While The Witcher is gearing up for a big few years ahead, it seems to have already hit a few speed bumps. CD Projekt Red recently released a remastered version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but many players are running into performance issues, particularly on PlayStation 5. On Reddit, players have reported dropped frames, screen tearing, audio issues, crashes, and environmental flickering.
According to Push Square, these problems seem to be inconsistent. Some users can play the game without problems, while others are experiencing so many crashes that the game is borderline unplayable.
On Windows PC, things have been a bit better, though there have still been some hiccups. Many players ran into major performance issues caused by Ray Tracing and Nvidia Hairworks, with some angry that their rigs could no longer run the game at a smooth framerate. As a result, negative Steam reviews spiked; the game’s recent reviews are at 79% positive compared to its overall average of 96%. Still, this didn’t stop the remaster from hitting a concurrent player spike of nearly 140,000 users on Steam alone. CD Projekt rolled out a pair of patches shortly after launch day to address graphical issues, save file problems, and audio bugs.
Thankfully, it seems that CD Projekt intends to address the problems on PS5 to bring this version more in line with PC. On X, the company listed many of the problems it plans to address, with performance issues, “particularly on PS5,” at the top. The team also plans to add more visual adjustments, fixes for My Rewards and Twitch Drops, voiceover audio fixes on console, and Ukrainian localization for other regions on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Additionally, the studio plans to bring more mod support to the game across all platforms with the help of Mod.io. While CD Projekt didn’t give an exact date for the upcoming patch, it seems the bug fixes will come sooner than what we saw with Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous console launch.
What’s next for The Witcher?
CD Projekt Red released The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt – Remastered to get players primed for the game’s upcoming DLC, Songs of the Past. This major expansion will apparently be comparable to The Witcher 3’s 2015 and 2016 expansions, which were around 15 to 30 hours long. Songs of the Past will once again follow Geralt as he attempts to solve a dark mystery in Dandelion’s hometown of Letten. The DLC is set for 2027. After Songs of the Past, CD Projekt is planning to release the next mainline game in the series, The Witcher 4, in 2028. While we don’t have many specifics, the game will star Geralt’s adoptive daughter, Ciri.
