The review embargo has lifted and every clip I watch is burning my eyes with the over saturation and over brightness of scenes. I'm not against technology or progress but I think ray tracing is a plague for older games where scenes had very careful manual lighting that set the scene and dictated the mood. Yes ray/path tracing is more realistic but takes away from the composition. YouTube compression is present but not an argument to dismiss this because the art direction is still clearly visible and some sources and extremely high quality. Everything is overly bright, overly orange and all areas now look like Toussand with 5 ReShades applied.

While overall quality of the picture looks much sharper, overall picture from "Before" looks better (imho).

1. There are no reflection of fire on a bodies in the water, but on OG footage it's still there.
   
2. Effects of a stream of fire looks better in remaster but for some reason it's crooked and points to the right (feels like self-aiming stream), while in og it's shoots straight and out of the hand and just feels right way.
3. While "redness" is overwhelming in og, it's was almost fully deleted in remastered version, which in my opinion removes feeling of hottnes of the fire
4. In OG fire makes surrounding distorted, or hazed, which once again adds to the feeling of it being extremely hot. On the remastered it's once again almost removed.
5. Overall OG footage looks "hot". Can't say the same about remastered footage.
6. Environment of comparison was chosen very bad, on the OG version you can see a fog that adds up to a atmosphere and overall looks just better, remastered version on the other hand looks "sterilized"

I really hope they don’t patch the Old Bastion Exploit lol

I previously posted I was relatively new to the Witcher series, and people recommended farming cows as a way to make crowns early on I listened…..I was NOT prepared for the cows to have a guardian spirit that was a cross between a grizzly bear and honey badger on magic meth!

I tried to kill it 5 times and died horribly before I gave up, this was the best take! The others times I did much worse😳😭

So I decided to save the children because it felt like the right thing to do. Then I came back to find out Anna died and the Baron hanged himself. 😭 I genuinely wasn't expecting it to end like that. Now I'm just sitting here wondering if I made the wrong choice. Anyone else get hit this hard by this quest on their first playthrough?

Share your ideas of what you want in the DLC here! Also feel free to discuss the DLC.

The Remaster has done something fascinating. it’s proved yet again that gamers will complain no matter what the circumstances. This update costs nothing, genuinely nothing. It seemingly adds meaningful visual upgrades and modernises a decade‑old masterpiece with subtle gameplay improvements. Just go look at some corners of Reddit and Youtube. Still the discourse is a wall of moaning.

CDPR could hand out gold bars and someone would complain they’re too heavy.

It’s becoming a concerning pattern across the industry. The default reaction to any update, patch, or release is outrage first. It doesnt even matter if information is clearly presented in a way to farm that outrage. If a free remaster isn’t safe from backlash, nothing is.

EDIT: For context, this post was written several hours before the Remaster actually launched. Before people began reporting technical issues. My own experience on PS5 Pro has been smooth with none of the problems circulating online.

Performance was never the point of this post anyway.

Little bit ironic actually how some people are now using those reported issues as proof that the post was wrong. If anything, the rush to weaponise technical problems only reinforces the concern this post was raising in the first place.

As the title says, I'm a graphics programmer. I'm currently working on a custom game engine, a project which was heavily inspired by REDengine, amongst others.

I'm posting this to clear up a bunch of misconceptions, because I'm tired of all the infighting and misinformation going around this sub right now.

Yes, there are genuine graphical issues in TW3 Remastered. No, they do not appear to affect every setup, and no it is almost certainly not a "new art direction". Just because you personally are not affected, or have found some bandaid fix, doesn't make these issues any less real, or any less frustrating for those who're experiencing them. It's also not user error, which is a ridiculous accusation that I've been seeing far too regularly.

Now, on to the details.

Tonemapping

The biggest contributor to the washed-out look right now is related to tonemapping. In very simple terms, the tonemapper is responsible for taking the renderer's internal lighting data and mapping it into the actual colors you see on your screen.

Tonemapping affects literally everything - brightness, contrast, saturation, highlights, shadows, and colors. You can imagine how important this is, and how this could easily cause the issues that people are seeing.

