The Witcher 3 Gets A Stability and Performance Update On Current-Gen

CD Pro­jekt Red has released a new update for The Witch­er 3: Wild Hunt for all plat­forms. Update 4.02 address­es sta­bil­i­ty and per­for­mance issues across the board for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Per­for­mance Mode itself has been improved across all cur­rent gen­er­a­tional plat­form, along with sev­er­al fix­es to bugged quests.

The PS5 specif­i­cal­ly had an issue fixed that was caus­ing char­ac­ters to appear blur­ry dur­ing cutscenes. Patch 4.02 also resolves crash­ing due to ray trac­ing on the Xbox Series X, while also address­ing a crash­ing prob­lem woven in with the “What­so­ev­er a Man Soweth…” quest.

This patch also adds some improve­ments to the last-gen ver­sions, includ­ing a fix for Xbox One quick­save pro­gres­sion trans­fers. You can check out the full list of changes includ­ed in this update below, as shared by CD Pro­jekt Red.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Patch 4.02

PC-SPECIFIC

• Improved CPU core uti­liza­tion in the DX 12 version.
• Restored hori­zon-based ambi­ent occlu­sion. Play­ers who had pre­vi­ous­ly turned Ambi­ent Occlu­sion off will need to do so again. You can find it in Options → Video → Graphics.
• Fixed an issue where the “My Rewards” sec­tion was not local­ized in REDlauncher.
• Fixed an issue with a flick­er­ing land­scape in Tou­s­saint that occurred when NVIDIA Hair­Works was disabled.
• Fixed an issue relat­ed to par­ti­cle opti­miza­tion which could result in tem­po­rary stuttering.

CONSOLE-SPECIFIC

• Improved Per­for­mance Mode on next-gen consoles.
• Fixed an issue where char­ac­ters could become slight­ly blur­ry dur­ing dia­logues and cutscenes on PlaySta­tion 5.
• Fixed an issue relat­ed to mem­o­ry usage in Ray Trac­ing Mode which could result in crash­es on Xbox Series X.
• What­so­ev­er a Man Soweth… — The game will no longer crash if Ger­alt runs away from Shani after start­ing the con­ver­sa­tion on next-gen consoles.
• Fixed an issue where quick­saves could­n’t be loaded when using cross pro­gres­sion on Xbox One.
• Added two miss­ing “Top notch swords!” on pre­vi­ous-gen consoles.
• Fixed an issue with over­writ­ing man­u­al saves where in some cir­cum­stances the old­est game­save was delet­ed on PlaySta­tion 5.
• Addressed per­for­mance issues in Beau­clair and Novi­grad that occurred after load­ing a gamesave.

VISUAL — PC and Next-Gen Exclusive

• Improved immer­sion of water appear­ance by adding refrac­tion to SSR and ray-traced reflections.
• Fixed a visu­al issue with brick tex­tures where black arti­facts cov­ered stone arches.
• Added a Motion Blur slid­er. It can be found in Options → Video → Graphics.

QUESTS & GAMEPLAY — Avail­able on all platforms

• Bat­tle Prepa­ra­tions — Fixed the lack of a dia­logue option that would progress the quest dur­ing the objec­tive “Let Aval­lac’h know every­thing’s ready.”
• Rea­son of State - Fixed an issue where the door to the ware­house could become per­ma­nent­ly locked if the play­er knocked, entered and then imme­di­ate­ly left the building.
• Scav­enger Hunt: Cat School Gear Upgrade Dia­grams Part 1 — Fixed an issue where the quest could stay active even after the dia­grams were looted.
• Fixed an issue where try­ing to start a New Game+ on an incom­pat­i­ble save would block the play­er from start­ing the expan­sions in stand­alone mode until the game was restarted.

LOCALIZATION — Avail­able on all platforms

• Fixed an issue with the Kore­an local­iza­tion of Cir­i’s and Ger­alt’s Gwent card descriptions.
• Fixed punc­tu­a­tion issues in Ara­bic localization.
• Updat­ed Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese font.