The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, one of the most universally beloved games to come out in the last ten years, is getting its next-gen upgrade. It’ll get a shiny new visual upgrade when it launches on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5 later this year, the company announced during its WitcherCon event. And not only that — there will be some extras in the game inspired by the Netflix show.
While the games came before the Netflix show — and the third one, in particular, was considered one of the most influential games of the last decade — the show’s popularity has given the games a boost in attention as well. It’s probably not a surprise that the games are capitalizing on the new interest in the second season as the perfect time to release the next-gen updates.
As for what kind of update we’ll be getting, CD Projekt Red first announced it was working on it last year (before the new consoles had even launched), and revealed it planned to release the upgrade in the second half of 2021. The upgrades include ray tracing and improved load times, two of the big features promised by the next-gen consoles. The developer had previously stated the game will be available for standalone purchase on those consoles, and the next-gen upgrade will be free to those who already own the game on PS4, PC, or Xbox One.
No one yet knows what, exactly, this Netflix-inspired DLC will be. Perhaps an updated look to the in-game characters to make them more closely resemble their actors — this was implied by one of the designers during WitcherCon. I would be very surprised if the DLCs were anything more substantive than cosmetic, but CD Projekt Red might have done something like that, in whatever time it’s not trying to fix Cyberpunk 2077.
Source: IGN
