The Witcher 3 Remastered - Before You Buy transcript

And we're back with another episode of Before You Buy. That show where we give you some straightup gameplay and our first impressions of the latest games releasing. It's me, Jake Baldino, and today we're talking about The Witcher 3 Remastered. We've been playing it over the weekend. Uh we're going to keep this one brief because we've talked about The Witcher like a million times over the last decade. We've covered every version.

The game is great. Play The Witcher 3. However you play it, I think right now we're talking about it at the very least. It's a good excuse uh to be reminded that it is excellent and if it's in your blind spot as a gamer, just something you've never played, uh jump into it. But we're talking about it today. Uh it's significant because this is going to be a free update uh for all people who own The Witcher 3. And it brings a surprisingly big list of small incremental upgrades that all add up to an overall kind of refreshed game. little gameplay control tweaks, little menu tweaks, uh, and a bunch of graphical tweaks to bring the game into the modern era with ideally some smoother graphics and some smoother gameplay right before they release their next big expansion next year.

The list of updates is really big and uh, I think the fact that it's releasing for free is commendable. That's great. I like to see this more of this. Now, what is important is that even though there are a ton of updates, it it still feels like The Witcher, man. it. It's The Witcher 3 for all that comes with that. A game I've loved for years. They didn't completely butcher it or take stuff out or anything. They just kind of slightly cleaned up some stuff.

Now, for uh some menus and combat and and stuff like that, it's great. For the visuals, uh it's a bit more to talk about. So, let's start with the graphics and the performance. We've been playing a review copy, and this footage is going to be spoiler-free still. uh and it has been captured uh running on a PS5 Pro and a PC predominantly. So essentially this is a perfect example a quick lesson in objectivity versus subjectivity.

The visuals here are technically improved in every way. There is more advanced highquality [snorts] lighting and all this stuff to make the game technically have objectively better graphics. It's got newer technology and therefore improved visual performance. This is where I think opinion and personal taste might come in though. If you've seen side by sides, you notice that uh the games do look a little different next to each other.

And honestly, even if I know there's this beautiful new realistic light being cast on the characters and the environments and all this stuff going on under the hood, my eye, you know, my taste is subjective and I like the way the older version looks a little better. Personally, the newer version is brighter. It seems like it has a little less contrast. uh some of the colors it just loses a little bit of vibrancy where the original had some uh some nice colors to it, some darkness to it and some grit that I think really gave it its identity.

Again, the visuals, the one thing I do want to end on here is that as much as it looks different side by side and how I did, you know, really prefer the way the original version looks after playing for a couple of hours, I completely got used to it and just felt like I was playing a smoother, slightly sharper Witcher 3. I want to be clear here that this is just my crazy opinion, okay? Because otherwise, the new version is improved in a lot of ways.

Obviously, it brings a lot. Uh, but some of you may not notice it. Some of you might. For me, my first impressions when I fired up the new version. Uh, this is the stuff, the good stuff that I noticed right away. Look, the image does look cleaner, meaning foliage, grass, ground, and wall textures all look much more visible and less mudded overall. uh interior darker areas also looked a little nicer. Uh there's this very light atmospheric fog in places not previously seen and it adds a nice little extra bit of something to it.

You know, uh crowd density is also something I really noticed right away. Uh most notably in Novograd, the big city, but like you know, a lot more NPCs around, but also the NPCs themselves looking a little bit more detailed. Now, the big thing for me, The Witcher 3 had some of the be it still does. that has some of the best sunsets in a video game ever. And I think they're still here and uh still good. And now the light just kind of casts more realistically, like, you know, through trees or through the environments.

But you'll notice it a lot with all this lighting stuff with like light rays shining and bouncing off of Geralt's head or maybe, you know, off the pommel of his sword if it catches the light just right. Character faces uh also have a little more detail to them. Uh, it seems like they went through all this and I think this is where the new lighting also really helps just in how the shadows are cast on the face. Geralt's face is not massively overhauled to like feel different or anything at all.

Thank god. But I did notice his eyes just feel a little sharper, a little more vibrant, a little more noticeable, like they've got a little bit more life in them. It's hard to explain. I'm not a graphics expert. But performance-wise, speaking of that, uh, performance-wise, it's twofold. On PC, I mostly had no issues. I did have one weird visual glitch with a bizarre wall texture popping up during the Kamoran intro. That was kind of disappointing.

I also had the occasional drop when the game was like loading up a new scene or transitioning to a new area. Then there's the PS5 Pro where we also played. On consoles, the game has two graphics settings, performance and ray tracing mode. On the PS5 Pro at least here, performance mode has an unlocked frame rate, while the ray tracing setting is a locked 60fps. With ray tracing on, the updated visuals impress on the console, but the frame rate isn't always the most consistent.

It seems to dip occasionally during cutscenes or uh in especially busy combat scenarios. That's a little annoying, and a couple of the hitches were a little disappointing. It doesn't ruin the experience, but note the frame rate didn't stick to like a real consistent locked 60fps, at least in our experience here. On performance mode, the game is generally smoother, but uh we also noticed some disappointing, you know, moments of slowdown or stuttering.

But it seems like it's only when the game was autosaving or loading, which has been in the case for a lot of games like this and this game in the past. Uh but it is a noticeable hitch sometimes. The rest of the time it was buttery smooth. So Eric, who has been playing this here, said he could barely tell the difference between performance or ray traced modes. Uh, and that's that's complimentary. The only real difference between the two uh that could really be seen was that the performance mode had some jaggies in some of the distant background details and even then a lot of the time it's kind of harder to notice.

