Yesterday’s free Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered upgrade might have propelled the old role-playing game to new heights, in terms of player popularity, but not everyone is happy with what’s changed. A particular point of contention concerns the game’s new lighting changes, which some people think has made The Witcher 3 too bright and washed out – though this is not the only issue.
The lighting is such an issue for some people they’re asking developer CD Projekt Red for a way to roll back their version of The Witcher 3 – which you can’t easily do on console as far as I’m aware (though there are various options on PC). “You people should figure out a way for Xbox users to play the older version because my god this new lighting is lifeless,” wrote one irate person on X. “What’s the point of removing all whimsy of a fantasy game? Realism is the death of escapism.”
“I prefer the old look,” said another player on Reddit, who provided detailed comparison images. “It has better contrast, with stronger highlights and a more pronounced overall image.” Another video was linked that painstakingly compares the Witcher 3 Remastered edition with the next-gen edition and the original edition of the game.
“I don’t think anyone is disputing that models, texture, foliage density and all that is bad – that’s improved for sure,” wrote another subreddit commenter. “The lighting is objectively better technologically (path tracing) but it is much brighter and almost ‘washed out’ sometimes while the ‘original’ (next gen upgrade actually which already had ray tracing) had more contrast and a different type of lighting. What you prefer is very much subjective here.”
Exactly what’s going on regarding lighting is tricky to pin down, because the changes have occurred for numerous reasons, however the overall issue is notable in comparison screenshots. The Witcher 3 – Remastered does look brighter and seems to have less contrast, and the chief offender seems to be a Bloom setting you can simply turn off on PC, though there’s no such option on console, which is another thing aggravating players there.
Exacerbating this are the Remastered edition’s new Path Tracing option, for those with computers that can handle it, which does seem to generally brighten areas. But the computing cost is so high, and the changes so negligible, even people with beefy PCs are broadly not in favour of it. The game also appears to have updated HDR settings, making The Witcher 3 blindingly bright for people with screens that can use it.
There are more technical issues besides. PC players with AMD-based systems are reporting a wide array of graphical glitches; Switch 2 owners are reporting blurry visuals when playing the game in handheld mode, even with blur-related graphical options turned off; and the game’s audio mix seems off with voices suddenly quiet and music loud, though apparently meditating in game, of all things, fixes this.
Console players on older Xbox Series S hardware are also bemoaning a drop in performance because of this update, which has brought the base minimum specs of the game up, meaning that whereas the game used to run with a high frame-rate, it now does not. And because the update is automatically applied on consoles, there’s little they can do about it.
Clearly, many of these issues are bugs and will be fixed, but a bigger question surrounds the broader approach to brightening the game and how intentional this was – in other words: will CD Projekt Red do anything to change it? It’s an issue I’ve contacted the company trying to explore.
However, it’s worth mentioning that while many people aren’t happy with the game’s updated new look, plenty of people are. There are easily as many posts from people stating that the game “looks so much better now”, if not more, than posts saying otherwise.
My own experience of The Witcher 3 – Remastered was very positive on PC, though I’ve not yet had a chance to test it on consoles. Across the game, the changes have made The Witcher 3 feel modern and revitalised, though they don’t fundamentally alter what’s there.
