7 years The Witcher 3: Waiting for the remaster and The Witcher 4 [Update]

Original item: It’s the week of The Witcher. On 05/17 PCGH celebrated the release of The Witcher 2 eleven years ago with a technology review, now the next birthday is coming up. The Witcher 3 was launched on May 19th, 2015 – we remember.

The Witcher 3: downgrade versus upgrade

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt is certainly one of the most important and well-known games of the 2010s. The development did not necessarily run in a straight line: the third and final part of the Witcher series was originally supposed to appear in autumn 2014, but after two postponements it finally happened on May 17th. And even if Geralt, Yennefer, Ciri and Triss never shone more beautifully thanks to RED Engine 3, there were also technical problems. CD Projekt Red faced a downgrade discussion. The topic attracted many voices, including PCGH technology fan Phil Reuther, who with his column at Wikipedia is referenced. CDPR turned the tables in the form of PR man Fabian Döhla and would much rather have an upgrade discussion.

But not only the comparisons of earlier trailers with the final game graphics caused discussions. The cooperation between CDPR and Nvidia, among other things at Hairworks, also resulted in an ugly mud fight. The then AMD Chief Gaming Scientist Richard Huddy even accused Nvidia of “sabotage”. Ultimately, the graphics of The Witcher 3 (buy now €28.35)Provide material for optimization over many years, because graphic mods for The Witcher 3 are still appearing today. Even PCGH renewed its config several times, most recently in 2019 with the PCGH config for version 1.32.

It is undisputed that CDPR established a sophisticated fan service for The Witcher 3, which was actually also intended for Cyberpunk 2077 – but for reasons that have not been implemented in this way until today. CDPR not only announced two chargeable expansions early on, which appeared in the form of Hearts of Stone (10/13/2015) and Blood and Whine (05/31/2016) and made many fans even happier, but also released a total of 16 ( !) smaller DLCs. It all culminated in the Witcher 3 GOTY, which was released on August 30th, 2016, and the Switch was also given its own version years later, more precisely on October 15th, 2019.

The Witcher 3: Remaster and The Witcher “4”

And what is The Witcher 3 doing today? The gaming world is still waiting for the next-gen version. The ray tracing remaster was announced in September 2020, and owners of the PC version could look forward to free fan service. After some delays and the multiplayer project in between, the release was postponed until further notice in mid-April 2022. The friendship with the porting specialist Saber Interactive, who was actually commissioned to launch the Switch version of The Witcher 3, was terminated. The remaining work on the next-gen version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt should now be completed by internal developers. A release date is still open.

And with all the good memories of the RED engine and especially of the RED engine 3: With the RED engine 4 used in Cyberpunk 2077, that was it for the in-house game engine. With The Witcher “4” (the game isn’t called that, but unfortunately it has become so common) the swing to the Unreal Engine 5 comes. And the planned multiplayer technologies are no longer pursued. So it remains exciting in the The Witcher universe for CD Projekt Red and the fans.

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Remaster release in 2022

Update: CD Projekt Red is taking advantage of The Witcher 3’s seventh birthday celebrations to a hint on the release period of the remaster. The fourth quarter of 2022 is now being planned. In April, it was still on record that the necessary follow-up work was to be evaluated, but no “monumental period of time” was seen for this. Now it’s about half a year of extra work.