The Witcher 3

[igor_kavinski]

When it did work, it ran pretty bad kind of like a slideshow.

They must really love the hate messages they get from their customers.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Its important to remember this patch was outsourced from the get-go to a Rus dev, then the Rus/Ukr war started, development stopped, then development got brought in house for a quick finish.

Its definitely one of those dev cycles that was uniquely cursed and there is probably a good amount of clean-up that needs to go into it.

What really sucks is that even with all the RT off apparently the base game's performance has dropped significantly so for a lot of people out there who weren't going to try for the RT stuff anyway this is really more of a free downgrade in performance.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

It isn't a downgrade in performance with no trade off though. As it looks better with the new Ultra+ settings. Whether the visuals justify the performance hit is up to the individual.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

It isn't a downgrade in performance with no trade off though. As it looks better with the new Ultra+ settings. Whether the visuals justify the performance hit is up to the individual.

- Ah, so the game can be made to look and perform like the old version without issue?

I thought the problem was thanks to a very low effort DirectX 11 to DirectX 12 wrapper (OG game being coded for DX11 and DX12 being required for any RT effects) which introduces a fair amount of CPU overhead not present in the original release.

 

[sze5003]

I get much better performance with dlss 3 frame generation but the game crashes every X minutes with it on. It's random how long it will run before it crashes to desktop.

 

[CP5670]

I'm not impressed with this update at all. It runs much worse than the old version did, like half the framerate, even at regular ultra settings and with RT disabled. On top of that, I don't see much of a visual difference over the old game, which already looked quite good. DLSS 3 does improve performance a lot, but it's still worse than the old version and doesn't always hit 120fps. There are also some clear visual glitches like stretched textures on some foliage, on top of mod incompatibilities. It's a good thing GOG lets you roll back updates (unlike Steam).

One of the Cyberpunk updates was like this too and the low performance turned out to be due to the screen space reflections setting, but that doesn't improve anything here.

 

[sze5003]

That's because this update was mainly to have the ability to use Ray Tracing as well as adding the ultra + settings. So the assets and graphics do look better even if you are not using ray tracing but the performance obviously isn't the same.

The hotfix update did nothing for me with the crashing and I think it may be related to having dlss enabled and frame generation enabled at the same time. The game may need the updated dlss 2.5 file but I won't know until I test more tonight.

Perhaps I can test with FSR and frame generation enabled to see if that still causes crashes.

 

[Racan]

I'm not impressed with this update at all. It runs much worse than the old version did, like half the framerate, even at regular ultra settings and with RT disabled. On top of that, I don't see much of a visual difference over the old game, which already looked quite good. DLSS 3 does improve performance a lot, but it's still worse than the old version and doesn't always hit 120fps. There are also some clear visual glitches like stretched textures on some foliage, on top of mod incompatibilities. It's a good thing GOG lets you roll back updates (unlike Steam).

One of the Cyberpunk updates was like this too and the low performance turned out to be due to the screen space reflections setting, but that doesn't improve anything here.

Yikes, I think I'll stick to the GOTY edition if and when I do another replay.

 

[AdamK47]

The DX12 executable is so very clunky. I've had no less than 6 different crashes just changing graphics settings. Even with ray tracing turned off it stutters. DX11 executable remains smooth. Same Ultra+ settings without ray tracing.

 

[AdamK47]

Yikes, I think I'll stick to the GOTY edition if and when I do another replay.

You can still use DX11 with this versions. It's not as bad as the new DX12 renderer.

 

[sze5003]

The DX12 executable is so very clunky. I've had no less than 6 different crashes just changing graphics settings. Even with ray tracing turned off it stutters. DX11 executable remains smooth. Same Ultra+ settings without ray tracing.

They use a dx12 wrapper api so it's not a proper dx12 implementation which would have required more work. The update itself should have taken more time. They got it right in cyberpunk eventually, it just happened the development on this was stopped then restarted and it had already been delayed before once.

 

[CP5670]

Yes, it does look like the DX11 exe still works nicely and has the old level of performance. Some of the grass still looks weird though, like the texture is stretched. I can't remember if it looked like this before.

I held off playing Blood and Wine for this patch (finished the rest of the game), but might as well just play with the DX11 version now.

 

[Racan]

Digital Foundry review

 

[sze5003]

Figured out why the game was crashing to desktop when I enabled frame generation.

Apparently having the GOG galaxy overlay enabled in GOG settings causes issues with using dlss and frame generation.

