The Witcher 3 Complete Edition was broadly a success when it landed on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S late last year. The ray-traced ambient occlusion and RT global illumination were both excellent, while the 60fps performance option was another breakthrough, especially for PlayStation users, who’d yet to experience that feature. However, frame-rate and stability were contentious and crashes were possible, while the PC version had its own range of issues.
Coming to the rescue is patch 4.01: an update that promises specific visual and performance tweaks. Based on patch notes, it boils down to optimisations to the RTGI and improved screen-space reflections on consoles, while the PC version included a new performance option for the GPU-heavy RTGI. That’s the promise then, but what has CD Projekt RED actually delivered? Well, perhaps the most crucial aspect of the patch is that the various crashes we experienced with launch code are now gone, indicating a welcome improvement that should hopefully improve the gameplay experience across the board.
Screen-space reflections – only accessible in the RT modes on the consoles, confusingly enough – are also improved. Side-by-side with the launch code, you’re looking at much higher resolution reflections. They’re more accurate, sharper and cleaner. The visual make-up is otherwise unchanged from the launch build. In terms of native resolutions, PS5 and Series X continue to target 1440p in the ray tracing mode – and target 4K in their performance modes, though this SSR technique isn’t active there. Shadow quality, textures, and draw distance settings are the exact same on patch 4.01, on both PS5 and Series X. So ultimately the SSR upgrade is the most substantial update. However, because the upgrade is only for RT mode, that means that Xbox Series S does not benefit, as it has no RT mode.
