If you own any version of the base game of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you can now grab its next-gen self as part of a free update. For newcomers a "Complete Edition" of the game is also available (always has been) and will download as the next-gen edition of the game.

Harnessing the power of next-gen hardware, the updated version of CD PROJEKT RED’s trilogy-concluding role-playing epic comes as a free download for owners of the original release of the game, featuring a wide variety of visual and performance improvements.

These include real-time ray tracing for PC, Performance and Ray Tracing modes on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, and Performance and Quality modes on Xbox Series S, support for DLSS on PC and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution across all next-gen platforms, faster loading times, and more. Furthermore, the next-gen version introduces content and quality of life additions: items and quest inspired by the The Witcher Netflix show, new camera options, quick Sign casting, Photo Mode, cross-platform progression, map and UI tweaks, a selection of community-created mods integrated into the experience — among many others. The Complete Edition also comes with all previously released content for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — the award-winning Hearts of Stone & Blood and Wine expansions, as well as 16 pieces of extra content.

Having fired it up on Series X over the past few days and taking the introduction and early parts of White Orchard for a run in Quality Mode, this is definitely a familiar, yet better-looking beast. Ray Tracing in particular brings a softness to the updated 4K visuals, and running at 30fps I didn't really notice too much in the way of the game being slower (in fact I had to turn down camera responsivness). Combat is perhaps more flawed an experience this many years on and with other games nailing it better, but there's a dance and cadence to it that came back with some muscle memory and repetition. On the whole though, I can see myself playing right through this again with a goal to making different decisions this time around because all of the above really does make it feel like a different, or even new game.

With the, *takes deep breath*, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Game of the Year Edition including all post-launch content including the Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine expansions. As a part of GOG's current We Love Games Sale -- which is a good enough reason as any to have a sale -- you can grab The Witcher 3 on PC for $15.79 AUD.

At 80% off the normal price that's the biggest discount given to the Game of the Year Edition to date. Again as it includes both chunky expansions -- now's the time to become Geralt of Rivia if you haven't already.


As seeing as it's a GOG-wide sale there are plenty of other deals too. Here's a few:

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - 75% Off at $8.50 AUD
Dishonored: Complete Collection - 70% Off at $34.49 AUD
XCOM 2 - 92% Off at $7.19 AUD
Control Ultimate Edition - 40% Off at $35.99 AUD
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - 80% Off at $7.99 AUD
Metro Exodus - Gold Edition - 66% Off at $32.29 AUD

Plus many, many, more -- from classic like old school Diablo, Warcraft, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion through to more modern titles.

Head Here For The Full GOG We Love Games Sale

It's a big day for the Nintendo Switch as Cd Projekt RED's has seemingly done the impossible and ported all that is epic with the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for the handheld-hybrid. As a Complete Editions the release includes both expansions: Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, in addition to all sorts of tech wizardry to get the game running at all.

As The Witcher 3 still serves as one of the most visually intensive games across PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Now we can add Nintendo Switch to that list.

Here's the launch trailer.



As players take control of Geralt of Rivia, famed monster hunter and silver-haired mercenary, The Witcher 3 offers a truly epic RPG world with well over 100 hours of excellent story-driven content. The Switch release may not look as high-fidelity as other versions, but simply getting to play The Witcher in handheld form is like witnessing a magic trick.

That highlight the effort gone into porting the huge open-world game to the platform. It's no secret that the Nintendo Switch's hardware is less powerful than current-gen consoles, and these new screenshots of the The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt provided by Nintendo showcase both the scaled back visuals and the impressive job done.

No doubt a low-resolution version of the game, with word that when played in handheld mode the resolutions sits at sub-HD levels - that being less than 720p. Which as per the following shots gives off the feel of a pre-rendered cut-scene from the late 90s or early 2000s.










Announced at E3 2019, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a complete version of the game including all expansions and will be out for Nintendo Switch sometime this year.

CD Projekt RED has been busy. With the likes of Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, GWENT: The Witcher Card Game and the much-hyped and E3 show-stealer, Cyberpunk 2077 (thanks to some Keanu magic), news that Nintendo Switch fans would also be playing in the world of the critically acclaimed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been met more than favourably.

It's also not really all that surprising, but now one of the highest rated games of all time can find an audience it might never have broken through to, and they get to play it on the go.

