The Witcher 3 Remastered Launches as a Free Upgrade

CD PROJEKT RED released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered on September 29, 2026. The upgrade is free for existing owners on GOG, Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Nintendo Switch owners can claim the native Switch 2 version within the same platform ecosystem.

The release also brings The Witcher 3 to Battle.net and the Microsoft Store as an Xbox Play Anywhere title. On supported platforms, Remastered replaces the Complete Edition and includes Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine.

What changed

Remastered is more than a texture pack. CD PROJEKT RED lists revised environment, character and monster assets, reworked foliage and lighting, a new shading model, native multithreaded DirectX 12 rendering, updated reflections and shadows, and revised terrain and material rendering.

Gameplay changes include a redesigned skill tree, revised combat and movement animations, new finishers, an exploration camera, a dynamic combat camera and equipment appearance reforging. Existing saves carry forward, but the redesigned skill system resets spent skill points.

The update also adds a refreshed interface, expanded Photo Mode, grouped loot, new accessibility options and cross-platform mod support through mod.io.

Why this matters on handheld PCs

The rendering path and PC requirements have changed. A preset or benchmark recorded before the Remastered update should therefore be treated as historical unless the tester confirms that it was repeated on the new version.

CD PROJEKT RED explicitly tells PC players to install current graphics drivers. That is especially important on Windows handhelds, where the manufacturer package, Windows Update and a generic GPU package may expose different driver versions.

Do not assume that a previously stable Witcher 3 preset will deliver the same frame rate or image quality after this upgrade. HandheldAtlas is not transferring older benchmark results to Remastered and is not publishing an FPS, TDP or battery estimate without a new exact-device test.

PC graphics features

The PC version adds path tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 with Ray Reconstruction, AMD FSR 4 with Frame Generation and Anti-Lag 2, and Intel XeSS 2.0 with Frame Generation and Low Latency.

CD PROJEKT RED states that FSR 4 is supported on Radeon RX 7000-series and newer graphics cards, while unsupported GPUs fall back to FSR 2. That statement does not by itself prove FSR 4 support on every AMD handheld APU, so players should check what the game actually exposes on their exact device.

Nintendo Switch 2

The native Switch 2 release adds handheld VRR and HDR, gyro aiming, touch input in menus and Gwent, mouse-sensor controls, motion controls and HD Rumble. These are platform features, not proof that the PC handheld build behaves identically.

A clean baseline for new tests

For a useful post-update handheld result, record the exact device, driver, game build, resolution, power mode, graphics settings, upscaler, frame-generation state and test route. Measure an average over a repeatable run rather than copying a frame-rate counter from one scene.

Sources

CD PROJEKT RED — “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered available now!”, published September 29, 2026: https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/media/news/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-remastered-available-now/

The Witcher — “See what’s new in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered!”, published September 28, 2026: https://www.thewitcher.com/sg/en/news/52041/see-whats-new-in-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-remastered

Cover: official CD PROJEKT RED launch artwork. It identifies the release and is not performance evidence.