Blood and Wine Will be a "Graphics Upgrade" From The Witcher 3 Base Game

Lizzy Finnegan

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Blood and Wine Will be a "Graphics Upgrade" From The Witcher 3 Base Game

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"Blood and Wine we literally started from scratch."

CD Projekt Red Eurogamer [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/167398-The-Witcher-3-Blood-and-Wine-Expansion-Gets-May-31-Release-Date#&gid=gallery_6226&pid=1] that there will be no new content released for The Witcher 3 after Blood and Wine releases, saying "this is the last thing we deliver and we focus on Cyberpunk."

"The first thing is that we try to fix as many bugs as we can for the second expansion and the main game," Tomaszkiewicz said, "and we will release a patch before we release the expansion and maybe one later."

Senior environment artist Len de Gracia told Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-05-09-witcher-3-blood-and-wine-is-a-graphics-upgrade-from-the-base-game] that the expansion is "a graphics upgrade from the base game."

"Generally it is a graphics upgrade from the base game. We have employed methods that we did not implement in the base game. You can literally bring your camera up to a wall now and the textures would be crisp - at least in most cases" he said.

"We just wanted to show that we can actually push it to the limit this time."

de Gracia said that the team "got really organized," saying "It's like a fresh development. Blood and Wine we literally started from scratch. The mistakes we went through, in terms of perhaps optimisation before, we have covered them."

Tomaszkiewicz said that the team is "pointing it at 30fps" for consoles, with de Gracia adding "We are still aiming for that but for the most part we have already hit it. In certain places we still need to run through stuff and try to optimize it the best we can, but in comparison to Witcher 3, production has been way smoother."

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Damir Halilovic

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Sep 6, 2010
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Given that they lied through their teeth about the graphics downgrade in the base game, I'll believe it when I see it.
 

Soviet Heavy

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I take it that framerate mention was regarding consoles. And I'm still not seeing the downgrade from the E3 visuals. If anything, Geralt's model looks more detailed, and they just removed the dumb muddy grey filter so the game actually looked colorful.
 

infohippie

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Xsjadoblayde said:
Is that a freakin unicorn with a cute little horn decoration there?? Why has nobody pointed (hehe!) this out?!
Because gamers would generally rather complain than notice cute stuff?
 

Magmarock

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I just started a new game in the witcher. Should I keep going out wait till this comes out and start again.
 
Sep 13, 2009
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Soviet Heavy said:
I take it that framerate mention was regarding consoles. And I'm still not seeing the downgrade from the E3 visuals. If anything, Geralt's model looks more detailed, and they just removed the dumb muddy grey filter so the game actually looked colorful.
I really don't get the complaints. The Witcher 3 is the most graphically impressive game I've ever played. Certainly on console, I can't think of a more technically impressive game I've seen
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

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Sep 8, 2011
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The Almighty Aardvark said:
Soviet Heavy said:
I take it that framerate mention was regarding consoles. And I'm still not seeing the downgrade from the E3 visuals. If anything, Geralt's model looks more detailed, and they just removed the dumb muddy grey filter so the game actually looked colorful.
I really don't get the complaints. The Witcher 3 is the most graphically impressive game I've ever played. Certainly on console, I can't think of a more technically impressive game I've seen
It is impressive. Both on consoles and PC. But it was sort of "downgraded" compared to first footage from 2013, not from 2014. In earlier builds the game wasn't as open world as it is in the final build. For example Velen was a separate region from Novigrad, and maybe the swamp area was separate as well. That allowed CDPR to play around with a different system for rendering and lighting etc. Instead of dynamic lighting they used global illumination, grass and foliage had a translucency layer and they used all kinds of different top of the line shaders, post-processing effects and physics for clothing and environment. See for yourself:

But it was a work in progress and when they decided to make it more open the consoles couldn't take it. And far fewer PC's would be able to handle something graphically intense like that as well. In order for them to make any profit they couldn't release it as PC exclusive and they couldn't fuck over console gamers by making a lesser product for them. And creating two different versions of the game would have fucked with their development. Overall I think they've made the right decision. It's still one of the most gorgeous games ever made.

I've seen a 20 minute preview of Blood and Wine. It is definitely graphically superior to the core game, but not to some kind of extreme extent that would make the rest of the game seem ugly by comparison. Grass, foliage, draw distance, some textures and lighting have been boosted:

I don't think that this was captured on PC though. No HBAO+ in sight.
 

LostCrusader

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Feb 3, 2011
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Glad there is a date set for it now, I've been holding off getting the first dlc until they are both out.