The Witcher 3’s next-gen update may look better, but you’ll pay for it in broken mods
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Rejoice! The days of searching the bodies in Velen of The Witcher 3 for juicy loot and coming up with nothing but a bunch of candles, broken rakes and a broken heart for your troubles are coming to an end. However, it seems that this blessing comes at a cost.
Release on December 14 The next-gen update of The Witcher 3 will feature six community-created mods to make life easier on The Continent. These will range from reworked graphics to general quality-of-life changes, enhancing the immersion of The Witcher’s dense open-world fantasy of political intrigue and monster slaying.
In addition to community-created mods to improve the look of monsters and make the minimap more like the 3D world, the update also includes a reworked version of a mod originally created by a senior base game gameplay designer and the corresponding modifications. two extensions.
While it’s great to see CD Projekt RED recognize its passionate modding community by making their work official, the next-gen update itself will break many existing mods created for the game.
Lots of questions about community mods coming with W3NG, so here’s the list again: ⚙️The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project by HalkHogan⚙️HD Monsters Reworked by Derroth⚙️Immersive Real-time Cutscenes by teiji25⚙️Nitpicker’s Patch by chuckcash⚙️World Map Fixes by Terg500 https://t.co/fs1oN3u0zmDecember 7, 2022
Downright necessary
About Twitter (opens in new tab)CD Projekt RED Global Community Director Marcin Momot shared the list of mods that will be included in The Witcher 3’s next-gen update.
- The Witcher 3 HD reworked project by HalkHogan
- HD Monsters reworked by Denroth
- Immersive real-time cutscenes from teiji25
- Nitpicker’s Patch from chuckcash
- World map corrections by Terg500
The mod I’m most excited about being included in The Witcher 3 is FCR3’s immersion and gameplay tweaks (opens in new tab) mod. Created by Andrzej Kwiatkowski, one of the original gameplay designers, he describes the mod in his listing by saying that it “doesn’t aim for deep and intrusive changes; instead, it’s meant to keep the original feel of the game, sometimes getting closer to the original intent behind the designs.” This means it focuses on “fixing immersion breakers, polishing underperforming skills and items, cosmetic changes, and bug fixing.”
That all sounds nice, but the most intriguing part of the mod is an optional pack that removes unwanted loot from the game. This will be especially useful for us serial explorers like me who are forced to loot every item we can find, and it will reduce the amount of low-value, pure junk Geralt encounters from time to time. I’m looking at you, rotting flesh.
Another one of the mods that gets its place in the spotlight is The Witcher 3 HD Rework Project (opens in new tab). Originally uploaded in 2015, this mod gives The Witcher 3 a facelift by improving the integrity and quality of textures, character models, terrain, creatures, and other items. Expect a complete visual overhaul to meet the demands of 4K gaming.
The HD Monsters reworked (opens in new tab) van Denroth perfectly complements the HD Rework Project by completely or partially reworking certain visual assets for The Witcher 3’s monsters. That said, the creator claims the goal is to stay true to the vanilla release and simply improve on what’s already out there. Those vampires are going to watch horrible; I can not wait.
The world map solutions (opens in new tab) mod is small but brilliant and makes your 2D mini-map reflect the terrain features of the world around you. At the same time, Nitpicker’s Patch – Various visual details (opens in new tab) corrects minor instances of visual mismatches when it comes to armor sets, bodies of water, and DLC costumes that don’t render correctly in cutscenes.
Speaking of cutscenes, the Immersive real-time cutscenes (opens in new tab) mod makes pre-rendered cutscenes appear in real time. This means better continuity in terms of character models, as well as general bug fixes for specific cutscenes.
The cloud behind the silver lining
With so many edits and additions in the next-gen update, broken mods are a necessary (if unfortunate) casualty.
“Updating a game means we change several files, so the mods that change those exact files will no longer work. If we want to change things in the game or add things, it is unavoidable,” writes technical support manager Karolina Niewęgłowska in a forum message (opens in new tab)explaining that the studios “teams need to focus on making updates the best they can [rather than] minimizing change.”
Niewęgłowska also included one test list of the most popular mods (opens in new tab) currently being used by the community, detailing which ones were broken in the update and which we can expect to still work after the update drops on December 14.
Niewęgłowska also says that once the update goes live, the CDPR modding team will be actively working with community modders to offer advice and help fixing their work. CDPR is already thinking ahead of this; Niewęgłowska writes that “in addition to the game update, we are going to release a new version of the Witcher 3 command-line tools for modders (Mod kit (opens in new tab)), adapted for the updated game with many bug fixes.”
Modders can also use a new version of the modding client TW3 Wolf Kit (opens in new tab)which will be released “shortly after the release of the update (also if possible given their holiday plans).”
Toss a coin to your mudders
The Witcher 3 still ranks high on most lists of the best RPGs ever, and with good reason. The passionate modding community has been making improvements and fixes to the game for almost eight years now, and it’s great to see CD Projekt RED embrace these mods with open arms.
It gives me some hope that when Gwent: The Witcher Card Game passes the reins to the community in 2024 we’ll see a similar amount of enthusiasm to keep the game going despite the developers moving to new pastures.