The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt gets next-gen patch to improve performance and fix bugs in PC and console editions

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has just received a new patch which brings several bug fixes and improves overall game performance. The update to version 4.02 is now available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series S / X, which have received the much-delayed “next-gen upgrade” in December that was plagued with reports of technical issues. The new update fixes the lack of a dialog option that would help progress the “Battle Preparations” quest, improves water refractions on PC, adds a motion blur slider, and more. The update weighs around 2 GB on PC and between 10 and 20 GB on consoles.

Polish studio CD Projekt Red has released patch notes in a blog post, separating out platform-based fixes. On PC, the DirectX 12 version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt should reduce the load on the CPU, in addition to stopping a strange flickering issue in the Duchy of Touissant, when the Nvidia HairWorks setting has been disabled. Grass shadows that previously looked blurry have now been fixed, although players will again need to turn off Ambient Occlusion for this to work. “You can find it in Options → Video → Graphics,” the post read. As mentioned earlier, a motion blur slider has been added to help smooth out camera movement, while a refraction effect has been added to SSR (screen space reflections) and ray-traced reflections. .

Performance mode has been improved on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X, and the game no longer crashes when Geralt decides to run away from doctor Shani after interrupting the conversation. Running The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt with Ray-Tracing on Xbox Series S/X would cause crashes, due to a memory usage issue, which has now been fixed. PS5 users no longer have to put up with blurry cutscenes or deal with having their oldest save data automatically deleted. Some localization issues have also been fixed, starting with updating traditional Chinese fonts and punctuations in the Arabic translation.

Meanwhile, CD Projekt Red is in the midst of developing Cyberpunk 2077’s paid expansion Phantom Liberty. The content boasts the biggest budget for an expansion in the studio’s history and stars Idris Elba (The Suicide Squad) in a major role — Solomon Reed, FIA agent of the “New United States of America”. Details are scarce, but a trailer from last year revealed Keanu Reeves would reprise his role as the magnetic Johnny Silverhand, who views our Federation allegiance as a “bad idea.” Featuring mounds of dead government officials, Phantom Liberty is described as a “mission impossible of spy and survival”.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt next-gen update and its latest hotfix are out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X.