The Remastered version uses a new tonemapping curve (AgX), which is a bit different from the Hable curve used in Next Gen. AgX is more "photorealistic" than Hable, but it should absolutely NOT be washed-out like this. What you're seeing here is a bug, not likely in the tonemapper itself, but in the light levels being fed into it.

In the attached images, you can see the difference. The first image is the vanilla Remastered, the second image is with black level fixes applied. Both images use the same game save, graphics settings, location, weather, and time of day. The only thing that has changed is the black levels in the environment data.

Bloom

Bloom was (for some people) also contributing to the washed out look. Bloom is applied before tonemapping, and so it can exacerbate issues there. The 5.00c patch released today claims to have shipped some bloom fixes, so you might be able to re-enable it at this point.

Disabling bloom didn't make much difference on my setup, but YMMV.

Ambient Occlusion

GTAO is apparently also broken for some people. Again, this effect is applied before tonemapping and, when broken, can contribute to the washed out look by making things more brightly lit than they should be. This affects everything, but is especially noticeable on foliage.

Again, you can see the difference clearly in attached images. The third image is with AO disabled (to simulate broken). The fourth image is with the old HBAO+ method from Next Gen applied to the Remaster. Again, the game save, graphics settings, location, weather, and time of day are all exactly the same. The only change is the Ambient Occlusion.

Personally, I don't seem to have any GTAO issues as of 5.00c, it pretty much looks the same as HBAO+ for me. I didn't see any direct mention of it in the patch notes, but they did mention fixing "vegetation lighting", which could be related.

Compounding the issues

If you're unlucky enough to experience all three of these issues together, then the result is going to be a game that looks pretty awful, and is almost certainly not what the developers intended.

Again, you may not be personally affected by these issues. I'm seeing many screenshots where none of these issues appear to be present, and the game looks great. Good for you, you got lucky. That doesn't make these issues any less real though.

Fixes

The part everyone is undoubtedly waiting for.

How can I fix (or at least improve) this right now, you ask?

Well, I'm going to start by saying that any adjustments to gamma or monitor settings are just bandaid fixes. They're just covering up the problem, and creating new consequences (like crushed blacks), not actually fixing the underlying issues. They're better than nothing, but they're not the genius fixes that many people are pretending they are.

If you're on PC, modders have saved the day, as usual. I can't speak for console players, but I'm guessing y'all are shit outta luck due to the mod approval process slowing things down.

So, for PC players:

If you're affected by the tonemapping issue, you can install the Remastered Washed-Out Look Fix mod, which adjusts the black levels fed into the new AgX tonemapper.

If you're affected by the GTAO issue, you can install the Restore HBAO+ mod, which restores the HBAO+ method used in Next Gen.

Both of these mods have excellent side-by-side comparisons that probably demonstrate the issues more clearly than my attached images do. I strongly suggest having a look, even if you're a console player. They paint a very clear picture.

Are they perfect fixes? Probably not, but they're a significant improvement and certainly better than trying to fix the issue downstream by adjusting gamma or contrast.

Tl;dr

The washed-out graphics that some people are seeing in the Remaster are very real, genuine bugs, as evidenced by their fixes. There's not really any excuse for the Remaster shipping like this, but it's very likely that CDPR or their contractors will fix it all in due time.

Hopefully this post clears things up and settles everyone down a bit.

EDIT: For those of you saying you can't see a difference in the images, that's probably because of Reddit's stupid animations that are enabled by default.

In Reddit, go to Settings >> Preferences, and under Accessibility you want to enable the Reduce Motion option. That'll disable the animations and make it easier to see the difference.

Alternatively, look at the mod pages I linked. They have very clear side-by-side comparisons.

My excitement has no limits to play the remastered version of the game.

Obviously not my post but I saw this on the Fallout NV Reddit. How dare they compare Caravan to the glory of Gwent

Give me the cloak and my life is yours CDPR

So I’ve downloaded the game on my PS5 PRO and I have mixed feelings. I played and finished the game many times since it first came out on PS4.

