CD Projekt RED has gone on record that there will be no graphical downgrades for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
The company was reacting to criticism from fans regarding the details in graphics in some recent previews. To be specific, they were reacting to this demo showing off the game’s use of Nvidia’s PhysX middleware.
Fans pointed out that the quality of this preview was not up to what CD Projekt RED had previewed previously. Speculation even grew that this would be the level of graphics that would be seen in the console versions of the game.
Community manager Marcin Momot shared this statement:
Please keep in mind that the game is still in production phase. Certain things are still being worked on. The final version of the game will look better than what can be seen in the latest screenshots – no matter the platform. As you probably know, when publishing screenshots, some of them can be subjectively less appealing than others (depending on one’s opinion), that’s perfectly normal. The most important thing here is that the game will come out looking gorgeous when we are done working on it. There will be no downgrade.
It should also be noted that this demo is exclusively previewing Hairworks, the hair and fur rendering technology under PhysX. Games that do make use of PhysX gets graphical enhancements exclusive to PCs that run on Nvidia cards.
If you have seen prior previews of the game, as well as CD Projekt RED’s own statements, there was no reason to believe the company would scale back on graphics.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be released on February 24, 2015, on Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