Winner of over 800 awards, including 250 Game of the Year awards, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an RPG set in a fantastic open world full of adventure, danger, and mystery. As professional monster slayer Geralt of Rivia, gamers must set out to find the Child of Prophecy — a powerful entity that may send the world spiraling toward destruction. Along the way, the witcher will find himself facing not only mighty foes, but also difficult choices, the consequences of which will ripple throughout the game’s epic narrative.

Set to launch this year both digitally and in retail, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition for Nintendo Switch comes with the base game, as well as every piece of additional content ever released. This includes both story expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, as well as all 16 free DLCs. In total, the Complete Edition offers over 150 hours of gameplay, for the first time playable truly on the go. The game is being ported to Nintendo Switch by Saber Interactive in close cooperation with CD PROJEKT RED.

In addition to the game card housing the entirety of the Complete Edition’s content, the box will also come with a set of physical goodies: The Witcher Universe compendium, game map, and stickers.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the first game from the franchise to be released on a Nintendo console, introducing the series to brand new audience, as well as giving anyone who already played Geralt of Rivia’s final adventure a chance to experience it again on the go. The release of the game on Nintendo Switch is also bound to further cement Wild Hunt’s status as the best-selling title of the franchise, which currently makes for more than half of the series’ 40 million copies sold.

Watch the announcement trailer embedded below.

Which of course comes packed with all DLC content including the expansions Heart of Stone and the more recent Blood and Wine. So yeah, if you haven't got around to playing The Witcher 3 yet then there's no more excuses. This is it. The definitive release of an epic RPG that will no doubt live on to become one of the defining moments of this gaming generation. One that justifiably carries the Game of the Year moniker.



The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Game of the Year Edition will be released for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The saddest day will come when I have nothing left to do in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and all of its expansions, but with so much on offer (and me in at more than 500 hours and counting), that might not come any time soon. Still, with the latest expansion -- Blood and Wine -- now out in the wild and standing as the final piece of content for the phenomenal game, a void is already beginning to form in my gaming heart of hearts.

Here's a snippet from our review:

It’s a gorgeous landscape, pulled right from ancient romantic medieval tales. Mimicking the rolling hillsides of France, Toussaint is littered with colourful vineyards and quaint villages. From almost anywhere in the game, the palace of Beauclair rises from these greener pastures, nestled over the countryside as a reminder of the Duchy’s role as both protector and ruler. This picturesque place sells the unseen dread in the game’s story tenfold, because it’s juxtaposed -- visually -- to the grim and dark tale at hand. Velen’s monsters and rude, downtrodden denizens were befitting the war-ravaged landscape, but in picture-perfect Toussaint, the underbelly becomes more nefarious; more dangerous. Because you almost don’t expect where, why or when it will rear its ugly head.

Without giving too much away to those of you who haven’t jumped in yet, Blood and Wine centres around vampires. And not just the lowly vampires we faced in Wild Hunt -- this is highbrow in-depth stuff. Like, arguably the greatest vampire lore ever crafted. It’s deeply layered and complex; rich and ever-rewarding the deeper you choose to go. The presented story is generally enough, but there’s plenty of literature littered throughout the adventure for you to sink your teeth into (pun absolutely intended), and each character’s performance is largely brilliant in delivery. This is some of the greatest storytelling in videogame form.

Click here for our full Blood and Wine review.

If you're at all like me, you've actually avoided playing Gwent in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for fear it will pull you away from the lush and inviting world outside, and leave stuck in the game's myriad taverns and shops playing the addictive in-game CCG.

You could also just be scared of it as it's a thoroughly thought-out meta game within The Witcher 3's already hefty gameplay matrix. Thankfully the folks at CD Projekt RED have seen your fear and here with a new video detailing all you could want to know about the in-game CCG so you can get back in there and collect 'em all.

Watch the Gwent gameplay video embedded below.

As it's the talk of the town and everyone's doing it, Joaby plunged himself into the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and loved myriad aspects of the game, but it wouldn't be a Joab experience without pitfalls glaringly opening up for him, and so he's brought his ranting self to AusGamers to present a case for why you should probably just play The Witcher 3 on easy.

Joaby and I are on odd pages in the same book. It's like one of us is reading upside down, but we both accuse one another of being that lopsided weirdo.

