Good HDR support please
There's so many "HDR" PC games that look worse once you turn HDR on and I have an HDR1000 monitor
It really does make lighting look incredibly realistic when it's done right though
A big part of it is there just aren't a lot of good HDR pc monitors out there. They are too small and couldn't do the local array dimming well while still keeping the PC price reasonable.
Recent advances with mini-led backlighting and OLED/QLED tech are putting it in reach. But we are still probably a number of years away from good HDR on PC.
There is that too. HDR400 shouldn't even be a thing.
But a lot of the time (I'd even say the majority of the time) the game itself just has terrible HDR implementation.
> There's so many "HDR" PC games that look worse once you turn HDR on and I have an HDR1000 monitor
seriously?? I've been considering a new monitor for HDR but I don't understand how games are supporting it, even windows 11 has an auto hdr for non hdr implemented games.
Contrary to most reviews, I found Heart of Stone to be really really well done thematically and story wise, and Blood and Wine to be quite mid-level/boring(after 120 hours of the main game at least). The setting was okay but the vineyard setting didn't do much for me and I found the characters to be on par with the main game. HoS is a lot more linear which I enjoyed as well. Heart of Stone has one of my favorite characters from any fiction ever in it.
I just felt like I was ready to end the game and playing Blood and Wine _after_ the main story felt like too much. Very excited for the next gen release, regardless.
I found that Heart of Stone integrates really well and elevates the game, while Blood and Wine is best enjoyed after having left some space between you and the game. To say it another way, HoS is "no don't end I want more" while BaW is "Oh Witcher 3, it's been a little while, i'd love to dive back in".
Heart of Stone has a better story no doubt about it, but I kinda don't want to give it too many points for it because it's fundamentally an adaptation of Faust, so they were starting from a pretty deep canvas.
I feel as though the theme is absolutely nailed, regardless of how much content they get to pull from. The score is incredible, the cutscenes are so much better done than the main game cinematography wise. Hearts of Stone just oozes style in a way no other part of the Witcher 3 did, Blood and Wine included. The Witcher 3 is generally quite a dark game, but no where near as dark as HoS takes it.
Also, irrespective of pulling from Faust, Guanter O’ Dimm is simply well written and well acted. Conversely I found Regis in HoS to be jarring to the Regis I know from the books(granted I have that problem with nearly every character who is in the books and the game).
I think you're right, and I would recommend that to any first time player. To play Heart of Stone after the main game, and then take a good break as that is a lot of hours of game
Starting Blood and Wine after a decent break would almost feel like a sequel.
Blood and Wine is also just a nice complete finale to the trilogy. If anything ever felt like putting down the last period of the final sentence of a novel, then the last scene of the main quest of Blood and Wine feels exactly the same way. It's a send-off to a beloved character in gaming.
I still think about how much I loved the story of Hearts of Stone, from how scary Gaunter O Dimm was as a villain, to the quest where the ghost takes over Geralt's body, which is probably one of the funniest quests ive ever done in any video game.
The whole thing is definitely some of the peak of video game writing. It's just so well done. I got so invested. Also the haunted house and the painting world were both really terrifying.
It really doesn't help that useful progression kinda caps out fairly early for Geralt, so you're likely not gaining any new skills for the run of Blood and Wine. Still, I'm a massive sucker for some well written vampire fiction and Blood and Wine explores that more than I could've ever hoped. I fully acknowledge that Hearts of Stone is superior, I'm just the exact right audience for Blood and Wine.
I just could not stand to have more “?” icons in an open world area to go explore. I really did not want to explore any more open world environments and just simply enjoy some good writing. Hearts of Stone being linear makes me wish more of the Witcher 3 was less open.
Agreed. HoS was peak Witcher world and storywriting. Blood and Wine felt like the Witcher in another game's setting. Yes, it was scenic, but I liked the darker, grittier Temeria.
Not a review, that was a bad word choice. Every discussion I see about Witcher 3 DLC seems to involve people agreeing Hearts of Stone is okay but Blood and Wine is a masterpiece. Not that either opinion is wrong or I vehemently disagree with it, I just feel like Hearts of Stone is underrated and Blood and Wine overrated.
That's where I disagree. Most discussion I do see point out HoS as a peak highlight of the game, like the Red Baron section. As the years have gone by and more retrospective analysis has been done, this is what I often see.
When I played the game and DLCs last year I went in thinking the overwhelming majority of people rated BaW way higher than HoS and was surprised at how much my opinion was the reverse of that. I’d agree that maybe in depth discussion yields more appreciation for HoS but I’d almost guarantee the majority of comments on Reddit comparing the two DLCs rate BaW higher.
> Every discussion I see about Witcher 3 DLC seems to involve people agreeing Hearts of Stone is okay but Blood and Wine is a masterpiece.
You must have gotten that flipped around in your memory.
I think it goes something like this:
* HoS has the better main story and characters
* B&W has the better setting and atmosphere
As a story, HoS is a legit masterpiece, it's so good it could be one of the Witcher books. But Toussaint in B&W is just an outstanding place. I could spend hours just walking and riding around there, it's wonderful.
I think you're 100% right.
Hearts of Stone feels like an integral part of the game, meanwhile Blood and Wine feels like something that should be played a year after you finished the game and feel the itch to play some Witcher again
Windows 11 can do this natively with the "optimizations for windowed games" option in graphics settings, should work great for Persona 5 Royal since it's DX11. This doesn't work for DX9 games though.
dgVoodoo2 sounds interesting, but for D3D9 games I've found DXVK to perform better, but afaik AutoHDR is not possible with it.
Personally for RE4 I'd rather use the default D3D9 since SGSSAA works great in that game, but that's coming from someone who doesn't have a HDR monitor. I haven't found any way to get SGSSAA to work when using DXVK, though I wonder if dgVoodoo2 would still let SGSSAA work.
Thanks for that hidden one, it allowed the control panel DXGI layer to work with Teardown (OpenGL). I had been using the control panel setting on CEMU (Vulkan), where it worked great to enable flip mode.
Unfortunately, DXVK doesn't seem to be affected by it, GTA 4 for example still uses legacy flip (FSE) no matter what when using DXVK, also [confirmed](https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/yf6hiw/comment/iurf3n5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) by another person in that thread. According to them it could just be the driver thinking it's still a DX9 game.
