The Witcher 3 fans furious after next-gen update kills PC performance

Some Witcher 3 players are not too happy after the next-gen patch seemingly botched the game’s performance and removed existing content.

Fans of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt waited a long time for the next-gen patch before it finally dropped in December 2022. While the third chapter in Geralt’s adventure is universally adored, the prospect of playing it optimized for next-gen systems was a tantalizing prospect, and an excellent excuse to dive back into the game.

However, some fans are reporting that since installing the patch, the game’s performance has taken a nosedive. There are also reports of some classic content that, rather than being optimized, has simply been cut from the new version.

Even those with high-spec PCs are reporting bugs and performance slowdowns, with one Reddit user saying: “Indeed. A damned shame. This game deserves better…and frankly, after CP2077 and a 2-year wait for this, we did too?”

After an entire Reddit thread reported that their game had been crashing since installing the update, one user said: “This is the exact same behavior I am seeing, got to White Orchard then it started crashing, when I go to load the save it crashes when fully loaded.” They were also not the only player who experienced this bug.

Others experienced issues when speaking to NPCs or when heading into cutscenes: “As soon as any NPC gets in screen FPS drops massively for me.”

Pre-rendered cutscenes missing

However, one of the biggest complaints has been leveled against missing content. For example, a romance scene between Geralt and Yenifer has seemingly vanished from the game.

The scene was one of many pre-rendered cutscenes in The Witcher 3 that fans were hoping would be remastered and optimized for their newer, more powerful systems. This has led to some fans speculating that other pre-rendered cutscenes may also now be missing from the game. Although, this remains to be seen.

Talking about the issue, one Reddit user said: “If cutscenes are missing, I’m not touching this game with a ten-foot pole until they fix their s**t. Some free update… game worked fine before.”

Another complained: “It’s not that they’re missing, it’s that they’ve been removed. The special story scenes were prerendered, so I guess CDPR couldn’t be bothered to render the ones the mod doesn’t fix in real-time, but were too embarrassed to include prerendered cutscenes in a 2022 release, so axed them.”

Some players were less impacted and were more positive about the update, even those who experienced some of the performance problems: “Also getting some weird graphical bugs even on ultra+. Shadows flickering and object popping. Kinda expected this stuff to be ironed out in the update unless it’s an engine issue that they couldn’t fix. So far everything else looks incredible. Very impressed”

So far it’s only PC players reporting the issues with The Witcher 3 next-gen update. Those playing on Xbox Series X|S and PS5 appear to be unaffected. CD Projekt Red is yet to respond to the community’s criticism. We’ll continue to monitor the situation and report any potential fixes to the problems.