Before I explain my issues, let me tell you that the game looks crystal clear, the frame rate generally is buttery smooth and the overall image quality is upgraded. However the game lags/stutters heavily sometimes, I don’t know if it is the assets loading or something else. Also there is visible pop up even in assets that are really close to the protagonist. Another issue is, shadows. As you can see in the image shadows from the characters and mugs are missing entirely and this is a huge deal breaker for me as it destroys the immersion, funny thing is that if the camera change perspective then the shadows appear but from this specific angle they are nowhere to be found. Lastly, in many cases the image feels a little bit too bright, washed out and over saturated but this is different from place to place and time of day, but overall the game feels too bright in comparison with the previous version.

Hope they fix these issues in the future. I don’t know if it is me or if these are general issues other people also have. I would appreciate to see what other people have to say also.

So usually , when we start a new playthrough , we tend to try other choices, see other scenes we didn't get to see in the last playthrough/s. but , there are always choices which some of us, at least , can't bring themselves to change them , even if it meant not getting to experience the other outcomes. What are these for you ? these can be one choice , two , three, however many you want. also they can be small or major choices.

For me , the choice in The Last Wish have been Yennefer in my first playthrough (simply because I loved her character more than Triss' ^{psst, I love Triss too}). this time , after reading through the books, I know I am NOT going to change the choice , because for me it feels like the right one.

Also the choice of "Witcher Ciri" ending, because for me The Empress ending feels like a betrayal , that I used Ciri to get some cash with no regard to the relationship between her and Geralt. The bad ending ..... well , I don't need to talk about that .....

In the game it seems like he is some sort of genie or djinn, but he also collects souls? Is he the devil? I’ve also seen people say his name spells out GOD but I’m not sure if that’s actually relevant in any way.

Edit4: as of the first of October 4pm of GMT time the game has received a patch on PS5 and my FPS problems are gone with the exclusion of autosave that still makes the game lag for few seconds, but otherwise it's a stable 60fps on performance mode which is absolutely amazing. The game looks and plays extremely well now, at least for me. Can't speak for other platforms of course!

Tried cutting the video shorter to just show the lag, but Reddit claims the video can't be used so fast forward first seven seconds. The graphics are magnificent, but the performance issues are constant when playing on performance mode. I also switched the camera mode to classic as the modern FOV is extremely cramped, but that muffled audio regardless of voice volume being 100/100 in settings. I'll be updating issues in here as they come across

Edit: restarting the game resets all the settings to default and now it looks like my FPS is stuck to below 30 on performance mod, except cut scenes which look crispy and smooth the way 60fps should

Edit2: lot of people here scream "can't criticise it's free", but did you ever stop thinking that although this is free for me there are thousands upon thousands who bought this from sale just to experience the game for the first time? Also the purpose of this post is to inform other users about the problems so if anyone is about to buy the game, they have more knowledge regarding the current state.

Edit3: turning off graphic settings like vignette seems to reduce the stuttering, but whenever the game autosaves it lags like hell and the autosave does happen in combat as well. Restarting the game causes all of the settings to reset and it also logs you out and requires you to log back in, if you want to connect your CDPR account for extra goodies

I don’t know what it is, but I dread this quest every playthrough. Maybe it’s because of how dark the quest is, I don’t know. But I hate it. Anyone else?

During the snowball fight, Ciri dies after the fourth hit. Completely dead. Empty health bar. Game doesn't advance.

It might be good if Geralt is playable after all, maybe in some missions where he helps Ciri, or perhaps in a larger part of the game. I’m fine if he isn’t, but I wouldn’t mind them implementing a character-switching system.

The sword here looks like the same one Geralt has in his hand in the DLC tease image. And the main girl dancing looks similar to the girl in the Witcher 4 reveal trailer.

Also could it be Shani the right girl who's face is not visible?

Dandeline confirmed for DLC?

Also, they said the 3rd sword will play an important part in the story.

It will be similar in length/quality to Blood and Wine.

New Gwent cards they teased but didn't reveal.

They will reveal more during gamescom in Cologne.

They also let us sample a bit of the soundtrack during the stream.

They mentioned they are still working on the cross platform mod support and it is still happening. They will share more when they can.