The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Gets Next-Gen Patch to Improve Performance, Resolve Bugs Across PC and Console Editions

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

Polish studio CD Projekt Red published patch notes in a blog post, separating fixes based on the platform. On PC, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's DirectX 12 version is expected to reduce the load on the CPU, in addition to stopping a weird flickering issue in the duchy Touissant, when the Nvidia HairWorks setting was toggled off. Grass shadows that previously appeared murky have now been fixed, though players will need to disable Ambient Occlusion once more for it to work. “You can find it in Options → Video → Graphics,” the post reads. As mentioned before, a motion blur slider has been added to help smoothen camera movement, while a refraction effect has been added to SSR (screen-space reflections) and ray-traced reflections.

Performance mode has been improved on both PS5 and Xbox Series S/X, and the game no longer crashes when Geralt decides to run away from the medic Shani after striking the conversation. Running The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt with Ray-Tracing on Xbox Series S/X would lead to crashes, owing to a memory usage issue, which has been fixed now. PS5 users no longer have to endure blurry cutscenes or deal with their oldest save data being deleted automatically. Some localisation issues were also resolved, starting with updated traditional Chinese fonts and punctuations in the Arabic translation.

Meanwhile, CD Projekt Red is deep into development on Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty paid expansion. The content boasts the biggest budget for an expansion in the studio's history and features 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 that Keanu Reeves would be reprising his role as the magnetic Johnny Silverhand, who deems our allegiance to the federation a “bad idea.” Featuring mounds of dead government officials, Phantom Liberty is described as an “impossible mission of espionage & survival.”

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

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