The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt News

Humble Winter Sale brings deals from CD Projekt, Sega, Rockstar, Square Enix, and more

If you're eager for some cheap games, but can't bring yourself to wait for the Steam Lunar New Year sale, the folks at Humble have just the thing. The Humble Winter Sale is underway with loads of deals from some of the biggest publishers in the business, including Sega, Square Enix, Rockstar, 2K, CD Projekt, Deep Silver, THQ Nordic, and plenty more.

You can head to the Humble Store to check out the deals for yourself, but here are some highlights. You'll find 35% off of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. You can grab Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines for 50% if you aim to catch up ahead of the sequel. The Witcher 3 GOTY Edition is 70% off, perfect for reminding you of CD Projekt at its best.

There are plenty of notable indie games on offer, too. You can get Hollow Knight for 50% off, or dig into the sandbox with RimWorld or Stardew Valley, both of which are 10% off. If you need some lockdown funtime, check out Jackbox Party Pack 7 at 20% off - I've been playing it using Discord streaming to keep up with pals over the past few months, and it's been grand.

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This gnarly Witcher 3 mod turns Geralt into a snowboarder (yes, really)

Hailed for its immersive open world, enticing narrative breadth, and refined combat system that placed it among the best RPG games, one criticism of the Witcher 3 has cropped up time and again. Where's the snowboarding at? In a world as diverse as that of The Continent, you can't seriously expect one of the planet's most-loved extreme sport to not get a look in. A new mod finally corrects this grave cultural and artistic oversight.

Geralt VGX Snowboarder, created by modder Feregorn, takes the Witcher's thrill-seeking to new heights, adding a snowboard for Geralt to shred down the mountainside. More magic than physics-abiding apparatus, the snowboard allows players to zoom down any incline while building up some pretty radical speeds. And you can do so in the style of a medieval alpinist wearing pretty nifty snow goggles.

The snowboard isn't just a tool for transport. Equip the board as a weapon and it will replace Geralt's swords, useful for dealing with any pesky bandits that might insult your chic aesthetic. Just ignore the piercing sounds and stabbing animations - it must be a very sharp board.

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ReShade's latest update speeds up load times for graphical mods

There's a new version of ReShade out now, and it has a new feature designed to cut loading times significantly. ReShade 4.9.0 adds a new effects cache, which means effects you've compiled for games will be stored on your PC rather than recompiled every time you load your games.

We've highlighted a bunch of ReShade-based graphics mods here - some of the best Witcher 3 mods use ReShade, and the tool has been used to add ray-tracing style effects to games like Resident Evil 3 and Doom (2016). It's a powerful tool, and you don't need to limit yourself to predefined presets - ReShade gives you a lot of extremely granular control over a whole extra layer of post-processing in countless games.

The trouble is, once you've added a bunch of effects, load times can get pretty long - previous versions of ReShade needed to recompile each set of effects each time you loaded a game - or even when you alt-tabbed away and then back in. Fortunately, version 4.9.0 saves your effects, and after the first time you compile them, you won't see longer load times - they'll be ready to go.

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This fabulously festive Witcher 3 mod gives geese santa hats

There are hosts of incredible Witcher 3 mods out there, with tons of options to make the open-world game's, well, open world look even more spectacular, increase Geralt's carry weight for better loot scooping, and even turn the Witcher himself into Overwatch's Genji. Then there are those that are just really good fun, and - in this case - fabulously festive. A new Witcher 3 mod lets the Continent's waterfowl get into the seasonal spirit by giving them their own Christmassy caps.

"GEESE HAVE SANTA HATS," proclaims modder Valennia on the aptly named 'Christmas Geese' mod page. Created by Vale and Feregorn, the mod does exactly this; it plops a weeny little red and white santa hat atop the heads of the RPG game's roaming waterfowl. Sure, it sounds simple, and it is - but get a look at the modder's images, and you'll quickly realise you can't possibly hope to celebrate the holiday season in-game without these little festively decked out fowl running around.

According to the modder, the creation was inspired by a previous mod that gave The Witcher 3's chickens little tin foil helmets, and now, all geese get santa hats.

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Witcher star Henry Cavill sustains minor injury on set during a 'swinging axes' scene

Our large, sweet PC building boy Henry Cavill has been forced to take some time off from filming Netflix's The Witcher Season 2 due to an injury he sustained on set. Evidently, the actor - who plays the leading role of Geralt - hurt his leg while shooting a scene that involved 'swinging axes.'

As reported by The Sun, Cavill had been about 20 feet above the ground and secured in a safety harness while filming an "assault course" when he hurt his leg. The Sun's source says Cavill "suddenly pulled up and was clearly in a lot of pain," but the source of the injury wasn't immediately clear.

While Cavill wasn't hospitalised, the source tells The Sun that the injury was severe enough to throw off The Witcher's shooting schedule by a few days, since Cavill can't walk properly at the moment - much less wear a set of heavy armour whilst fighting off Nilfgaardian soldiers or rotfiends. The Sun's report didn't indicate how long Cavill would be out of commission, but Deadline reports that filming will continue while he recovers.

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