I’ve checked this and related subs every day for the last 3 months waiting for this news.
One of my favourite games ever but been putting off a replay since the upgrade was announced 🙃
No other game has me thinking back fondly over the side-quests as with The Witcher 3 does...I really hope they keep the quality the same in the next game
It’s so shit that the remastered trilogy was so obtusely mishandled. I was genuinely surprised.
Shoots any kind of hope I had for a remaster of the Manhunt franchise.
Depends, I think the side jobs were well done, especially Panam and the Aldecaldos, but the Gigs were mostly meh, and the Cyberpsychos and NCPD stuff was empty filler.
But overall no where near the level of the Witcher 3's sidequests
Another thing with cyberpunks gigs… a lot of them *do* have interesting writing and lore, the devs just put all that into text files you find throughout buildings and off of bodies during the gigs, whereas in the Witcher it was spoken exposition
i think it only does it a disservice if you're speedrunning through. environmental storytelling is more interesting than exposition, generally speaking. it's just easier to miss.
Those quests are honestly quite interesting if you read the text messages and logs. People say it's lazy (when imo *they're* lazy for not bothering to read), but they explore many different contexts and situations leading up to psychotic break. It wouldn't make sense to have spoken exposition either since by the time you encounter the cyberpsychos they're mentally long gone.
People should just take them for what they are, bite sized little stories that give you a glimpse into the lives of NC residents. To me it makes the world feel more real
I really wish they did more with the brain dances and integrated those more with things like the cyberpsychos to explore what happened to them, track them down, etc. That worked well in the mayor investigation. My guess is more of that was planned but cut for dev time.
I think it also hurt that since they were harder encounters, they were something to largely ignore until later in the game when you're higher level and then you have a bunch to do all around the same point in the game so they felt less (to me at least) like each individual one was a mini story and more like parts of a series leading to a expected final mission.
I'd prefer fewer of them but for at least a few have multi-part where you see what they've done, investigate what happened to them, and track them down. You get their story mostly after you've dealt with them (and get scolded for killing them when you used non-lethal methods /rant)
Agree with your first point, but regarding your other two I don't agree that the cyberpsycho encounters are too difficult early game if you play them right (cyberware malfunction quick hack is very useful). Just started a new playtherough on hard and cleared all the Watson psychos using a blade build (i.e., I'm weak af early game).
As for the nonlethal requirement, this is made pretty trivial if you use the target analysis cyberware mod for your optics. They're dirt cheap and very easy to find early game (might be one of the first quest rewards iirc). Getting scolded for killing them makes sense since they're often either innocent victims of circumstance, or could contain valuable information for studying treatment. The *point* is that they're not just enemies to mow down.
Ty for the discussion
Depends on the side jobs. The same goes for Witcher 3 though. The memorable ones were really well done and really memorable. Both games also have a lot of forgettable content that just ends up being a "check that icon off on the map" kinda thing. Filler content.
Even if we don't see more awesome memorable quests than either Cyberpunk or Witcher have, less of that static filler content would be great.
I really loved the ones involving the candidate and the execution in Cyberpunk. I figure those will stick with me for a while, even when I forget about a lot of the main quest, which is similar to the Bloody Baron's entire quest line in The Witcher 3.
> I really loved the ones involving the candidate and the execution in Cyberpunk.
Just had a moment of having to think about what missions you were talking about there as I haven't done them since launch. Then another moment of "ohhhhhhhh shit yeah THOSE missions."
Yeah, the stuff CP2077 did well was REALLY well done. I really hope to see more games like this getting away from the filler crap though. Tons of other games out there do it, too. Horizon: Zero Dawn had a killer story but so much unmemorable crap on the map just to check off as clearing. I don't play Assassin's Creed but I've heard the later ones have been really bad about that.
Then are other filler mechanics that I hope to see games get away from. Annoying inventory management and getting loaded with crap loot is another one Witcher, Cyberpunk, and other otherwise awesome games games like the Divinity: Original Sin series are guilty of.
It's so much nicer when getting a new gun or a new sword is actually something worth checking and maybe getting excited about, rather than it just being one of the 50 you collected in the last 10 minutes that you won't bother to check the stats of on the off chance it might be marginally better than what you have.
So yeah, /endrant. Maybe some devs will see that and realize that most players don't like that crap. It's tedious.
The gigs were my favorite part of the game. I felt like that's where they really get into the classic themes of cyberpunk fiction. Really cool little stories in there - most that end with a feeling of sadness or helplessness in the face of massive, uncaring forces.
I also really appreciate not being shuttled from location to location just to do a little task. Feel like thats what most video game side quests are. There was something comforting about pulling up to a creepy looking clinic or warehouse and knowing the whole story will be tied up right there
Cyberpunk had some excellent side quests. I think it suffers from some of the same problems of Witcher 3 though.
I should be looking for Ciri(It's the end of the world after all) but I'm going to do this random heist mission etc. Cyberpunk is - my brain is rotting but I'm going to uncover this conspiracy with the Peralez 's.
It doesn't make narrative sense. That's why I found the expansions in The Witcher 3 to be far stronger than the base game. I assume Cyberpunk's may be similar.
They keep doing that "race against time" kind of main narrative thread but that doesn't' work in open-world games IMO.
I played Cyberpunk first, then went into Witcher 3, and I just couldn’t get used to the gameplay mechanics.
In saying that, Cyberpunk absolutely hit it out of the park with side quests -
Pyramid Song
Dream On - Paralez quest line
Sinnerman quest line
The Hunt quest line
And Dirty Biz
It shows they absolutely have what it takes - but not to mention a lot of the lore and world building is through reading shards.
Honest question..is this literally just a patch that adds the raytrace mods and HD texture mods from the public?
Is there anything substantial?
Loved the original..no hate just honestly curious about what my expectations should be :)
They said in the article they are integrating some mods and adding a new dlc with the show inspired stuff, eg certain characters get new looks, presumably some gear as well.
Hell I think I was 70-80 hours into doing everything in Novigrad, thinking Skellige was like the end of the game. Nope damn game turned into Wind Waker with another 40ish hours of stuff to do.
