CD Projekt Red is back in overdelivery. Player confidence took a hit following Cyberpunk 2077’s wild launch, but The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s free next-gen update is a return to form, striving to improve an already great game. has poured in, showing good things for the future of the series.
What could have been a simple PlayStation 5 and Xbox series port with polished graphics and a $20 price tag became CD Projekt Red’s introspective mission. 3. Anyone who has purchased a physical version of The Witcher 2 or 3 in the past will remember the bundle of extras that came with it (such as soundtrack CDs and maps). Next-gen update.
Whether it’s one of the new armor sets based on locations from beloved books like Dol Blathanna, a new lore snippet, a brand new mission, or even a new Gwent card, the dev team is trying to show they really care. But it’s not just the effort behind these new additions, it’s the changes CD Projekt Red has made to previous mechanics that truly bode well for the future.
For fans returning to The Witcher 3, the most noticeable of these changes is the combat system. What many complained about in the original, it can be slow and somewhat repetitive at times, but CD Projekt Red has made some minor changes that bring real intensity and dynamism to every fight. added.
New melee camera angles push players into the center of the battlefield, connecting Sprint to L3 essentially adds a new mechanic to combat, and a quick casting sign system keeps you locked into battle at all times. Combine these with 60 frames per second gameplay and haptic feedback (at least on PS5), and combat feels almost scripted. Geralt casts his Yrden to trap his one enemy, dodges another attack, and flashes Igni to take them both down. Then dodge the arrows and then sprint towards the shooter to perform a brutal finisher. Every battle feels like a cutscene.
Even if these changes were introduced in The Witcher 4 (because they don’t have an official name) they would feel like a satisfying improvement, so the fact that CD Projekt Red is announcing them means even better things are going on. And it’s even more exciting to understand what the community wants.
CD Projekt Red didn’t stop there, as it included real fan-made mods as an official feature of the next-gen update. World map improvements, balance updates, and even some texture upgrades are all features added by the development team and created by the community. The fact that CD Projekt Red has returned to pay attention to the community after being alienated shows that the same mistakes won’t be repeated when The Witcher 4 is released.
Of course, it will be the first (or second) of several new Witcher games, as CD Projekt Red announced earlier this year that it had at least five sequels and spin-offs in the works. This increase in game development can present its own challenges, as long as we put the same amount of effort and attention into future games that we put into the next-gen version of . Don’t worry.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and UK news editor. He talks about witchers all day long.
