The Witcher 3 Remastered adds 70+ features including ray-traced hair, skill tree overhaul, and Photo Mode expansion

CD Projekt Red has released full patch notes for The Witcher 3 Remastered ahead of Tuesday's launch, detailing over 70 significant changes across visuals, gameplay systems, and accessibility features.

The visual overhaul represents the most comprehensive graphics work since the game's original release. The remaster implements native DirectX 12 rendering with multithreading for improved performance and visual quality. Shading has been fundamentally rebuilt, with updated textures and models drawing from The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project community asset pack. Grass, foliage, and terrain rendering now use improved lighting and shadow calculations for more natural environments.

Ray-traced HairWorks provides enhanced lighting and shading on character hair, while subsurface scattering has been updated for more realistic skin rendering. New Image-Based Lighting (IBL) improves ambient lighting and reflections across different environments. The remaster adds GTAO (Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion) as a new Screen Space Ambient Occlusion option and reworks bloom effects. Motion blur receives a higher-quality, more cinematic treatment, and tone mapping has been updated to improve colors, lighting, contrast and detail throughout the game.

The skill system receives a substantial redesign. Skills are now organized into a skill tree with each skill featuring three ranks. Rather than spending a fixed number of skill points, unlocking new skills now requires having necessary prerequisite skills. This restructuring resets all player skill points upon update, requiring players to redistribute their abilities. The skill tree itself has been rebalanced with refined bonus values, effects and synergies, and some skills have been renamed to better reflect their effects.

Equipment now supports appearance customization through a reforging system. Master craftsmen Yoana and Hattori offer this service, allowing players to change an item's appearance without affecting its stats. Appearances unlock by acquiring new equipment and crafting diagrams. Dyes from the Blood and Wine expansion will carry over to reforged items.

Combat and movement have been substantially refined. Non-boss monster behavior has been polished, including attack patterns, counterattacks, movement, reactions, flight and effect application. Cantering and galloping now require button presses instead of continuous holding, with a new "Horse control input sensitivity" slider added to settings. Geralt's jumping animation has been refined for a more natural feel without affecting jump distance or height. New finisher animations and idle animations expand combat variety. Climbing, vaulting and gap-closing animations now feel more responsive and fluid. Target-lock switching has been improved for smoother camera control during combat, and mounting and dismounting animations have been polished.

The user interface receives extensive tweaks across multiple systems. The skill screen reorganizes into a more intuitive tree layout. The map screen now makes switching between tracked quests easier, with untracked quests receiving distinct markers and the ability to be tracked by selection. Players can now hide herbs, boats and corpses on the minimap for a cleaner view. Quest notifications combine multiple updates into single HUD notifications. The nearby loot system groups items into a single window rather than requiring browsing through multiple windows, and a loot feed displays recently collected items on the screen's left side. Item tooltips now preview item details before pickup. Meditation transitions from a UI screen to a timelapse for increased immersion.

Photo Mode receives the most significant expansion of any feature. Players can now select from multiple characters to place in shots and choose from poses and expressions for Geralt and placed characters. A Look-at dropdown controls where characters direct their gaze. The mode now supports placing and adjusting lights with control over brightness, color and angles. Camera positions can be locked to ensure capturing intended shots, and camera presets allow saving and reusing specific positions and angles. Players can apply different environment presets, change screenshot aspect ratios, and toggle a first-person camera mode to see the world through Geralt's eyes. Camera collision with objects and walls can be toggled. Weather and time of day are now adjustable, with intensity controls for effects like rain and storms. Rule of Thirds lines in various aspect ratios can be toggled with optional cinematic black bars. Camera coordinates display in the UI. Surrounding NPCs can be hidden, and placeable props expand creative possibilities. On PC, the cursor is now visible in Photo Mode when using a mouse.

Accessibility receives dedicated focus with a new Accessibility section in Settings. Ukrainian text localization has been added. The Bard's Ballad preset reduces cognitive load for players experiencing mental fatigue or concentration difficulties by simplifying mechanics and disabling select features. This preset includes customizable options such as Vitality Regeneration Boost with adjustable thresholds and regeneration intensity, Infinite Breath for unlimited swimming oxygen, Unlimited Item Durability eliminating repair needs, Unlimited Boat Durability removing navigation hazards, Ignore Item Weight for unrestricted carrying capacity, Faster Boats for reduced sea travel time, and Toggle Witcher Sense allowing button toggle instead of holding.

The remaster will be available as a free update for existing players and becomes the standard version for new purchases across all platforms on Tuesday.