Shortly after the launch of the remastered version of The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red has released the first patches. The updates tweak the controversial lighting and resolve a frustrating save issue on PC.
The launch of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered was supposed to be a celebration for RPG fans. But no sooner had the first Witcher players returned to Velen and Novigrad than frustration began to cloud their joy at the reunion. In addition to washed-out colors and pitch-black huts, it was primarily glitchy save files that caused the most trouble.
CD Projekt Red didn’t waste any time, however, and released the first hotfix just two days after launch. Patch 5.00c for the PC tackles several urgent issues at once.
The visuals are being fine-tuned
The biggest point of contention in the remastered edition was undoubtedly the revamped lighting: The game world suddenly seemed “lifeless”; overpowering bloom effects and HDR washed out all contrast, while certain indoor areas, on the other hand, were much too dark. Where Geralt used to ride through atmospheric twilight, players now found themselves looking at milky-bright landscapes in some places or stumbling through the darkness in taverns.
According to official statements, the update now “makes various adjustments to the lighting” and brightens up indoor areas that had previously been far too gloomy. While PS5 console players are still waiting for an option to completely disable the controversial bloom effect, the overall visual experience noticeably benefits from the correction.
In addition, the patch adds DLSS support—previously missing on PC—to the Xbox Play Anywhere version, bringing the two versions into technical alignment.
The patch also addresses a bug that caused real frustration, especially here in Germany: If your Windows username or the path to your Documents folder contained special characters or umlauts like “ä,” “ö,” or accents, the save system would completely crash. New save files could neither be created nor loaded, and on top of that, the graphics settings would reset every time the game was launched. This nightmare is over with the update.
CD Projekt Red has also made improvements to the audio. After accessing the pause menu, the dialogue would regularly cut out for many players, causing Geralt and his conversation partners to fall almost completely silent, while music and ambient sound continued to play at full volume, unaffected. The hotfix resolves this issue and ensures that voice acting remains stable.
