Launched in 2015, Witcher: Wild Hunt is one of the most popular open-world role-playing games of all time. Developed by CD Projekt Red, the same studio that brought us Cyberpunk 2077, the game recently got a 'Next Gen' update, which improves the overall graphics and brings some really useful quality-of-life changes along with some new side missions. If you already own a copy of the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, make sure you download the free 'Next Gen' update. Here's everything we know so far about the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Next Gen update. Updated graphics The updated version of the game makes significant changes to the game's lighting and shadows. The developers have also integrated some community-made modifications like the popular 'The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project', 'HD Monsters', 'Impress Real-time Cutscenes', 'Nitpicker's Patch' and more. The new version also bumps character textures to 4K, upscales sky textures, makes improvements to vegetation, water and meshes and all main characters now have high-resolution shadows. The developers have also fixed some bugs like the one where hair was clipped by armours. It also adds support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.1, a brand new photo mode, the ability to pause the game during cutscenes and an alternative dynamic camera option that reacts to your movement and combat. If you planning to play the game on a PC, you get an additional graphic preset called 'Ultra+' that lets you modify parameters like the number of background characters, grass density, shadow quality, texture quality, increase foliage and bump up the texture, terrain, water and detail level. Those with NVIDIA's 4000 series graphic cards can also enable DLSS 3. The update brings improved textures, fidelity, shadow, and crowd density and increases the draw distance on all next-gen consoles. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X players also get ray-traced global illumination and ambient occlusion with a dynamic resolution scaling target set to 30 FPS. You also get a 'Performance Mode' which helps the game stay at 60 FPS. Gameplay changes CD Projekt Red has incorporated the 'Full Combat Rebalance 3' mod which brings some changes and fixes some annoying gameplay bugs. Some quality of life changes include a 'Quick Sign Casting' option, a new default map filter, increased minimum fall damage height, the ability to collect all herbs without having the go to the loot window and many more Cross Progression CD Projekt Red has also added a cross-progression feature that lets players back up their save games on the cloud so they can pick up where they left off on another device. However, this feature is only available after you log in to your GOG account. Moreover, save games from consoles are not carried over to the PC version of the game. New side missions Taking inspiration from the Netflix series, the developers have also added some side quests like 'In the Eternal Fire's Shadow', new outfit for Dandelion and a new Nilfgaardian Armour set.
