It will have 'a range of visual and technical improvements — including ray tracing and faster loading times'. It will be free for those that already have it on console and PC. As someone that put nearly 500 hours into it on the PS4, and another 200 plus on Xbox One X, I don't think I'd do it all again, but I am definitely curious about it and will check it out on both PS5 and Xbox Series X. I am curious if anyone is currently going through it now, and if that's the case, what do you make of this? And for those that haven't played it but have been thinking about it, what do you think?

I will absolutely check it out since its a free upgrade, and since its the wetcher 3 I'll probably end up getting sucked back in for another play through

I mean, I have the other two to play first so .... thanks. Now I can delay it further.

I'm planning to build a new PC soon and playing this again with some high end graphics was actually something I was already interested in doing at some point, so this just gives me more reason to do so.

It's probably too much to hope for, but it would be great if the upgrade was cross-platform.

I'll be curious to boot up the game after the update and say "Okay, that's how many frames I lost."

I got the DLC's but never did them. If I can bring my save over and finally finish those up, that'd be dope.

My question for this and all the other games that offer a free upgrade. Is it assumed that it's a timed thing? Otherwise, let's say I don't have the Witcher 3. Is there anything stopping me from a buying a $5-$10 used xbox one/ps4 copy and upgrading it to play on my series x/ps5?

I’m mostly curious what the PC side updates are going to be?

I don't know that there's much more for me to do in The Witcher 3, but I'll boot it up to see how much more sexy Geralt looks with ray tracing or whatever. That's what ray tracing does, right?

@brian_: I'm guessing you know what ray tracing does more so than you're letting on, but yeah, it might make Geralt look better, haha. It has to do with the way light interacts with the environment, so reflections off of water or a mirror for instance, or the way shadows work depending on where a light source comes from. I'm curious what the water will look like as that's the least impressive looking area of the visuals in my opinion.

@hhap: I have to assume there is nothing stopping you from doing that. Although, I do wonder if you have to have all DLC to make the upgrade since the next-gen versions will come with all content. I think they would have been more specific about that if that were the case, but perhaps they have to clarify.

No. The story is alright but the combat feels bad and the level gate keeping is a bummer. I managed to beat it while ignoring most of the hundreds of question marks but I have no reasons to go back.

But...I played it like 5 years ago. Why would I want to play it again?

I always planned to replay it again some day, not quite yet, but its definitely a world i want to be in again.

Yup! Only played it once, years ago on the base hardware. Have been kicking around a replay on the X1X but might just postpone until the Series X is in the house.

I would be if I didn't only own the Switch port! It does make me more likely to buy CDPR games in the future though :)

Looking forward to seeing what the RTX effects looks like. I put my replay of the game on hold until they update it

Sure, I've already played through that game 4 times. I'll take any flimsy excuse to do another playthrough.

@shindig: eh, skip Witcher 1 and maybe consider 2 (got some good stuff but a little rough around the edges, especially with the improvements 3 adds to the formula).

Nah, I own all three so I'm not skipping. I don't buy things with the intent not to play them.

If I end up getting the new Rtx 3080 I will definitely give it a whirl, never beat it after 120 hours.

I played through about a third of the game before Arkham Knight came out, then let it take a backseat while the myriad PS4 patches were released throughout 2015...and wound up letting it linger in the backlog until July of 2016, at which point I decided to just start from scratch. I then played the game intermittently (but in fiendish stretches) from 7/9/2016 up through both DLCs which took me until 1/1/2018 to earn my final trophy in. Yes, that's right, The Witcher 3 was a 1.5 year excursion for me all told!

In other words...I'll probably download it to take a look at it, but I just don't have another year and a half in me for this game.

I need very little reason to revisit Witcher 3.

@shindig: That's good. Despite one having much clunkier movement, I think it's better than two. The world and music are better. Two felt too linear to me, and although its length is fine, it's kind of short comparatively and doesn't feel like you go to many interesting-enough places. It takes time to get into one though. It's one of those games that you should stick with until it clicks. I should check two out on the Xbox One X, I never did that.

There's won't be a better reason to replay it again. And I'm looking forward to it.

If I end up upgrading to 2nd gen RTX card it might be worth going back to Witcher 3. Otherwise the performance hit is just not worth it.

