The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt News

Henry Cavill offers first look of The Witcher Season 2's Geralt, and a potential plot clue

Fans of pictures of Henry Cavill wearing things, rejoice! The Witcher lead actor recently took some time out from his daily schedule of punching tanks to death with his bare fists and using the wreckage to build gaming PCs for orphans to take to Instagram and offer fans a look at Geralt's outfit for season 2 of the Netflix original series.

The image shows a suitably stoic-looking White Wolf bedecked in studded leather armour. The gear might be as darkly coloured as it looks, or it may just seem dull in comparison to the beams of light emanating from Cavill's magnificent chin. But wait! There's also a bit of a clue to the plot direction Season 2 might be taking.

Cavill also shared a quote alongside the picture, which the actor attributed to "the writings of [Witcher novelist] Andrzej Sapkowski." The excerpt reads as follows: "'It may turn out,' said the white-haired man a moment later, 'that their comrades or cronies may ask what befell these evil men. Tell them the Wolf bit them. The White Wolf. And add that they should keep glancing over their shoulders. One day they'll look back and see the Wolf.'"

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Zelda meets The Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed: Black Flag in Ocean's Heart

A Zelda-style pixel art action-RPG with monster hunting contracts, conspiratorial pirates, crafting, treasure hunting, and shipfaring? Sign us all the way up. Ocean's Heart is an upcoming PC game from publisher Nordcurrent and developer Max Mraz. So far, it's ticking all the boxes, plus a few more boxes we never knew existed, possibly because those darn sneaky pirates went and buried them. Yarrr.

Chances are, you might already be familiar with developer Max Mraz's previous work. They're the mind behind the gorgeous pixel art and charming Zelda-fication of Bloodborne in Yarntown. Some of that soulsborne DNA may well have carried over, too. One of the creatures in the preview screens is part Witcher 3's leshen, part Bloodborne's cleric beast. Encountering outlandish and inventive creature designs is always a huge joy in pixel art games, and Ocean's Heart looks like it delivers with aplomb.

Protagonist Tilia's adventure will involve travelling the wilderness, taking on monster fighting contracts, discovering powerful artefacts, and, perhaps most intriguingly, unravelling pirate conspiracies. Pirates aren't generally known for their ability to play intricate games of 4D chess, as evidenced by their habit of marking all their secrets with a giant X, so this sounds captivating.

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The Witcher 3 HD rework mod is a "new visual experience"

There's many great The Witcher 3 mods, but one of the most essential is The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project, a fan-upscale of the RPG game that's gradually overhauled the entire Continent. After nearly five years, the large-scale mod is complete, creating a "new visual experience" for Geralt's exploits.

Nothing specific is listed by creator Halk Hogan in the improvements for the latest version, 12.0, rather, it looks like a fine-tuning and last lick of paint on everything that's been done so far. A release preview, which you can watch below, shows some of the new texture and environment work, and it's night and day in some instances. Overgrown foliage has a little more life to it, old buildings look a bit more worn down and lived-in, leather and armour truer to the real-life equivalents.

Most of this is minor details, adjusting the lighting and improving the shading, but when you make enough of those tweaks, they add up. Even just from these stills, the action-adventure game has an added vibrancy to it. The Witcher 3 isn't exactly old, it only turned five this year, but the look and feel of a game can start to feel past it quickly, and this rework brings it right up to date.

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This new Witcher 3 mod makes relic weapons worth hunting down

The Witcher 3, for everything it does right, has always been a little lacking when it comes to the loot department. "Here is my family's ancestral sword. Take it Geralt, for you have saved us all," someone would say. A few levels later, it's useless and you're forced to sell it for booze money. No more, says modder Zowbaid. "The Essential Weapon Rework Mod" makes special weapons actually feel special.

"Now, when you find a Relic out in the world, you'll actually feel that level of excitement you're meant to feel discovering a high-tier piece of gear in an RPG," says Zowbaid. Each Relic feels "unique and different" the modder goes on to explain. Some have boosted stats, whereas others are tailored towards specific flavours of Geralt build. It's not all serious, though, as Zowbaid explains some of them are "just all-out crazy and fun combinations". Sounds like a good time. Much like this comically large spoon.

Relic weapons, in case you needed a refresher, are those shiny brown-coloured doodads with unique names. The mod also makes changes to the Witcher school weapons, and scales with NG+.

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This Witcher 3 retexture mod has been updated to look even better, again

Given how gorgeous The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is out of the box, it's amazing to see how much effort modders have devoted to making it look even better. Modder Halk Hogan PL has been working on his HD textures mod since 2015, and the latest version gives the Witcher 3's environmental textures and models a remarkable amount of extra pop and depth, while staying faithful to the original design.

Hogan has gone back through and added additional fidelity to just about all 3D rocks and stones in the game, and done an "Ultra HD" pass on power stones, palisades, bricks, thatched roofs and stone walls, metal cages, torches, cobblestones, and more.

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In Toussaint, the area featured in the Blood & Wine DLC, he's also improved the look of water in sewers, puddles, and brooks.

It's an impressive achievement: the Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project really does make a big difference in the Witcher 3's environments. Stones genuinely look, well, stonier. You can see other improvements in the before-and-after comparison video (below), such as increased detail on pine boughs, and metal textures looking less like battered chrome and more like real iron tools.

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