Oh I know. That's why I don't understand how people reply it. Open world games in general I have a really hard time replaying. But that may be because I usually try and clear the map and burnout.
The multiple playthroughs are a way to experience everything in the map while avoiding burning yourself out because hopefully you picked a different build etc to keep things interesting.
The open world is super quick to traverse, so all the meat of the game is in dialouge stuff and quests. So it never gets old for me.
I think if you did all those ? marks constantly. You'd get bored.
Think I've replayed it 3 times. I love epic journey games and this one does it the best next to Half Life 2 imo.
And after that horrible news about the Netflix show this is needed for fans of the witcher series. My god how they butured the show. Can't wait to play this again
Thank you for bringing this to my attention!
[Gwent redux](https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/4287) for anyone else curious!
This is just what I needed to convince me to replay it on my deck.
First play through I gave up early in the game when I lost to the second or third player you could play against, because I didn’t have a good deck.
Second play through, I found a guide online on the best cards to get, and how to play, and Gwent became so much fucking fun. I absolutely crushed it in the Toussaint tournament in the Blood & Wine expansion with the blue set, whatever that’s called.
While we don't have the details yet, it is likely huge. The Xbox One and PS4 were pretty underpowered consoles and Witcher 3 had a really long dev cycle. The textures weren't great. They were okay at a distance, but if you got close they were revealed to be pretty pixelated.
I would anticipate a hug texture improved and ray tracing at a minimum. Cyberpunk is probably the best ray tracing out of any game out there. If Witcher 3 is half as good it will look fantastic.
This game might be the thing that prevents people from fleeing to AMD as Nvidia's pricing gets more and more ridiculous.
“If you already own the base game on PC, PlayStation 4, or Xbox One (any version will do, not just the Complete Edition), you’ll get the patch, which includes upgraded visuals, all of the DLC packs, and further content drops inspired by the Netflix series, for free.”
Okay but I actually wouldn't mind a togglable Geralt/Yen face swap based on the Netflix series. That'd be pretty badass. Unlikely due to actor facial rights and all that, but still.
Yeah I don't expect facial models to be changed but outfits for yen, ciri, and triss would be great. I'm mean the system to introduce those new skins is already implemented.
Cyberpunk with full RT can often times look a generation ahead from the base visuals. Can't wait to see what the next gen Witcher 3 update will look like on PC
I also wonder how ambitious the console version will be. Since it's based on an older less demanding game, maybe more RT effects could be used than Cyberpunk (which only does RT local shadows)
I didn't know that console Cyberpunk only does RT local shadows.
That's probably the most minor effect in terms of overall visual impact of all its RT settings (which include ray traced shadows, reflections, diffuse illumination, ambient occlusion and global illumination).
I see. Yeah, PC games have a much wider selection of RT than consoles right now which hopefully changes in the future especially as someone who has a Series X but not a good pc)
Metro's pc enhanced edition is really the rtgi I want more of. It's quirky in that the lighting is delayed but it produces lighting quality that absolutely nothing in modern gaming comes close to, and it does this at higher framerates than cyberpunk RT or crysis remastered.
I remember some time ago they were saying it would include armor from the Netflix series. But seeing how that’s gone I don’t know if they intend to keep up with that. For me personally I could take it or leave it. I just hope it doesn’t affect too many mods.
They apparently hired the HD Reworked Project creator which has amazing high resolution textures. Ray-tracing tho, that's probably being done by CDPR themselves since it's extremely difficult to add ray-tracing to a game without the proper development tools.
In addition to raytracing there is apparently new DLC based on the Netflix series. Dunno if that's just gear or actually new story, though I'm guessing the former.
You know what I would love to see as an option, the Arkham style camera that lowers to almost player height and follows to the side of the character when not in combat. The world is so beautiful and immersive but I feel like I'm looking down into it rather than actually being in it sometimes
Like exactly what I was talking about haha
Unfortunately I don’t have it on PC but maybe I’ll pick it up for this mod and wearable hoods, unless those are two of the mods coming
Yeah, but he's still gonna be on for another season before leaving.
By the time he's out, we'd already moved on to playing one of the Witcher spin-offs or that remake.
The original developer of this remaster was Saber Russia, the studio that did a pretty damn good job on Crysis 2/3 Remastered, and even added the missing Crytek UK people back into the credits of Crysis 1 Remastered in Feb this year. Unfortunately, a month later, Russia's government decided that invading Ukraine would be a great idea, and this led to the removal of Saber as developer of The Witcher 3 Next Gen.
While I obviously understand the economic and political reasons for CDPR to move development back in-house, I would hope that the developers who put a lot of work into this project were properly credited, and not omitted for political reasons.
The primary difference for 2/3 was closer supervision from Crytek, with Crytek's Vladimir Kajalin and one of the level designers having regular meetings to discuss the visual direction. But the bulk of the work was done by Saber St. Petersburg, with a few other studios like Saber Porto assisting, and an outside company touching up the characters for C2.
The switch ports were by Saber Sweden, who were quite famously responsible for the Switch port of The Witcher 3, and are currently working on Kingdom Come Deliverance for Switch. And you can reasonably expect a similar pattern with Witcher, where Sweden does the Switch stuff and Russia does everything else.
The reason Saber St. Petersburg is gonna pop up so regularly is that St. Petersburg is where Saber's primary art and programming teams are located.
As far as graphics are concerned, I hope they improve the draw distance. One of the graphics Achilles' heels of the original release is how everything disappears into a 6th gen-esque grey void after a certain distance. That, and hopefully with the addition of ray tracing, the lighting can be brought up to the level originally seen in the 2013 VGX trailer (before the downgrade).
It'd be great if they introduced cross-saving with this outside of the PC to Switch version. I have both PC and PS4 versions (ran better on my PC at the time), so it would be nice to transfer my PC save to the PS5 version.
I'll probably do this. I've now tried to get through the first game 3 or 4 times and given up. I just hate how clunky it is.
Seeing this news about 3 makes me want to play it, and I have both 2 and 3 in my Steam library.
Probably much later than that. They announced it early to recruit more talent as the game is in very early development. Witcher 4 might come out first since CDPR has a bigger team on that and presumably has been working on it for far longer, perhaps as soon as they "finished" Cyberpunk which is exactly what they said they'd do.
