Five days out from launch, CD Projekt Red put out a side-by-side clip on Tuesday 23 September comparing the original The Witcher 3 with its remastered version. The plan was to show off the work. The reception took a turn the studio probably did not plan for, with a share of players rating certain elements higher in the 2015 build. The argument sits on very specific details, and those details are worth a look before 29 September.
At a glance
The remaster lands on 29 September, a free upgrade for anyone who owns the game.
The clip published by CD Projekt Red shows Geralt casting Igni at drowners.
Complaints centre on particles, fire reflections in water and the fog.
What The Witcher 3 remaster offers on 29 September
CD Projekt Red announced this version on 25 August, in a release posted on its press site. The remaster arrives on 29 September on PC through GOG, Steam and the Epic Games Store, on PlayStation 5 and on Xbox Series. A Nintendo Switch 2 version turned up in a Nintendo Direct earlier this month.
The studio describes a bundle of visual and gameplay improvements. The package pulls together the base game and both expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, which existing owners pick up at no extra cost.
This version arrives during a busy stretch for the licence. CD Projekt Red is also preparing Songs of the Past, an expansion shown in August, and work continues on the next instalment in the saga. The Witcher 3 is doing shop-window duty at a point when attention sits elsewhere.
The Witcher 3 upgrade stays free for anyone who already owns it. That fact weighs heavily on how you judge the rest.
The comparison the studio published on Tuesday
The clip sets the original The Witcher 3 and the remaster next to each other on one scene: Geralt casting Igni at a pack of drowners in a swamp. The choice of setting makes sense, since it stacks fire, water and mist together, the three surfaces where a renderer shows its hand fastest.
The studio uses it to display what has been reworked. Geralt’s armour carries noticeably more detail, the water reads as better defined, and lighting runs through a ray-traced pass. Fog takes a different approach: the original laid down sharply drawn low clouds, while the remaster pushes haze further into the distance.
Why the reflections started an argument
This is where the demonstration turned on its author. GamesRadar points out that in the 2015 build you can make out the fire reflected in the brackish water, as a slightly blurred orange smear. A fair few players reckon that reflection has lost presence in the remaster.
Criticism also lands on The Witcher 3 particle effects, which parts of the comment sections rate as easier to read in the original. GoNintendo carried the same clip and the reactions that followed it.
Honestly, some of this argument comes down to video compression and screen size. Judging a ray-traced pass from a compressed clip leads to shaky conclusions. That said, the complaint about the fire reflection concerns something plainly visible, and it comes up too often to wave away.
What the row says about the format itself
A side-by-side comparison is a thankless exercise. It isolates a few seconds, usually on a night scene or a misty one, and invites everybody to hunt for the difference. Viewers then look for the flaw ahead of the whole.
The Witcher 3 sits in an odd spot for another reason. The game is eleven years old, and a good share of its audience has replayed it several times, often with heavy graphics mods. Those players end up comparing the remaster against a modified build they assembled themselves, more than against the original.
The game already went through this in 2022, with the next-gen update. It also drags along the comparison with its E3 showing, which many still hold up as a benchmark nobody reached. Every new version gets measured against that footage.
A few seconds of clip judges a full overhaul badly. The reviews on 29 September will say considerably more.
Switch 2, Xbox Play Anywhere and the rest of the file
Two practical details come with this launch. The remaster joins the Xbox Play Anywhere programme, announced on Xbox Wire alongside the game: owners of the Xbox Series version pick up the PC build through the Microsoft Store, with save syncing between the two.
On Switch 2, the Japanese eShop listing puts The Witcher 3 at 43.5 GB of required space. Take that for what it is, a storefront figure that can shift from one region to another.
What to watch for on Monday
Three things will be worth a look at launch. First, how reflections behave in play, on a screen, rather than through a compressed video. Second, how performance holds up on each machine, with ray tracing running across wildly different hardware.
Third, the Switch 2 build of The Witcher 3, the most closely watched because it asks for the most compromises. It turns up in a state nobody has yet seen running at length.
Anyone who already owns the game gets this remaster for free, which changes what you can reasonably put it on trial for. Still, CD Projekt Red picked this comparison to sell its work, and a share of its audience read it as the opposite of what the studio meant to show.
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