I play games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Batman, The Evil Within and most shooters on the hardest difficulty setting available, but I hate the Souls games -- games he relishes the challenge from, as well as other games like Civilzation, but he also likes playing most of the aforementioned on settings that allow him to just sink into the world. We're the original odd couple!

I don't wholly agree with a lot of what he says here, particularly in combat, but his case is thoroughly thought through and meticulously articulated, so we thought we'd hand him a soapbox and let him run with his shocking suggestion of playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on easy.

Click here for his The Witcher 3 opinion piece -- complete with narrated video.

It will likely be remembered as the biggest game of 2015 and it continues to reap praise and reward everywhere, but CD Projekt RED isn't shying away from their project now that it's out in the wild, and like any proud parent, they're more than happy to show off their creation -- and the work that went into it -- any chance they get.

Today a new video from the team highlights the breadth of languages the game comes completely packaged with in voice-over form. In fact there are 15 localised languages -- seven of which are fully voiced, while the remaining eight are completely subbed.

The video below is an interesting and clever way to showcase this, through the universal language of song, as it's sung, in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will likely give Skyrim a run for its money in the patches department in its lifetime, but with a world so big and rich, there are bound to be fixes and updates needed to keep the wheel turning for players. Plus CDPR love their players, so as long as they're supporting us, we'll support them.

Here are Patch 1.04's notes:

• Rebinding of all keys is now available after switching on the ‘Unlock Bindings’ option in the Options\Key Bindings submenu
  
• Corrects an issue in the dialogue system that might have caused dialogue looping in certain scenes
  
• Fixes an issue with incorrect behaviour of Wild Hunt warriors after they were affected by the Axii Sign
  
• Corrects a bug that caused spontaneous combustion of gas clouds
  
• 1280 x 720 resolution is now properly displayed as a valid resolution option
  
• Fixes boat stuttering in cutscenes
  
• Texture rendering quality for the high and ultra presets has been improved
  
• Further improvements made in NVIDIA Hairworks performance
  
• A few additional gwent cards are now available in the Prologue area
  
• Fixes an issue where users with usernames incorporating non-Latin characters were unable to import saves from The Witcher 2
  
• Includes a series of overall stability and performance improvements
  
• Fixes issues related to alt + tabbing and minimizing the game window
  
• Updates the game icon
  
• Enlarges the loot pop-up window in the UI
  
• Fixes an issue where, in certain circumstances, the comparison window could extend beyond the game borders in the UI
  
• Upgrading items included in gear sets no longer destroys rune sockets on said items
  
• Introduces small tweaks in the UI for gwent
  
• Corrects some missing translations in localised versions

It's a longer list than our humble five things we want to see feature, but out of the gate a decent list of fixes.

Console fixes are coming soon.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is awesome. It’s a defining game for this generation, and for open-world games in general. It’s visuals are a step above its peers and the sheer volume of content within its walls is almost baffling.

Still, it does miss a few things...

...and, given developer CD Projekt RED has pledged some serious post-release support by way of free DLC and two massive expansions, plus myriad patches to make sure the experience is always the best for players, we thought we’d present five elements we think the game is missing that could very easily be added in.

Our list of five includes property purchase, upgradeable boats, a better UI, better hunting and a boost in climbing mechanics.

Click here for the full feature.

Thanks to our distribution friends at Namco Bandai here in Australia, and CD Projekt RED, we have an awesome The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Collector's Edition give away!

We have two Collector's Editions to give away, one on PS4 and the other on Xbox One, as well as three copies of the game on either PS4 or Xbox One for six runners up.

The Collector's Edition features a hard cover art book, an action statue of Geralt doing what he does best, a Gwent deck, a Witcher medallion and more! (Please note: Our runner up prizes are promotional copies of the game, not retail).

As per usual, it's a thinking game where you need to tell us in 50 words or less:

"If You Could Create Your Own Monster for Geralt to Fight, What Would it Be?"

Click here to enter the competition!

Have your doctor's notes ready, or keep your kids home from school (then send them off anyway) -- whatever you can do to sit back and plant yourself into the world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and not be at work as the game officially releases at retail in Australia today.

We've spent some time with it now, producing both a written review and a video review, scoring the game a 10/10 for its scale and scope, its brilliantly dynamic story and variations in main and side quests.