So both modes aren't exactly perfect in terms of performance, but they are very solid. And while personally, you know, not everyone's really going to be able to tell the difference between the two, if you care about the tech, you can appreciate the what the ray trace mode is bringing to the table. Also, one last thing I want to note is PC performance. I did play on a high-end PC here. Uh, everyone's PC performance is going to be different.

Everyone's machine is different. So, I'd keep your eyes peeled for when the game starts rolling out for everybody. In a perfect world, this update wouldn't disrupt anyone's situations, but, you know, sometimes it happens. So, it performed well for me, but I'm not Digital Foundry, so let's see how it goes for everyone else. But, uh, the other interesting stuff here, uh, the updates, like, you know, the the smaller stuff.

Again, I am impressed how CD Project Red actually managed to touch so many little key aspects of this game and not make it feel radically different. You know, gameplaywise, it is preserved. So, if you were expecting a whole new gameplay overall, you're not getting that here. Again, it is still The Witcher. If you didn't like the combat, you're still probably not going to. Me personally, though, look, hot take. I don't know if all of a sudden everyone's going to hate me, but I always enjoyed the combat.

All right, I don't want to hear it. Now, the camera has a bit more of a dynamic flow to it. Like, fighting multiple enemies, the camera is way out. Uh, and when you get down to one enemy, uh, the camera does a really nice and smart uh, zoom in like in a in a way smoother fashion. Combat overall is just like ever so slightly more zippier and responsive. Dodges and rolls feel a bit more connected to the combat, if that makes sense.

It's hard to explain, but like also some of the signs like AR in particular, they have a little bit more oomph behind them. Still, again, I want to reiterate it feels like the Witcher combat. You know, despite uh the official description saying like all these overhauls and tweaked animations and updated stuff, uh it's still Witcher 3 combat. It's just a hair better. Oh, and uh the new finishers are noticeable. Uh they got some cool ones in there.

Roach the horse has also been updated to control a little better. Uh you'll be able to precision fine-tune him a little better. Like the, you know, the remaster reveal trailer. Uh it showed, you know, Roach weaving between trees, and you can definitely do that now. I was able to do that. It is nice. But again, to reiterate, it's still a Witcher, and Roach is still going to be Roach. So, if you played, you get it. His path following is a little better here.

They have updated that, but he'll still do some dumb stuff, take some dumb turns. He's still going to spawn in weird spots at this point. Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome for me cuz I've played this so much. But like, I don't know. I love Roach. I don't care. Also, Roach seems like he's got a bit of a better turning radius, for lack of a better description. He just he seems like he turns better. What I really liked was the smaller stuff.

If you've been playing the game a bunch, you might, too. Most notably, uh, transmogrification for armor and clothing, meaning like you can now look how you want, but still have the stats you want regardless. Uh, this is always good when games have this. RPGs all need this in my opinion, but uh, also uh, just the menu where you would pause is improved. This is a small thing, but you would pause in the Witcher and you'd be presented with tabs like quest, uh, inventory, map, stuff like that.

Then you would click on one and it would bring you into it. Now they reduced it by one button press. So when you pause uh you automatically have the full screen starting with the map and then you have all the tabs on the top you could bounce between. That is a small thing uh but I'm pretty sure it is new for this update in particular and it does it does make a difference. Also uh meditating now is not just done in the menu.

Uh when you access the meditation screen and you click meditate, it shows Geralt actually like kneeling down and meditating in the real world as time passes around him. It's a small thing, but it's nice. Little things like that are appreciated. There's options now to like remove some stuff. I believe like uh you know like you can remove the weight limit. You can remove weapon degradation if you want that. More options are always better, but I also there's a part of me that would love an option to be able to just switch off the new visuals.

I wasn't able to see that yet and I know that might be a big ask, but anyway, that's the long and short of it. Very simple. Those are the things I observed playing it over the weekend jumping in. I think if anything, this just sets like a nice little stage for uh The Witcher 3 Songs of the Past expansion coming next year. But also worth noting uh with this update now, everyone gets access to all the other previous Witcher 3 expansion DLCs like Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine.

Uh and those are absolutely excellent. They are worth playing. In fact, you might have actually seen some gameplay from those expansions uh on screen here. And I I I just think that's a good massive amount of game for everyone now. So no excuses other than time of course for you to check this out. But hey, this is a before you buy. You know how this goes by now. I give you some pros, some cons, and some personal opinion.

And now I want to hear yours down in the comments. Look, I I I talked a lot of game here at the start with uh me just liking how the older version of the game looked. I know technically now it is better, but you know, it's just a matter of opinion. So let me know yours. Let me know where you land with that. but also just The Witcher in general. What's your history? Have you played The Witcher 3 as much as we have? There's a good chance you have.

Maybe you're considering jumping into it for the first time. Or also, God, I would love for them to just give this treatment to The Witcher 2. I think that game needs some love. But either way, uh, let's talk about anything Witcher 3 down in the comments. Hit us up. Follow me on Instagram if you want, Jake Baldino. But for now, that's all we got for you. Clicking the like button helps us if it helped inform your download decision or anything like that.

But thanks for watching and we'll see you guys next time. >> Come on. One left.