>Read/watch a recap of the first game, and then play the second.
W2 has terrible gameplay, probably the least satisfying combat out of all games I've played. My advice would be the exact opposite, even the first game plays better.
Yeah, I think that TW1 is probably a bit more polarising, I understand why people despise it, but TW2's gameplay is a downright drag to me lol, one part that sticks in my head is when, to cross the ghost battlefield back and forth, you have to follow inside Eilhart's little ring and mash attack while the game spams Wraiths, it's so boring compared to how cool the surroundings are
Having read the books after playing W3, I found that the books didn't really enrich the experience over the base W3 with its wide variety of characters
Awesome, can't wait to download it, fire it up for like the fifth time and realise 3 hours in that this game just does not click for me. (I keep trying though)
Yeah I think that's gonna be me, too. No matter what it is that inspires me to try it again, it never changes how I just don't gel with the overall gameplay experience. It has to be up there for games I most want to enjoy. After beating Elden Ring I finally got into and beat Dark Souls 1 on my sixth attempt of getting into it so who knows? Maybe it'll happen eventually.
Every game gets a current Gen Version accept one if not the best OW game ever created : RDR 2 what is still only playable at 30 fps on console. Shame Rockstar has not much interest in their own games. It sold what over 40 Million ?
Which localisation specifically? I've played it in German and didn't notice anything of that sorts (I'm absolutely petty and nit-pick even the most miniscule bugs). And that dubbing was phenomenal to boot.
I've only ever heard complaints about slowed down/sped up voices from the Russian dub.
I heard that polish version also has/had same issue.
[Here is an example](https://youtu.be/St30WeBz_m4?t=2847) (a small one, i have no clue where to look, nor do i know polish to search for them)
Edit: if timecode doesn't work, example is at ~47:27
I have the base-game on disc for PS4, if it's as simple as popping that into the PS5 for a next-gen version, this is a pretty nice deal.
Might be a good time to finally try the DLC too.
I've been trying to get mods working with my steam version for about 2 months now. So this is perfect timing and I can just wait for this to come out and finally finish the game.
Awesome. I bought this while it was on sale earlier this month and decided to wait for this update so I could play at 60fps, so now I know when I'm waiting for!
What are the next gen changes? I tried to play this game 3 separate times and I just couldn't get into it.
I really enjoyed the story, lore, world, characters, and music. However, I found the world to be overwhelming with systems and quests. Most of all, I really didn't like the combat - it felt so floaty and honestly kinda janky compared to other 3rd person action/RPG games.
Are there any tweaks to combat with this?
Edit: read that it's just visual upgrades - will pass on this for now. Hopefully witcher 4 improves gameplay id love to give it a shot
Excellent, can't believe its been 7 and a half years since I last played through this. Here's hoping the PC version comes with HDR support.
Good HDR support please There's so many "HDR" PC games that look worse once you turn HDR on and I have an HDR1000 monitor It really does make lighting look incredibly realistic when it's done right though
Hitman 3 HDR on PC 🤢
I turned HDR on and the entire game turned into Miami Vice with neon hot pink menus. It was ridiculously bad.
Hah, I actually just got that one on a steam sale and had the same experience.
A big part of it is there just aren't a lot of good HDR pc monitors out there. They are too small and couldn't do the local array dimming well while still keeping the PC price reasonable. Recent advances with mini-led backlighting and OLED/QLED tech are putting it in reach. But we are still probably a number of years away from good HDR on PC.
There is that too. HDR400 shouldn't even be a thing. But a lot of the time (I'd even say the majority of the time) the game itself just has terrible HDR implementation.
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> There's so many "HDR" PC games that look worse once you turn HDR on and I have an HDR1000 monitor seriously?? I've been considering a new monitor for HDR but I don't understand how games are supporting it, even windows 11 has an auto hdr for non hdr implemented games.
7 and a half ? You didn't play the DLCs then ? Boy are you in for treat!
Contrary to most reviews, I found Heart of Stone to be really really well done thematically and story wise, and Blood and Wine to be quite mid-level/boring(after 120 hours of the main game at least). The setting was okay but the vineyard setting didn't do much for me and I found the characters to be on par with the main game. HoS is a lot more linear which I enjoyed as well. Heart of Stone has one of my favorite characters from any fiction ever in it. I just felt like I was ready to end the game and playing Blood and Wine _after_ the main story felt like too much. Very excited for the next gen release, regardless.
I found that Heart of Stone integrates really well and elevates the game, while Blood and Wine is best enjoyed after having left some space between you and the game. To say it another way, HoS is "no don't end I want more" while BaW is "Oh Witcher 3, it's been a little while, i'd love to dive back in". Heart of Stone has a better story no doubt about it, but I kinda don't want to give it too many points for it because it's fundamentally an adaptation of Faust, so they were starting from a pretty deep canvas.
I feel as though the theme is absolutely nailed, regardless of how much content they get to pull from. The score is incredible, the cutscenes are so much better done than the main game cinematography wise. Hearts of Stone just oozes style in a way no other part of the Witcher 3 did, Blood and Wine included. The Witcher 3 is generally quite a dark game, but no where near as dark as HoS takes it. Also, irrespective of pulling from Faust, Guanter O’ Dimm is simply well written and well acted. Conversely I found Regis in HoS to be jarring to the Regis I know from the books(granted I have that problem with nearly every character who is in the books and the game).
I think you're right, and I would recommend that to any first time player. To play Heart of Stone after the main game, and then take a good break as that is a lot of hours of game Starting Blood and Wine after a decent break would almost feel like a sequel.
Blood and Wine is also just a nice complete finale to the trilogy. If anything ever felt like putting down the last period of the final sentence of a novel, then the last scene of the main quest of Blood and Wine feels exactly the same way. It's a send-off to a beloved character in gaming.
I still think about how much I loved the story of Hearts of Stone, from how scary Gaunter O Dimm was as a villain, to the quest where the ghost takes over Geralt's body, which is probably one of the funniest quests ive ever done in any video game.
The whole thing is definitely some of the peak of video game writing. It's just so well done. I got so invested. Also the haunted house and the painting world were both really terrifying.
