The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt News

There’s a surprising link between Baldur’s Gate 3 and The Witcher 3 – and fans are loving it

None other than Geralt of Rivia himself, Doug Cockle, is in Baldur's Gate 3, and fans are pretty happy to hear from the ole Witcher once again.

Prior to the PC launch of the highly successful RPG, developer Larian Studios shared a community post outlining some of the game's extended cast. We already knew that there would be some big names in there like Resident Evil Village's Maggie Robertson, Critical Role's Matthew Mercer, and Mr. "Get Me Pictures of Spider-Man" himself J.K. Simmons. But the post also revealed some of the other cast members you'll be able to meet in the game, which pretty casually mentioned that The Witcher series' own Geralt, i.e. Cockle, would be voicing a character in the game.

I won't say who Cockle is voicing so that you can save the surprise for yourself, but needless to say, fans were pretty happy at the announcement he would be featured in Baldur's Gate 3. Over on the game's subreddit, multiple fans immediately started quoting some of the frequently repeated lines from the game with classics like, "What now, you piece of filth," "Looks like rain," and who could forget, "Wind's howling."

The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red is laying off 100 staff members. With multiple RPG game projects in the works for both of these videogame series and even more on the way, the studio says that the layoffs of around 9% of the workforce will take effect by March 2024, with the Cyberpunk 2077 studio saying it wants both the "best people" and the "right teams." It's unclear if, or how, this will impact the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty release date.

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Xbox Free Play Days: Tee off, slay monsters, and more this weekend

Microsoft has announced this week's batch of free-to-play games for the weekend, and one happens to star a certain monster slayer and Ladies' Man.

That's right, The Witcher 3 is free to play this weekend on Xbox, which should give you plenty of time to decide whether the dark fantasy world of The Wild Hunt is for you.

It's the Complete Edition which contains the two expansions Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. This version also features several improvements that take advantage of Xbox Series X/S, including community-made mods, performance, and quality modes, a variety of gameplay tweaks, and ray tracing elements on Xbox Series X.

March 13, 2023, was a very good day for PC Gamer associate editor Ted Litchfield. Because on that day, CD Projekt finally fixed the grass shadows in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, meaning he could finally enjoy the game the way it was meant to be. At the time, he no doubt believed that peak videogame grass quality had been achieved—and yet somehow, CD Projekt has made it even better...
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Patch 4.04 — list of changes

Patch 4.04 or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is live and brings various fixes to the game!

Check out what changed in the list below.

[h2]PC-SPECIFIC[/h2]

Frames allowed by the "Maximum Frames Per Second" setting will now be counted properly when DLSS Frame Generation is enabled.
Fixed some instances where characters' hair could look too bright when Ray Tracing was enabled.
Bald Mountain - Fixed a crash that occurred when Ray Tracing was enabled and all the other Ray Tracing options were off.
The Beast of White Orchard - Fixed an issue where loading a certain checkpoint save could cause the game to freeze if Ray Tracing was enabled.
Fixed an issue where the game would start without REDlauncher and open a browser tab request for permission to "Use Cyberpunk 2077 with your Epic Games Account".
Fixed an issue where input from a gamepad could still work while having the game in a suspended state.
Fixed an issue where a second cursor with high sensitivity would appear in the Main Menu when "Hardware Cursor" was set to "Off".

[h2]VISUAL[/h2]

Fixed an issue where fog could look as if it were 2D in some places.
Fixed an issue where the sky's reflection on the water with Ray Tracing enabled was partially missing at specific locations in White Orchard, Velen and Toussaint.
Grass collision now works properly.
Added an HDR calibration option.
Fixed an issue where the mountains in Kaer Morhen could disappear when changing the camera angle while Geralt is under water.
Get Junior - Removed an unnecessary body of water from Oxenfurt sewers.
Fixed an issue where the loading screen would stutter while having Ray Tracing enabled.

[h2]QUESTS & GAMEPLAY[/h2]

Added an option to switch potions and apply oils from the radial menu.
Fixed an issue where Geralt's health rapidly depleted when diving.
The Final Trial - Fixed an issue where leaving the area and coming back could cause Lambert to stand in the water instead of sitting in the boat, blocking progress.

[h2]MISCELLANEOUS[/h2]

Addressed some issues with loading saves when using the Cross Progression feature on multiple machines with the same GOG account.

Please note: these are only the most notable changes and additions to the game. The patch contains other fixes that didn't make it into this list.