news The Witcher 3 next-gen review: Customize one of the greatest RPGs ever

The “next-gen” upgrade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is almost here, and I've spent a few days playing through the first few hours of the game (very leisurely) to see what it's

like. I've got good news: It is, in fact, a complete Witcher 3 experience with some light quality-of-life improvements and a substantial graphical upgrade. It also still serves as

a high-water mark in RPG design, to the extent that it still makes other games look dimmer by comparison. The update, which I played on PlayStation 5, remains on three major

pillars: visual upgrades, several fan mods that have been integrated into the game proper, and some new DLC that integrates aesthetics from Netflix's The Witcher series into the

game. The visual updates offer a performance mode that locks the game at 60 frames per second. They're good frames, and although I know that PC players have been living in this

world for a while, the experience of kicking back on the couch and watching Geralt of Rivia pirouette while cutting Drowners in half can't be beat. It's great outside of action,

too. Watching Geralt's facial expressions at 60 fps on a big 4K television is mesmerizing. His characteristic “hrmms” and “uh-huhs,” with their attending slight changes of

expression, have always been at the core of his character; there is a cleanness to the game's lines and movements in performance mode that draws those things out, and makes them

all the more stylized, with well-defined edges and a slightly softer palette in between. Picture: CD Projekt Red It also doesn't hurt that the performance mode never made the fans

in my PS5 kick in. By contrast, anytime that Geralt even thought about speaking to townsfolk, or galloping Roach through a monster-infested swamp, on my last-gen playthroughs, it

sounded like my PS4 was going to launch into orbit. The Witcher 3 still manages to make the vast majority of other open-world RPGs (most other games, really) seem lacking by

comparison I wasn't nearly as impressed with the update's 30 fps ray tracing mode, however. I'm not sure if it was an interaction with my TV or an actual frame rate issue, but

turning the fidelity-focused mode on seemed to introduce an actual stutter. Even weirder, in an early cutscene with the sorceress Yennefer, it seemed to entirely break the audio

sync with the character models (pausing the cutscene and switching back to Performance immediately fixed it). I did not leave it on very much, other than to simply see how things

looked with the major lighting changes. As I continue my replay of the game on this newer console, I am going to keep it on performance mode, if only because that allows the game