The Witcher 3's next-gen update brings Netflix skins and integrated mods next month

(Image credit: CD Projekt RED)

Okay, sign me up for another 200 hours of The Witcher 3 I suppose, because CD Projekt RED has announced that the game's long-awaited next-gen update will finally release on December 14, exactly a month from now.

The post accompanying the release date's announcement promises a bevy of "visual, performance and technical enhancements" but doesn't go into great detail about what that actually means. It'll include ray-tracing though, and also promises to integrate "a variety of mods" into the base Witcher 3 experience. Again, CD Projekt doesn't actually say which mods, so I'm forced to assume the announcement is referring to Geralt VGX Snowboarder.

That's not all, though, we're also getting "a set of DLCs inspired by Netflix’s The Witcher series" featuring new weapons and armour and "alternative looks" for select characters. To me, that sounds like you'll be able to toggle an option to make the game's characters look more like their Netflix counterparts. So, what's it gonna be, CD Projekt? Cavill Geralt or Hemsworth Geralt? Choose wisely, people have strong opinions about this.

The next-gen update for The Witcher 3 has had a long and winding road since it was originally announced in 2020. It's been delayed so many times that CD Projekt had to come out last April and insist that it wasn't actually in "development hell" after being delayed "until further notice," a statement that probably only further convinced people it was in development hell after being delayed until further notice.

But, joy of joys, it turns out that the studio was telling the truth, and we'll finally feast our eyes on an exhaustingly high-resolution bathtub Geralt in December this year. It'll be free to us PC players that already own the game, and should just download like any other patch when it comes out.

If you're one of the few people who hasn't yet picked up Witcher 3 for a pittance during a Steam sale, there will also be a new "Complete Edition" of the game, bundling up all the content released thus far with the next-gen update's shiny additions.

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.