Having played through this game nearly twice now, i don't think I'll go back for a whole playthrough, but I'll def pop in and check it out one night.

They Kinda did that. There was a promotion not to long ago where if you linked your PSN/XBL account on GOG Galaxy and you had Witcher 3 they gave you the game on PC.

I will hopefully get around to it at some point, its in my backlog pile. But it is nice that CDPR keeps up with there games and give free enhancements/upgrades, so that when i do get around to it its a better version.

Just saw they were adding HDR as well, I will probably take a look at it anyway whether I get a new card or not. Hdr>

@lego_my_eggo: Yeah, sadly I missed out on that. I ended up just picking up the GOTY while it was on sale on Steam, so I can get the upgrade later. Hopefully I won't regret that.

One I always thought about but heard ran like crap on launch ps4 so maybe ill finally get around to getting it

I'll be curious to see the extent that they rework it, but aside from inheriting the raytracing implementation, I'm assuming we'll see some texture up-res or reworks, and if we're lucky they'll take advantage of being designed natively for SSDs, instead of having to worry about duplicated assets for mechanical drives. The install size is already so small for the size, but if they could chop it down knowing that anyone playing on the upgraded edition would have an SSD, i'd be all for it.

Whatever they do for PC, it's a good excuse for me to jump back in. I stopped when I got to Skellige, so I just need to completely restart at this point anyway.

@the_nubster: Oh boy Skellige for me was a good amount of time into the game. Thats basically like the last area.

@humanity: I know, it's probably the worst place to put it down, but it was just... too much. Too much game. All of the side content felt so meaty and well-done that sitting down to play it always felt like a commitment. It set the bar for open-world game writing extremely high, but at the same time I don't know the the open-world design made it a better game than the hub-style design of Witcher 1 and 2.

@the_nubster: I know exactly what you mean. There are times when I love a game but turning it on takes so much effort because I know it's going to be, as you said, a commitment and not a casual play session. This is why after open world games I often yearn for some breezy, completely linear, single player action games where I just turn it on and plow forward. I'm currently making my way through Monster Hunter World and I'm basically 2 monsters away from "beating" the campaign. While the early parts of the game were very forgiving and fun, these end monsters all feel like a real commitment and I'm nearing that point where maybe I just had enough at this point? But so close to the end.. I know I'll probably never pick it back up.

@humanity: This is getting way off topic at this point but Remnant is that breezy linear game for me right now. The design of the world between the overworld and procedurally-generated dungeons means I can roll a new adventure mode and go through one of the biomes with no fuss, and bumping up the difficulty makes it engaging enough to make it feel like an accomplishment but without requiring me to 100% engage to wring the use out of it.

I will probably beat it on NG+

Here's hoping that my progress will carry over

I fell off Witcher 3 hard about 20 hours into the game and have no desire to go back, so it's a no for me. For people that like the game though it's cool that it's being updated like this so I'm happy for them.

I definitely am! I bought it on Xbox all the way back in 2016 but have only beaten White Orchard. I've been thinking of getting back to it and finally trying to do a full playthrough, and this is the perfect opportunity.

Really wish I knew about this before I did a new game plus playthrough on PC.

This may have been answered somewhere above, but did they confirm if PS4 saves will transfer to the PS5?

this game seems right up my alley but every time i try to get into it, it does nothing for me.

Its nice they are adding content to the PC version as well. But i have spent way too much time playing through the main story and the expansion packs. So i will most likely not dip into it again. Maybe years from now when i get in that mood.

So Witcher 3 is the new Skyrim or GTA 5, i.e. how many different ways can they resell or rerelease Witcher 3.

it's free, they not reselling it

I'll turn if on for 30 mins and take a look.

Kinda wish I had time to replay that game, but there's just no way.

This is still one of the games that I need to go tackle but every time I do something just annoys me, and it's a different thing every time! I need to get addons to just remove weight limits and make potions automatic and a whole host of other things. Or just add some guns to it, or something.

@rorie: Even on my first playthrough I went straight for no carry weight, auto-apply oils, and no item degradation mods. Don't got time for that noise.

P.S. Modding this game is also kind of annoying, get ready to solve some code conflicts!