud so you can pick up right where you left off on different devices.

A Modder’s Delight

CDProjekt Red actually has gone a bit above and beyond what developers usually do for updates. They have actually taken fan-made mods into consideration when designing the Witcher 3 next-gen update.

The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project and HD Monsters Reworked are two of the headlines which improve texture resolution across the board. The Nitpicker’s Patch makes fixes to some extremely small details that would otherwise go unnoticed by those with the untrained eye. It tries its best to remove armor clipping, floating objects, and other tiny nuisances.

CDProjekt even added the Immersive Real-Time Cutscenes mod. This does away with the pre-rendered cutscenes in the base game that were locked to 30 fps and had a generally lower resolution. NPC outfits will also update to whatever you set them to since this new method makes use of in-engine rendering instead.

Flashier Fighting

Last on the additional mods is Full Combat Rebalance 3, by Flash_in_the_flesh. What’s interesting about this is that Flash is actually a dev that worked extensively on The Witcher 3. So he definitely knows the ins and outs of the title and set forth to create sweeping tweaks to the combat experience. The exhaustive list is too long to mention here, but nearly every aspect related to fighting has been changed in some way.

Toss a Coin for Your Witcher

The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Update lands on December 14, 2022. Aside from everything outlined above, there are also tons of new QoL features, side quests, improvements, and more to look forward to.

For more news, check out V Rising Developers Share Exciting Details on the Free Expansion Coming In 2023 and Space Marine 2 Gameplay Revealed in Explosive New Trailer.