Or you can use FSR 2.0 with frame generation and that won't cause crashes. Seems to be specific to the GOG overlay or an issue with the way they have dlss implemented.

 

[Igo69]

This game runs smooth as butter on my old PC. Going to install some mods for it.

 

[PlanetJosh]

For anyone using commands on the command line (the Debug Console Commands Next Gen,) did you ever use the "hideplayer" command? It makes your character disappear letting you play in first person view. Does anyone know the command to return back to 3rd person view? Can't find it.

You can get back in 3rd person again but you have to exit to the Main Menu and load a save. To avoid that hassle I'm looking for the command if available to make your character visible again.

Oh and hideplayer is in the group of extensions commands to the Debug Console. So if you don't already have it you have to install the Debug Console Extensions after installing the main Debug Console Next Gen.

 

[lopri]

I played this through and did not like the dialog nor the story line. The main character's voice acting is also too low and monotone, couldn't hear him sometimes.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I played this through and did not like the dialog nor the story line. The main character's voice acting is also too low and monotone, couldn't hear him sometimes.

Watch the Netflix series. Pretty compelling.

 

[rstrohkirch]

This release was a waste. You can already get customizable view distance mods, foliage mods as well as great 4k texture packs. That basically leaves RTX which is punishing for its performance. But, it's free so guess I shouldn't complain. =]

 

[igor_kavinski]

Hopefully they will fix the slow RT by releasing a remastered version in UE5 using their Lumen RT tech.

 

[AdamK47]

Hopefully they will fix the slow RT by releasing a remastered version in UE5 using their Lumen RT tech.

That's not going to happen.

 

[igor_kavinski]

That's not going to happen.

Then I'll take Witcher 4 in UE5

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Alright folks, fired up the game and have made it to Velen, have completed the initial parts of the Witch and Bloody Barron questlines among other side quests.

Holy **** what a great game, it honestly feels like the game Dragon Age Inquisition should have been. Feels very similar in layout (not one huge open world like Skyrim which is what I initially thought, but multiple independent but still huge zones) but with actual stuff to do in each one with real towns and questlines and loot and more. Feels like CDProject Red has made a more Bioware-esq action RPG than even Bioware does nowadays (Witcher 2 was great like this as well).

I normally hate riding horses in open world games because they tend to hitch on every little rock or ledge or what-have-you but Roach is actually hugely useful in navigating the world which is a first for me in these kinds of games.

Combat is combat, much like Witcher 2 its serviceable but not going to win any blue ribbons. Unlike most I don't hate the combat, but certain elements of it (like locking on to an enemy) are functionally useless since you rarely ever encounter one single opponent at a time and locking on becomes a huge liability with the cramped, zoomed in camera. Most encounters seem to go slash, slash, dodge out of range, dodge back into range, slash, slash, dodge out of range... over and over and over.

Looks like I better buckle myself in cause this is likely the only thing I'm going to be playing for the next 6 months at the rate I go through games.

Edit: Should mention I'm playing the DX11 version with Ultra+ settings, no Hairworks, no TAAU. Game runs like butter on my sig rig, bouncing off the 144FPS cap of my monitor.

 

[Zenoth]

Yeah The Witcher 3 was CDPR's 'peak', which I simply feel like they'll never top. Not just because Cyberpunk failed (by comparison), but quite simply because The Witcher 3 is that good of a video game. They just hit the nail on almost every game aspects (almost, it's not "perfect", but the positives of the game overall far outweighs any negatives I can think of).

I'm sure The Witcher 4 will have spectacular visuals, but something tells me it will not equal or get anywhere close to the atmosphere and story-telling of TW3. You don't just top a Masterpiece like it's nothing even within the same company. BioWare never topped DA Origins within the DA franchise, nor did any of their games ever did in my book (ME2 might be close though but not quite there; DA Origins is a Masterpiece).

I find it a little 'harsh', however, when a company "happen to" make a Masterpiece like that, because everything they do after that is an attempt at topping that work, and it just quite never works (or if it does, those cases are extremely rare). There might be a case to say that companies shouldn't try to "top their swan song" game and just deliver 'relatively constant good games'. But I guess that - on the other hand - games like Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3, Elden Ring or God of War 2018 happening 'every now and then' from a few different companies is never a bad thing either.

But anyway, digressing a bit but the point is: TW3 is a Masterpiece and will remain that way forever regardless of what CDPR themselves try to do next., period.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

@GodisanAtheist

I played with hairworks on. I figured since it was running flawlessly, even when I was playing on a setup with 4k max, why no use it?