The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered Review

Believe it or not, there are still some out there that have not played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt before. CD Projekt Red’s action-adventure RPG is always in the discussion of the best video games of all time and, having racked up over 65 million copies sold, has been widely available on all major platforms since its 2015 release – including even the original Nintendo Switch in what was a remarkable porting achievement. Yours truly had only ever dabbled in the opening hour or two previously, so The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered presents a welcome opportunity to return to the Continent.

More than ten years on from its original release, this edition of The Witcher 3 presents itself as a remastering project that doesn’t just improve on the already beautiful visuals that encompass every field and settlement of this massive world, but offers a multitude of enhancements designed to make for a more engaging adventure.

The graphical upgrade is certainly the biggest draw. Although personal experience with previous iterations of The Witcher 3 is slim, there is no doubt about the technical quality that is on show, despite there being the odd hiccup here and there. In the very first room of the game, there was a wall that shouldn’t be there that could be passed through and required reloading to get rid of it. There is also somewhat of a washed-out look going on in general that can be overcome by messing with the bloom setting.

It is usually the way that CD Projekt’s launches catch a few problems, and that seems to be the case here. Still, running Remastered on a modest laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 GPU delivers a stunning-looking game. This will more than satisfy those that get a kick out of dense environments bursting with life, with highly detailed models and textures filling every area.

Ray tracing adds that extra touch when it comes to lighting and shadows, although there is the question of it affecting performance; as expected, there was a drop in framerate when the feature was turned on, but it would be remiss to knock the game for that given this rig isn’t at the very top end nowadays. Laptop users should be more than content, especially if graphics aren’t the be all and end all of your gaming experiences.

Personally, ultra settings could capably be run, resulting in a dazzling spectacle and a smooth framerate. However, those looking for the views of someone with a high-end desktop computer would do well to check out other reviews. Reports from other users indicate there are far more issues at hand than what have been personally encountered here, so it would be wise to stay informed.

Fortunately, anyone that hasn’t played previous Witcher games can rest easy in the knowledge that The Witcher 3 is safe to jump into without being remotely familiar with the series. Of course, established characters will show up here, but there is little to fret over, with this entry standing on its own as an open-world epic with a story that requires next to no understanding of Geralt of Rivia’s prior escapades.

Witcher and monster hunter Geralt seeks to rescue Ciri, his adopted daughter, from the Wild Hunt spectral riders, ending up on a quest of grand proportions, and in a spiralling storyline featuring multiple paths and endings. Multi-choice dialogue doesn’t always amount to much in video games, but there is something to be said for the effort and outcomes that have gone into The Witcher 3’s twisting narrative branches.

An unfortunate side is Geralt being a rather monotone and gravelly voiced protagonist that makes it difficult to connect to him, despite some humorous pieces of dialogue here and there. Other characters and their voice acting carry the game on this front, and The Witcher 3 certainly doesn’t lack in this regard. In fact, even though open-world games can be incredibly overwhelming in their vastness and run the risk of being too empty as a result, the Slavic folklore-style Continent is rife with entertaining locals and side quests that do well to ensure it is hard to get bored in any session with the game.

Sure, like most games of its ilk, fetch and hunt quests are a part of the package, and there is no escaping them here. However, The Witcher 3 does such a good job with its medieval lore and building of its bleak and war-torn world, melding quests into ones that develop characters with expansive conversations, adding a degree of realism to this fantasy land. It is easily one of the areas of the game that is done extremely well.

Although combat is said to have been reworked in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered, it is difficult to ascertain how different it is to the original having not played that version beyond the tutorial. What can be said, however, is that despite an array of helpful shortcut and quality-of-life options that make gameplay very fluid both in and out of battle encounters, the real-time combat has a floaty feel that seems to be the case for previous versions of the game.

Perhaps it was even floatier in the past, but Geralt’s intricate dance-like fighting style is a little at odds in intense battles to the death with some of the brutal monsters and fiends the White Wolf finds himself in need of slaughtering. There is a lack of crunch in the physics that amounts to combat being not the most exceptional part of The Witcher 3, despite it doing a plethora of other things brilliantly.

It is unfortunate, too, because with a game that can easily demand well over 100 hours – particularly thanks to the inclusion of the two expansion packs, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, in this Remastered edition – combat veering on the lacking and slightly repetitive side in an RPG of this scale is the last thing it needs.

It wouldn’t be fair to dismiss what CD Projekt Red has added and changed in Remastered, however, because the list is long as far as differences go compared to what came before. A reworked skill tree system offers new abilities, a dynamic camera makes for more intricate fights, transmog lets Geralt retain the stats of one set of amour while wearing another, new animations give way to more realistic movement for the Witcher and his trusty steed Roach, with the horse handling better over bumpy terrain, and there is an enhanced photo mode for those so inclined to indulge in recording memories.

It is the range of accessibility options and mod integration that is most impressive, though. The quest can progress much smoother by choosing to ignore frustrating elements such as item weight, enabling auto loot and auto healing mechanics, applying infinite breath and unlimited boat durability, and more. Some players will have opinions about what constitutes going too far in terms of manually shaping the difficulty of a game, but being able to tweak aspects like these while retaining a challenge in combat is the best of both worlds.

With modders having been brought on board to work alongside CD Projekt Red, too, it is fitting and welcome to see mod support in The Witcher 3 – Remastered. The door has been opened to all sorts of quests and features, so this alone will no doubt keep things fresh right up until the upcoming brand-new expansion, Songs of the Past, due next year.