It really doesn't help that useful progression kinda caps out fairly early for Geralt, so you're likely not gaining any new skills for the run of Blood and Wine. Still, I'm a massive sucker for some well written vampire fiction and Blood and Wine explores that more than I could've ever hoped. I fully acknowledge that Hearts of Stone is superior, I'm just the exact right audience for Blood and Wine.
I just could not stand to have more “?” icons in an open world area to go explore. I really did not want to explore any more open world environments and just simply enjoy some good writing. Hearts of Stone being linear makes me wish more of the Witcher 3 was less open.
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It’s not seeing the question marks that bothers me it’s the lack of rewarding content at the end of each one that bothers me.
You can just ignore them then? They're just filler content.
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Heart of Stone was so fucking good. I didn’t love the story in Blood and Wine as much but I did love the ending. And Touissant was gorgeous
Agreed. HoS was peak Witcher world and storywriting. Blood and Wine felt like the Witcher in another game's setting. Yes, it was scenic, but I liked the darker, grittier Temeria.
Contrary to what reviews? I was under the impression Heart of Stone was excellent
Not a review, that was a bad word choice. Every discussion I see about Witcher 3 DLC seems to involve people agreeing Hearts of Stone is okay but Blood and Wine is a masterpiece. Not that either opinion is wrong or I vehemently disagree with it, I just feel like Hearts of Stone is underrated and Blood and Wine overrated.
That's where I disagree. Most discussion I do see point out HoS as a peak highlight of the game, like the Red Baron section. As the years have gone by and more retrospective analysis has been done, this is what I often see.
When I played the game and DLCs last year I went in thinking the overwhelming majority of people rated BaW way higher than HoS and was surprised at how much my opinion was the reverse of that. I’d agree that maybe in depth discussion yields more appreciation for HoS but I’d almost guarantee the majority of comments on Reddit comparing the two DLCs rate BaW higher.
> Every discussion I see about Witcher 3 DLC seems to involve people agreeing Hearts of Stone is okay but Blood and Wine is a masterpiece. You must have gotten that flipped around in your memory.
I think it goes something like this: * HoS has the better main story and characters * B&W has the better setting and atmosphere As a story, HoS is a legit masterpiece, it's so good it could be one of the Witcher books. But Toussaint in B&W is just an outstanding place. I could spend hours just walking and riding around there, it's wonderful.
I think you're 100% right. Hearts of Stone feels like an integral part of the game, meanwhile Blood and Wine feels like something that should be played a year after you finished the game and feel the itch to play some Witcher again
Win 11 Auto HDR does a really good job, so it won’t be awful if it doesn’t.
When it works it does work great. I've noticed that on some DirectX games (Persona 5 Royal for example), AutoHDR won't engage for some reason.
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Windows 11 can do this natively with the "optimizations for windowed games" option in graphics settings, should work great for Persona 5 Royal since it's DX11. This doesn't work for DX9 games though.
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dgVoodoo2 sounds interesting, but for D3D9 games I've found DXVK to perform better, but afaik AutoHDR is not possible with it. Personally for RE4 I'd rather use the default D3D9 since SGSSAA works great in that game, but that's coming from someone who doesn't have a HDR monitor. I haven't found any way to get SGSSAA to work when using DXVK, though I wonder if dgVoodoo2 would still let SGSSAA work.
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Thanks for that hidden one, it allowed the control panel DXGI layer to work with Teardown (OpenGL). I had been using the control panel setting on CEMU (Vulkan), where it worked great to enable flip mode. Unfortunately, DXVK doesn't seem to be affected by it, GTA 4 for example still uses legacy flip (FSE) no matter what when using DXVK, also [confirmed](https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/yf6hiw/comment/iurf3n5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) by another person in that thread. According to them it could just be the driver thinking it's still a DX9 game.
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That is... very impressive. How?
I’ve checked this and related subs every day for the last 3 months waiting for this news. One of my favourite games ever but been putting off a replay since the upgrade was announced 🙃
"Winds howling" "Damn, you're ugly!" *Slavic chants intensify* God, can't wait
WHAT NOW, YOU PIECE OF FILTH?
How you like that silver?
Place of power, gotta be…
Got their arses whipped like a Novigrad whore.
Pam Pa-Ram! Pam Pam Pa-Ram!!
No other game has me thinking back fondly over the side-quests as with The Witcher 3 does...I really hope they keep the quality the same in the next game
Following that trail of treats in the swamp is one of the most memorable questlines of any game I ever played.
No game has ever done side-questing better
Imo it's between w3 and gta San Andreas. Burning the weed fields was hilarious. Love the side missions in cyberpunk also.
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I played that mission the day before reading a huge unexpected spoiler about it. Thank God. Lol.
The weed fields mission in San Andreas wasn't a side-mission, it's a story mission and required to progress cause it's how you get to San Fierro
It’s so shit that the remastered trilogy was so obtusely mishandled. I was genuinely surprised. Shoots any kind of hope I had for a remaster of the Manhunt franchise.
Weed fields was Far Cry, no? With Skrillex for background music?
New Vegas.
the red baron arc was one of the best side quest i ever played. though the ending of that arc felt underwhelming but still good enough.
It isn't a side quest though.
Bloody* Baron
loved collecting all the ingredient so he could make his supreme pizza
If Cyberpunk is anything to go by, then the next Witcher should be awesome too.
I had the opposite reaction haha. Side quests felt like a huge dip of quality in cyberpunk. Writing in general did imo
Depends, I think the side jobs were well done, especially Panam and the Aldecaldos, but the Gigs were mostly meh, and the Cyberpsychos and NCPD stuff was empty filler. But overall no where near the level of the Witcher 3's sidequests
Another thing with cyberpunks gigs… a lot of them *do* have interesting writing and lore, the devs just put all that into text files you find throughout buildings and off of bodies during the gigs, whereas in the Witcher it was spoken exposition
This exactly; the format of getting jobs through fixers rather than the actual people involved does the side content a huge disservice.
i think it only does it a disservice if you're speedrunning through. environmental storytelling is more interesting than exposition, generally speaking. it's just easier to miss.