It's also gorgeous.

Of course these things can often go awry on launch days with bad patches, servers breaking or any other number of gremlin-like activity. So consider this post home to your highs, lows and woes.

From or review:

There is no question in my mind that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been worth the wait. It’s sheer scale and absolution in content, alongside its surprisingly strong narrative -- both in the main quest lines, and the peripheral ones around them -- is delivered with a maturity rarely ever seen in games of this scope.

There’s Triple-A gaming, and then there’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Jump into the Comments below. And please, avoid spoilers for others.

We're all used to the final media push for big games, and these are often accompanied by very tasty and well-produced cinematic launch trailers, but few are in the same realms as at least the last few Witcher cinematics, topped off today with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's "A Night to Remember" video.

Having played enough of the game to know exactly what's going on here (dolls for days), this is both an on-point 1% teaser of what's to come and just an incredible capture of the Witcher universe as a whole.

It's a bit NSFW, but probably worth the reprimand if you have to choose your work screen over a small tablet or phone :)

Watch it embedded below and read our written review, or watch our video review for the full AusGamers verdict.

You can already read our complete written review of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt right here, but for visual aid purposes, we went ahead and captured a host of spoiler-free footage and put it together for a full video review.



The complete video comes in at just over 12-minutes, and should be absolutely watched at 1080p so you can see just how good the pre day-one patch review version of the game was looking on PS4. And also because I imagine at 1080p, my voice sounds even sexier.

Watch the full video review embedded below.

There is no denying The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has made itself known. Delays, gorgeous visuals, the promise of a truly open-world married to a mature gaming experience -- all of it a tantalising premise, but has it delivered?

The short answer is yes. In fact, it's a resounding yes. This is a game you will be playing for a long time, and has helped shape the foundation of dynamic open-world videgames to come.

Here's an excerpt from our spoiler-free review:

So this world -- arguably the most intricate and detailed ever created in the history of videogames, is also a joy to move through. In fact I spent more time on foot than using any other means to get around when I wasn’t faced with bodies of water. On PS4, running natively at 1080p and without the day-one patch it rarely ever dipped in performance and just always impressed. Beyond just looking good though, there’s a real sense of animation and nature to it all, despite the game’s setting being one of a land torn by war with death all around. Alleged no-goodnicks hang from trees and posts with hessian bags over their heads; identities shielded from the rest of the land’s denizens to prove that anyone can become a decorative deterrent where the forced law of conflict is concerned.

We'll have a full video review with our own captured gameplay for you tomorrow, but for now, click here for our complete The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt review.

If you're like me, there's a good chance you're just skipping these posts now, so as not to spoil the game for yourself or, like me, you can't get enough of it in anticipation of its May 19 release date this month.

Man, there's so much I wish I was allowed to say, but... sigh. Anyway, below is just another example of how this anticipated open-world action-RPG epic is tracking as we close in on its launch later this month and, well I should probably just let the video do all the talking.

Watch it embedded below.

We're closing in on the release of one of the most anticipated open-world games ever, and today CD Projekt RED is giving you more monstrous reasons to want to put your life on hold with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Garnering over 200 prestigious awards before launch, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is CD PROJEKT RED’s most ambitious endeavour up to date. Set within a truly open world, the game puts you in the role of a wandering bounty hunter and monster slayer, Geralt of Rivia. In The Witcher, you take on the greatest contract of your life -- tracking down the Child of Prophecy, a living weapon that can alter the shape of the world.

May 19 worldwide for PC, PS4 and Xbox One is when you'll need to plan your first sick day (of many), and to see why, watch the "Monsters" video embedded below.

Charles Dance is one of television and cinema's most celebrated actors. He brings a gravitas to every role he plays, including that of Game of Thrones' Tywin Lannister, which is why it was such a big deal for CD Projekt RED when they secured him for his first ever videogame performance.

Celebrating this fact, the team has shared a video of the actor (who often plays the villain) in the studio which, of course, features some unseen vision from the closing-in-fast The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Other great roles you might remember Dance from include as Benedict from The Last Action Hero, Sardo Numspa from The Golden Child, Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown and Dr Clemens in Alien 3.

Watch the full video embedded below. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt arrives on PC, PS4 and Xbox One May 19.