The Witcher 3 next-gen review: Customize one of the greatest RPGs ever

The “next-gen” update for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt it’s almost here, and I spent a few days playing the first few hours of the game (very leisurely) to see what it’s like. I have good news: it is, in fact, a suit Sorcerer 3 experience with some slight quality of life improvements and a substantial graphical upgrade. It also still serves as a benchmark in RPG design, to the point where it still makes other games feel weaker by comparison.

The update, which I played on PlayStation 5, is based on three main pillars: visual updates, several fan mods that have been integrated into the actual game, and some new DLC that complements the Netflix aesthetic. The sorcerer series in the game.

The visual upgrades offer a performance mode that locks the game to 60 frames per second. They’re good frames, and while I know PC gamers have been living in this world for a while, the experience of lounging on the sofa and watching Geralt of Rivia twirl as he cuts Drowners in half is unbeatable. It’s also great outside of the action. Watching Geralt’s facial expressions at 60fps on a big 4K TV is fascinating. His characteristic “hrmms” and “uh-huhs”, with their subtle changes of expression, have always been at the core of his character; there’s a cleanness to the lines and movement of the performance mode game that draws these things out and makes them even more stylized, with well-defined edges and a slightly softer palette in between.

Image: CD Projekt Red

It also doesn’t hurt that the performance mode never got my PS5 fans into the action. Conversely, every time Geralt thought he was talking to townspeople or galloping Roach through a monster-infested swamp, in my last-gen playthroughs, it felt like my PS4 was about to launch into orbit.

However, I wasn’t as impressed with the update’s 30fps ray-traced mode. I’m not sure if this was an interaction with my TV or an actual frame rate issue, but turning on the fidelity-focused mode seemed to introduce actual stuttering. Weirder still, in an early cutscene with sorceress Yennefer, it seemed to completely stop syncing the audio with the character models (pausing the cutscene and returning to Performance fixed that immediately). I didn’t leave it on much, other than to simply see how things looked with major lighting changes.

As I continue my replay of the game on this newer console, I’ll keep it in performance mode, if only because that allows the game to lean to its strengths. Geralt’s world it’s a world, and the new 4K textures, with their lush greens and rough browns, provide a stunning backdrop against which Geralt and crew stand out. Whatever light ray tracing is invoked here is just the right amount, without detracting from the motion at all. The Velen has always been mostly marshes, but inside The sorcerer 3In the new incarnation of 2022, the marshes take on an ethereal aspect, almost like drops of petroleum jelly poured into the desert. Fantasy Vaseline.

Image: CD Projekt Red

Improved graphics, mods that make inventory management and map navigation a little easier, and some additional DLC are all good. But I’m not sure if they’re the explosively exciting thing about returning to The sorcerer 3 in 2022. These are items that may lure you in for a replay or, if you’re lucky, your first foray into the interconnected worlds of commoners, creatures, immortals, and lords that Geralt weaves together. I’m what gets you in the door, maybe, but I’m not the party.

The party – by which I mean the huge political and interplanar story going on inside The sorcerer 3 – is still amazing and still manages to make the vast majority of other open world RPGs (most others Gamesreally) seem lacking in comparison.

Take White Orchard as an example. It’s the first area of ​​the game and serves as both a catch-up for franchise veterans and a tutorial for new players. Geralt and his pseudo-dad Vesemir are trying to meet their old friend Yennefer in the middle of a war zone, and she wasn’t where she told them she would be. They’re on a quest and are immediately drawn into things witchers do: there’s a griffin to hunt and local politics to navigate, and hunters must find a solution that satisfies both. The White Orchard section of the game takes less than two hours (quicker, for others), but is absolutely loaded with information about the world and the goals of its characters, big and small. We know the nations that are at war. We learn about their policies and who might gain power if the invaders win. We see inefficiencies and hopes for a better tomorrow, and we see old prejudices remaining and new ones emerging.

Image: CD Projekt Red

Geralt lives in a place as rich as a place of play has never been and, above all, he is tired of it. Through him, we learn to tire ourselves and can be irritated by the short-sightedness of his inhabitants. It was amazing to me how quickly I was reabsorbed into this fantasy world after I thought I was done and completely out of it, having done it for (I thought) last time a couple of years ago. The updates help with this feeling of character alignment and sitting in fiction – the UI is more unobtrusive now and there’s a new efficiency to menu display that makes everything much quicker to navigate, but that’s not it which will keep. people engaged in the next few weeks or even months. That magic has been there the whole time.

Strangely, the prevailing thought that haunted me while playing The sorcerer 3 again it was actually about another game. I was thinking about it Cyberpunk 2077which I played earlier this year, and how little it played the hits of The sorcerer 3. A strength of Geralt’s adventure is how little it really has to do with him. He is in some important rooms and meets people who move and shake, but warriors live and die without him. Dynasties fall. Monsters kill the weak. The mechanics of life happen and he doesn’t have to be there to see it all unfold – that’s what makes his story so compelling. He’s a hero when he’s around, and he’ll move or shiver as needed, but his world isn’t driven by a protagonist. It’s a humble fantasy, or at least it presents itself as such, and by contrast, Cyberpunk 2077 it was so self-centered of the player that it felt like people didn’t exist if they weren’t in my field of vision. In that game, history happened so that protagonist V could be there to inherit it. Geralt is almost anonymous in comparison.

The next-gen update will make it available to more people and I’m excited about it. But it left me with a melancholy feeling about where we’ve been and, given the future of The Witcher franchise, where a post-Cyberpunks The Witcher game could go. I hope CD Projekt Red’s 2015 RPG, rather than the one released in 2020, is the foundation on which to build.

The next generation update for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be released on December 16 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PS5 using a pre-release download code provided by CD Projekt Red. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Learn more about Polygon’s ethics policy here.