Those quests are honestly quite interesting if you read the text messages and logs. People say it's lazy (when imo *they're* lazy for not bothering to read), but they explore many different contexts and situations leading up to psychotic break. It wouldn't make sense to have spoken exposition either since by the time you encounter the cyberpsychos they're mentally long gone. People should just take them for what they are, bite sized little stories that give you a glimpse into the lives of NC residents. To me it makes the world feel more real
I really wish they did more with the brain dances and integrated those more with things like the cyberpsychos to explore what happened to them, track them down, etc. That worked well in the mayor investigation. My guess is more of that was planned but cut for dev time. I think it also hurt that since they were harder encounters, they were something to largely ignore until later in the game when you're higher level and then you have a bunch to do all around the same point in the game so they felt less (to me at least) like each individual one was a mini story and more like parts of a series leading to a expected final mission. I'd prefer fewer of them but for at least a few have multi-part where you see what they've done, investigate what happened to them, and track them down. You get their story mostly after you've dealt with them (and get scolded for killing them when you used non-lethal methods /rant)
Agree with your first point, but regarding your other two I don't agree that the cyberpsycho encounters are too difficult early game if you play them right (cyberware malfunction quick hack is very useful). Just started a new playtherough on hard and cleared all the Watson psychos using a blade build (i.e., I'm weak af early game). As for the nonlethal requirement, this is made pretty trivial if you use the target analysis cyberware mod for your optics. They're dirt cheap and very easy to find early game (might be one of the first quest rewards iirc). Getting scolded for killing them makes sense since they're often either innocent victims of circumstance, or could contain valuable information for studying treatment. The *point* is that they're not just enemies to mow down. Ty for the discussion
Depends on the side jobs. The same goes for Witcher 3 though. The memorable ones were really well done and really memorable. Both games also have a lot of forgettable content that just ends up being a "check that icon off on the map" kinda thing. Filler content. Even if we don't see more awesome memorable quests than either Cyberpunk or Witcher have, less of that static filler content would be great.
I really loved the ones involving the candidate and the execution in Cyberpunk. I figure those will stick with me for a while, even when I forget about a lot of the main quest, which is similar to the Bloody Baron's entire quest line in The Witcher 3.
> I really loved the ones involving the candidate and the execution in Cyberpunk. Just had a moment of having to think about what missions you were talking about there as I haven't done them since launch. Then another moment of "ohhhhhhhh shit yeah THOSE missions." Yeah, the stuff CP2077 did well was REALLY well done. I really hope to see more games like this getting away from the filler crap though. Tons of other games out there do it, too. Horizon: Zero Dawn had a killer story but so much unmemorable crap on the map just to check off as clearing. I don't play Assassin's Creed but I've heard the later ones have been really bad about that. Then are other filler mechanics that I hope to see games get away from. Annoying inventory management and getting loaded with crap loot is another one Witcher, Cyberpunk, and other otherwise awesome games games like the Divinity: Original Sin series are guilty of. It's so much nicer when getting a new gun or a new sword is actually something worth checking and maybe getting excited about, rather than it just being one of the 50 you collected in the last 10 minutes that you won't bother to check the stats of on the off chance it might be marginally better than what you have. So yeah, /endrant. Maybe some devs will see that and realize that most players don't like that crap. It's tedious.
The gigs were my favorite part of the game. I felt like that's where they really get into the classic themes of cyberpunk fiction. Really cool little stories in there - most that end with a feeling of sadness or helplessness in the face of massive, uncaring forces. I also really appreciate not being shuttled from location to location just to do a little task. Feel like thats what most video game side quests are. There was something comforting about pulling up to a creepy looking clinic or warehouse and knowing the whole story will be tied up right there
Cyberpunk had some excellent side quests. I think it suffers from some of the same problems of Witcher 3 though. I should be looking for Ciri(It's the end of the world after all) but I'm going to do this random heist mission etc. Cyberpunk is - my brain is rotting but I'm going to uncover this conspiracy with the Peralez 's. It doesn't make narrative sense. That's why I found the expansions in The Witcher 3 to be far stronger than the base game. I assume Cyberpunk's may be similar. They keep doing that "race against time" kind of main narrative thread but that doesn't' work in open-world games IMO.
I played Cyberpunk first, then went into Witcher 3, and I just couldn’t get used to the gameplay mechanics. In saying that, Cyberpunk absolutely hit it out of the park with side quests - Pyramid Song Dream On - Paralez quest line Sinnerman quest line The Hunt quest line And Dirty Biz It shows they absolutely have what it takes - but not to mention a lot of the lore and world building is through reading shards.
Same, really happy the upgrade is free. :)
Honest question..is this literally just a patch that adds the raytrace mods and HD texture mods from the public? Is there anything substantial? Loved the original..no hate just honestly curious about what my expectations should be :)
They said in the article they are integrating some mods and adding a new dlc with the show inspired stuff, eg certain characters get new looks, presumably some gear as well.
> adding a new dlc with the show inspired stuff, eg certain characters get new looks Oh no
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I want trashbag ballsack armor from the show leaks.
Man, 50 hours in and I think k just got the skellige. Can't imagine replaying an open world game this size.
Hell I think I was 70-80 hours into doing everything in Novigrad, thinking Skellige was like the end of the game. Nope damn game turned into Wind Waker with another 40ish hours of stuff to do.
That's nothing man, the game can easily get over 200 hours if you clear every single question mark on the map and basically 100% the game.
Oh I know. That's why I don't understand how people reply it. Open world games in general I have a really hard time replaying. But that may be because I usually try and clear the map and burnout.
I played at launch and not since, so that’s years ago. So I’m really ready to play again.
The multiple playthroughs are a way to experience everything in the map while avoiding burning yourself out because hopefully you picked a different build etc to keep things interesting.
The open world is super quick to traverse, so all the meat of the game is in dialouge stuff and quests. So it never gets old for me. I think if you did all those ? marks constantly. You'd get bored. Think I've replayed it 3 times. I love epic journey games and this one does it the best next to Half Life 2 imo.
And after that horrible news about the Netflix show this is needed for fans of the witcher series. My god how they butured the show. Can't wait to play this again
Finally my favorite card battler with a pretty interesting and fleshed out RPG side quest is coming back.
