The Witcher 3 fans have reacted to an official comparison clip featuring a snippet of side-by-side gameplay from the original game and the upcoming remaster, with some saying the new version actually looks worse.
In the clip, you can see Geralt casting Igni on a group of drowners in the swamp, with a side-by-side comparison with the original game and the remaster. And while the new version of the game has much greater detail on Geralt’s armor, along with much more defined water, the reflections seem to be divisive.
Choose your cast – wisely. #TheWitcher3Remastered pic.twitter.com/zcgLSvLvDi
— The Witcher (@thewitcher) September 23, 2026
In the original game, you can see some of the fire reflected in the brackish water underneath the drowners, even if it results in an orange-ish blur. That’d be a pretty low bar to clear with the ray tracing on offer in the remaster, but the clip doesn’t show any reflection of the fire at all. The fog is also much different in the remaster. In the original, there are defined clouds of fog floating just above the ground, where the remaster takes a more atmospheric approach to the fog in the distance.
A lot of the differences between the two sides of this clip comes down to the remaster using ray tracing, where the original didn’t have it. Fans have had mixed reactions to this clip regardless. X / Twitter user LeafusMaximus said “despite literally adding RT to the game you managed to post a pic with worse water reflections, worse fog effects, worse armor textures in some cases (the glove he keeps back towards the camera for example), the new drowner just look wetter, the old ones actually look scaly/mucky.” While desugar_64 simply asked: “Are you sure you didn’t swap the footage around?”
Luckily, if you don’t like the new visual representation, you should be able to roll back to an earlier version of the build as long as you’re playing on PC. I’m not sure if that option will exist on consoles, but if you really don’t want your current install of The Witcher 3 to get this change, you can turn off automatic updates. If you are planning on upgrading to the remaster though, you will be able to carry over your save data when the game comes out on September 29.
Jacqueline Thomas
Senior Tech Editor
Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She’s been covering gaming hardware for more than a decade for IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer and more. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
