Fans of The Witcher 3 will never say no to a new, improved version of it, especially one that doesn’t reset save data or trophy and achievement progress. But the recently announced remaster is way more than just another visual touch-up. Everything from horseback riding to the photo mode is getting tweaked. Dozens of new features are being added. To get an idea of the scope, CD Projekt Red suggests thinking of it as The Witcher 3 2.0.
“When you look at The Witcher 3 and the opinions of players and press, gameplay is what was criticized most—it’s the aspect that is most outdated,” Paweł Sasko told Kotaku at Gamescom 2026. “That’s the main thing we wanted to fix.”
He continued:
When you look at The Witcher 3 and the opinions of players and press, gameplay is what was criticized most—it’s the aspect that is most outdated. That’s the main thing we wanted to fix. Having worked on update 2.0 for Cyberpunk, when we think about this remaster, it’s almost like a 2.0 overhaul [for The Witcher 3]. We applied the same design principles to RedEngine 3 that we learned from RedEngine 4 on Cyberpunk. We analyzed what annoyed people most—like exploration, Geralt’s movement controls, and the lack of finisher [attacks]. That has all been addressed, and it makes the biggest difference in how the game feels to play.
What made Cyberpunk 2077‘s Phantom Liberty Expansion feel like a brand-new version of the game wasn’t just performance improvements and quality-of-life tweaks, it was the overhauling of core systems that streamlined clunky gameplay and made combat a lot more engaging. The last major upgrade The Witcher 3 received was mainly a visual boost to take advantage of more powerful consoles. Everything coming in the remaster, meanwhile, is aimed at making more fundamental improvements to the overall experience, including new features coming with the Songs of the Past expansion next year.
“In the base game, different builds shared too many passive skills,” Sasko pointed out. “Now, we’ve added many more active abilities rather than just passives, making the combat much more interactive. You will feel your choices immediately in combat with new moves and synergies. We are also adding new tools, like the iron chain. The chain was mentioned multiple times in the books and was featured in famous scenes like the Witcher 1 CGI intro, so I’m glad we can finally bring that dynamic element into the combat.”
As with Cyberpunk 2077’s 2.0 overhaul, most of the underlying enhancements and changes coming to The Witcher 3 will be part of the free remastered version upgrade in October. Normally, it would be a pain to have to re-learn combat mechanics and skill trees from scratch. With The Witcher 3, I’m looking forward to it.
