The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered Screenshot
Image: CD Projekt Red

Over a decade old now and barely showing its age, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt saddles up for one more victory lap today, with the release of a massive free remaster update. CD Projekt Red's open-world RPG now boasts a whole new lighting engine (including path tracing, for those with really swole PCs), new textures, new animations, and a bunch of gameplay tune-ups. And if you only owned the basic version of the game without any expansions? Well, you get those now for free. You can check out the full patch notes here - they're rather extensive!

While it would be nice to assume that this was done purely out of kindness to their fans, it's most likely that the release of the Switch 2 version of the game (a potentially lucrative new market) gave CD Projekt the opportunity to revisit the game and tune it up while they were optimizing it to run on this new generation of handheld console hardware. Everyone wins here, though, so I'm definitely not grumbling.

The optional upgrade to full path-traced lighting (an even more demanding variant of ray tracing) certainly looks nice and is a PC-exclusive enhancement, but you'll need a top-of-the-line PC to get the most out of it. Even with a 5090, you'll need some DLSS upscaling and maybe even frame generation to consistently hit above 60fps. A quick test with every setting cranked to max has me itching to dig back into the game, but I'm afraid Geralt is going to have to get in line - this is a busy week.

One of the most interesting new additions in the remastered version is cross-platform mod support. While you'll still need the PC version to make mods, anyone on any platform (including the brand new Switch 2 version) can download community creations from the game's Mod.io page. CD Projekt have always had a close relationship with their modding community, with the studio hiring the creator of major combat rework mods for the first two games to direct the action on the third. Plus, many of the new textures in the remaster are from the community-made HD Reworked Project.

So even if CD Projekt were to stop, there'd still be adventures yet to come. But they're still keeping Geralt vusy. While the next Witcher game is confirmed to be starring Geralt's adopted daughter, Ciri, the old White Wolf still has some life left in his old bones. On top of the remaster, there's one final Witcher 3 expansion in the works - Songs of the Past - due out sometime next year. If you start today, you might even be caught up by the time it launches - this is a BIG game.

The Remastered update is out now for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, with the game currently 50% off (down from £40/$50 until October 1st. Far from the cheapest the game has been (it has been as low as £2.49), but that's still a whole lot of very polished, open-world RPG for £20 if you're late to the party.

Minor PSA: At the time of writing, downloads from UK servers for the game are painfully slow, but I was able to grab it in just a few minutes after changing my Steam download server to Washington, DC, home of Valve's headquarters.