A fresh hotfix means The Witcher 3's next-gen update might work now
Break out the Kriek
The Witcher 3's next-gen update was borked on PC, but a fresh hotfix from developers CD Projeckt Red might have just unborked it. They say the update to the update "should improve the overall stability and performance", which will hopefully be especially good news for anyone trying to de-neck nekkers on an ageing graphics card.
Here's their Tweet, where they also say more improvements are incoming:
They also mention the next-gen update is now live on Origin, which is slightly confusing because nowadays that's called the EA app.
The update was supposed to add fancy ray-tracing effects along with a bunch of other visual improvements, which it did - while also lowering people's framerates and introducing crashes. Crucially, it lowered performance even without any of the new effects turned on, which sucked/might still suck for folks who can barely run the game anyway. Beefy cards weren't seeing the frames they should have been either, as resident RPS hardswaremen James confirmed in his detailed analysis.
It's still possible to roll back the changes - though that means reverting back to the last major patch from 2016.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition is out on Steam, GOG, and the Epic Game Store. It might work properly now?