The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered is now out and has become the most concurrently played version of the game ever, which might paint an inaccurate, and literally weaker, picture of what the game really is and stain our collective memories of it.
The remaster does improve upon a lot of gameplay aspects, and it lets you keep the funniest bugs, actually. That’s awesome. I also don’t think CD Projekt Red got lazy at remastering The Witcher 3, and it’s just amazing that this is completely free for people who already own the game. Still, I cannot help but feel like the modern quest for realism has harmed the game’s beautiful art direction. I believe you can observe what I’m talking about pretty much everywhere, but it’s never clearer than in Toussaint, the area from the second DLC, Blood and Wine.
Though it still looks great in comparison with most games out today, it just doesn’t look as good as the OG, which is disappointing. The warm, vibrant colors, all the beautiful contrast and bloom that once surrounded everything in that area are now mostly absent, now replaced by more deeply defined, more photorealistic visuals. And that sucks because, well, this was unnecessary, but even if someone very high up really thought it necessary, we could still have had both.
And when we talk about the OG Witcher 3’s special immersion, we just cannot forget its wind and its vegetation effects. Upon entering Velen way back in 2015, it was impossible not to be floored by how different it was from everything else, and how surprisingly lively that massive swampland actually felt. A lot of it came from the beautiful vegetation movements all around us. Sure, those weren’t necessarily realistic, but, like, what game are we even talking about here? Those effects looked great, but now they’ve been severely neutered, and the wind in every part of the Remastered is barely even noticeable, leaving the game feeling like any other big open-world title out there.
To anyone getting into The Witcher 3 for the first time via the remaster, I understand I might sound completely mad for going about how the wind elevated the original so much. Still, anyone who experienced the game at release will miss that unique effect and scratch their head, wondering how climate change has managed to mess up even video games these days.
As a gamer, I can recognize the graphical leap, but as an arts enthusiast, I cannot ignore all that has been unnecessarily thrown away. Still, even with everything I’ve just said, I’ll take the too-realistic Geralt of the remaster over anything that the monstrous Nvidia DLSS 5 will soon conjure to replace him.