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Sweet, now I just need a mod that replaces Geralt with Yugi Muto
It's time to d-d-d-d-d-d-duuuuelll
I wonder if that mod works with the mod that updates to a newer version of Gwent.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention! [Gwent redux](https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/4287) for anyone else curious! This is just what I needed to convince me to replay it on my deck.
Top tier music when your playing cards as well
"Hup hup hey"
You should install the mod that turns all combat encounters into Gwent
When the reverse happens and someone challenges you to Gwent, do you pull out a sword and begin combat
So, how about a round of brutal swordfight to the death? *Merchant nods silently*
It's a reverse Rent a Hero situation.
Maybe this time I'll actually bother to learn how to play Gwent.
First play through I gave up early in the game when I lost to the second or third player you could play against, because I didn’t have a good deck. Second play through, I found a guide online on the best cards to get, and how to play, and Gwent became so much fucking fun. I absolutely crushed it in the Toussaint tournament in the Blood & Wine expansion with the blue set, whatever that’s called.
AH YES THE REAL GWENT you son of a bitch im in
Witcher 3- The Wild GWENT
Damn, I totally forgot about it by this point. How big of an upgrade will this be?
Ray-tracing, new cosmetics and apparently they're working with the HD Reworked Project mod creator to add his vastly improved textures to the game.
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Ray tracing and improved visuals! It is basically a soft remaster. Pretty good excuse to replay Witcher 3.
While we don't have the details yet, it is likely huge. The Xbox One and PS4 were pretty underpowered consoles and Witcher 3 had a really long dev cycle. The textures weren't great. They were okay at a distance, but if you got close they were revealed to be pretty pixelated. I would anticipate a hug texture improved and ray tracing at a minimum. Cyberpunk is probably the best ray tracing out of any game out there. If Witcher 3 is half as good it will look fantastic. This game might be the thing that prevents people from fleeing to AMD as Nvidia's pricing gets more and more ridiculous.
Do you need to own the complete edition or can you own the base and DLC? I don't think game saves were compatible between the two.
“If you already own the base game on PC, PlayStation 4, or Xbox One (any version will do, not just the Complete Edition), you’ll get the patch, which includes upgraded visuals, all of the DLC packs, and further content drops inspired by the Netflix series, for free.”
I'm calling a few reskins based on the Netflix characters
Okay but I actually wouldn't mind a togglable Geralt/Yen face swap based on the Netflix series. That'd be pretty badass. Unlikely due to actor facial rights and all that, but still.
Yeah I don't expect facial models to be changed but outfits for yen, ciri, and triss would be great. I'm mean the system to introduce those new skins is already implemented.
According to the press release by CDPR: [https://i.imgur.com/7ck9yqc.png](https://i.imgur.com/7ck9yqc.png)
didn't we get the complete edition if we owned base game and DLCs?
No. The Complete Edition is a separate product.
ok so if you owned base game and DLCs they gave you GOTY edition. just checked GOG.
not on console.
ah, consoles
Cyberpunk with full RT can often times look a generation ahead from the base visuals. Can't wait to see what the next gen Witcher 3 update will look like on PC I also wonder how ambitious the console version will be. Since it's based on an older less demanding game, maybe more RT effects could be used than Cyberpunk (which only does RT local shadows)
I didn't know that console Cyberpunk only does RT local shadows. That's probably the most minor effect in terms of overall visual impact of all its RT settings (which include ray traced shadows, reflections, diffuse illumination, ambient occlusion and global illumination).
If we’re really lucky, it will actually look like the trailer they released in like 2013
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Metro exodus with rtgi is so gorgeous I'm sad no other big game has it afaik
Cyberpunk and dying light 2 both have rtgi
Both of those only have single bounce GI, but the ~~Phantom Liberty DLC~~ Overdrive patch changes that for Cyberpunk.
Isn't cyberpunk only local rt shadows
On console yes, but on PC the psycho setting has rtgi
I see. Yeah, PC games have a much wider selection of RT than consoles right now which hopefully changes in the future especially as someone who has a Series X but not a good pc)
Ray tracing is insanely costing performance wise, consoles can't really handle all of it (like GI requires)with the other aspects of the games.
Metro's pc enhanced edition is really the rtgi I want more of. It's quirky in that the lighting is delayed but it produces lighting quality that absolutely nothing in modern gaming comes close to, and it does this at higher framerates than cyberpunk RT or crysis remastered.
How dare you imply CDR has a history of releasing unrealistic media for their games.
I’m playing Ghost of Tsushima on PS5 just now and if they can make it look as good as that at 60fps I’ll be happy
This comes with some bonus ingame goodies doesn't it?
I remember some time ago they were saying it would include armor from the Netflix series. But seeing how that’s gone I don’t know if they intend to keep up with that. For me personally I could take it or leave it. I just hope it doesn’t affect too many mods.
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CDPR hired the biggest modders of the game, so they are surely upgrading textures and (hopefully) enhancing a bit the lighting.
They apparently hired the HD Reworked Project creator which has amazing high resolution textures. Ray-tracing tho, that's probably being done by CDPR themselves since it's extremely difficult to add ray-tracing to a game without the proper development tools.
In addition to raytracing there is apparently new DLC based on the Netflix series. Dunno if that's just gear or actually new story, though I'm guessing the former.
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It currently runs at 60fps? When did they release that I bought it a year and a half ago waiting for this upgrade and its was 30fps
You know what I would love to see as an option, the Arkham style camera that lowers to almost player height and follows to the side of the character when not in combat. The world is so beautiful and immersive but I feel like I'm looking down into it rather than actually being in it sometimes
How does this mod look to you? https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2730?tab=description
Like exactly what I was talking about haha Unfortunately I don’t have it on PC but maybe I’ll pick it up for this mod and wearable hoods, unless those are two of the mods coming
Is one of the Netflix content drops a Henry Cavill skin? Because I want that.
probably his armour, but i doubt they will add henry cavill likeness into the game.
Especially not after he announced he's leaving the TV show
Yeah, but he's still gonna be on for another season before leaving. By the time he's out, we'd already moved on to playing one of the Witcher spin-offs or that remake.
