Who witches the witchers

CD Projekt have released the full list of PC system requirements for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered, a free upgrade for the base edition of the grizzled and cantankerous fantasy action-RPG. This covers both the previously announced minimum PC specs and the recommended, ultra, ray-tracing minimum, ray-tracing recommended, and path tracing configurations.

The Remastered edition itself launches tomorrow, Tuesday 29th September, so if you're reading this on a Casio desktop organiser from the 90s, there's just enough time to rush out and spring for a $2000+ mega-PC so that you can subject Geralt's pitifully scarred mug to a bombardment of faithfully modelled pseudo-photons. Here's a table with all the settings dissected in full.

The table comes from this blog post, in which CD Projekt go into slightly more detail about how they benchmarked the thing. "The expected FPS targets in the table above are based on our QA tests," they caution. "Occasional frame rate fluctuations may occur depending on the scene and gameplay."

The devs also talk a bit about the new SSD requirement and the ending of support for Windows 10. "That doesn't mean that the game will stop running on Windows 10 with the next game update," they note. "However, we no longer develop or test on this system, so we cannot guarantee compatibility or performance going forward. Additionally, we only support components that continue to receive official updates from their manufacturers."

James was reasonably impressed by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered when he saw both it and the forthcoming Songs of the Past expansion at Gamescom, calling attention to some slicker combat animations and camerawork. You can read more about the visual flourishes, together with various tweaks for the enemy AI, ledge climbing, the Photo mode and more besides, in CD Projekt's latest changelog.

All that notwithstanding, I've read some mixed reactions among returning players to side-by-side visual comparisons. The more obvious reason to take issue is that you can't afford a hardware upgrade. If you're among those who'd rather steer clear, it may cool your jets to read that "depending on your platform, it is possible to revert to an earlier version of the game (1.32, listed as Classic)," as CD Projekt explain. "Upon the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered, it will be also possible to revert to the 4.04 version." For context, the 4.04 version is the previous "next gen" remaster update, initially released in 2022.

Our resident Witcherphile Mark is possibly even less sure about the Songs of the Past expansion, which will launch in 2027, paving the way for The Witcher 4 in 2028. He feels The Witcher 3 already has a perfect ending in the Blood and Wine expansion.