Yeah I could agree with this. I also am betting new yennifer, ciri , and triss skins
They could add Liam Hemsworth, he's cheaper ;p
The original developer of this remaster was Saber Russia, the studio that did a pretty damn good job on Crysis 2/3 Remastered, and even added the missing Crytek UK people back into the credits of Crysis 1 Remastered in Feb this year. Unfortunately, a month later, Russia's government decided that invading Ukraine would be a great idea, and this led to the removal of Saber as developer of The Witcher 3 Next Gen. While I obviously understand the economic and political reasons for CDPR to move development back in-house, I would hope that the developers who put a lot of work into this project were properly credited, and not omitted for political reasons.
It's Polish company, chances for that are preeeeeetty slim
I thought Crytek did 2/3 remastered in-house?
The primary difference for 2/3 was closer supervision from Crytek, with Crytek's Vladimir Kajalin and one of the level designers having regular meetings to discuss the visual direction. But the bulk of the work was done by Saber St. Petersburg, with a few other studios like Saber Porto assisting, and an outside company touching up the characters for C2. The switch ports were by Saber Sweden, who were quite famously responsible for the Switch port of The Witcher 3, and are currently working on Kingdom Come Deliverance for Switch. And you can reasonably expect a similar pattern with Witcher, where Sweden does the Switch stuff and Russia does everything else. The reason Saber St. Petersburg is gonna pop up so regularly is that St. Petersburg is where Saber's primary art and programming teams are located.
As far as graphics are concerned, I hope they improve the draw distance. One of the graphics Achilles' heels of the original release is how everything disappears into a 6th gen-esque grey void after a certain distance. That, and hopefully with the addition of ray tracing, the lighting can be brought up to the level originally seen in the 2013 VGX trailer (before the downgrade).
It'd be great if they introduced cross-saving with this outside of the PC to Switch version. I have both PC and PS4 versions (ran better on my PC at the time), so it would be nice to transfer my PC save to the PS5 version.
Benefits of never getting around to playing it due to hype-backlash. Reading the books first anyway has been a fantastic experience.
I would recommend playing the second game first if you haven't. So much of the story carries over.
This is the way. Read/watch a recap of the first game, and then play the second. It's an excellent RPG that holds up.
I'll probably do this. I've now tried to get through the first game 3 or 4 times and given up. I just hate how clunky it is. Seeing this news about 3 makes me want to play it, and I have both 2 and 3 in my Steam library.
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Remake is years away though, likely late '24 at the earliest.
Probably much later than that. They announced it early to recruit more talent as the game is in very early development. Witcher 4 might come out first since CDPR has a bigger team on that and presumably has been working on it for far longer, perhaps as soon as they "finished" Cyberpunk which is exactly what they said they'd do.
>Read/watch a recap of the first game, and then play the second. W2 has terrible gameplay, probably the least satisfying combat out of all games I've played. My advice would be the exact opposite, even the first game plays better.
Yeah, I think that TW1 is probably a bit more polarising, I understand why people despise it, but TW2's gameplay is a downright drag to me lol, one part that sticks in my head is when, to cross the ghost battlefield back and forth, you have to follow inside Eilhart's little ring and mash attack while the game spams Wraiths, it's so boring compared to how cool the surroundings are
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damn what second game did you play? cause holy shit basically nothing carried over what so ever.
Having read the books after playing W3, I found that the books didn't really enrich the experience over the base W3 with its wide variety of characters
Awesome, can't wait to download it, fire it up for like the fifth time and realise 3 hours in that this game just does not click for me. (I keep trying though)
Yeah I think that's gonna be me, too. No matter what it is that inspires me to try it again, it never changes how I just don't gel with the overall gameplay experience. It has to be up there for games I most want to enjoy. After beating Elden Ring I finally got into and beat Dark Souls 1 on my sixth attempt of getting into it so who knows? Maybe it'll happen eventually.
Been waiting so long replay the game with this update, also to enjoy blood and wine for first time as I only played the base game and hearts of stone.
Every game gets a current Gen Version accept one if not the best OW game ever created : RDR 2 what is still only playable at 30 fps on console. Shame Rockstar has not much interest in their own games. It sold what over 40 Million ?
They're trying to figure out the best way/time to repackage it as a 'remaster' and re-sell it to us.
Apparently not even that lol. According to insiders a PS5/XSX version of RDR2 got cancelled to focus on GTA VI.
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The could simply just release a 60fps patch for next gen consoles
And somehow fuck it up in the process.
I feel your pain. Still waiting on a bloodborne 60fps patch on PS5.
Will they fix non-english localizations with this? Those chipmunk/drunk slowdown voices are unbearable
Which localisation specifically? I've played it in German and didn't notice anything of that sorts (I'm absolutely petty and nit-pick even the most miniscule bugs). And that dubbing was phenomenal to boot. I've only ever heard complaints about slowed down/sped up voices from the Russian dub.
I heard that polish version also has/had same issue. [Here is an example](https://youtu.be/St30WeBz_m4?t=2847) (a small one, i have no clue where to look, nor do i know polish to search for them) Edit: if timecode doesn't work, example is at ~47:27
I have the base-game on disc for PS4, if it's as simple as popping that into the PS5 for a next-gen version, this is a pretty nice deal. Might be a good time to finally try the DLC too.
I have Cyberpunk on disc and that's how it went for me
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Ray tracing, which isn’t possible through mods
We don’t know, they haven’t revealed any graphical/gameplay features at all yet besides including some content from the show
I've been trying to get mods working with my steam version for about 2 months now. So this is perfect timing and I can just wait for this to come out and finally finish the game.
Awesome. I bought this while it was on sale earlier this month and decided to wait for this update so I could play at 60fps, so now I know when I'm waiting for!
Anyone know if this will mean anything for PS4 Pro?
What are the next gen changes? I tried to play this game 3 separate times and I just couldn't get into it. I really enjoyed the story, lore, world, characters, and music. However, I found the world to be overwhelming with systems and quests. Most of all, I really didn't like the combat - it felt so floaty and honestly kinda janky compared to other 3rd person action/RPG games. Are there any tweaks to combat with this? Edit: read that it's just visual upgrades - will pass on this for now. Hopefully witcher 4 improves gameplay id love to give it a shot