CD Projekt Red addresses divisive lighting changes in new PC patch for Witcher 3 Remastered

A second patch has been released for The Witcher 3 Remastered Edition that directly addresses lighting issues on PC, along with a few other notable issues.

Specifically, The Witcher 3 patch (hotfix 5.00c) brings “various visual adjustments in Velen, including adjustments to Bloom, vegetation lighting, saturation, and path tracing lighting” – all things that have caused concern since the release of the Remastered update.

The patch also addresses an audio issue where voiceover volume was “significantly lower” after using the game’s pause menus. The patch notes are as follows:

• Fixed an issue where the game could not be saved or loaded if the Documents folder path contained special characters.
• Fixed an issue where voiceover audio could become significantly quieter than other in-game audio after cycling through pause menu tabs.
• Various visual adjustments have been made in Velen, including adjustments to Bloom, Vegetation Lighting, Saturation, and Path Tracing Lighting.
• Reverted a change that caused significant performance and visual issues with HairWorks enabled for some users.
• Fixed an issue where marketing telemetry settings were not saved correctly.
• Fixed an issue on GOG where achievements were not appearing in the unlocked list after being earned.
• Fixed an issue where it was not possible to launch the Classic version (1.32) of the game.
• Again, thank you for your patience as we continue to investigate the issues you report.

Yesterday, CD Projekt Red released another patch for the more console-oriented Witcher 3, which also made “various lighting adjustments”, among other things.

The Witcher 3 Remastered update was released earlier this week and brings significant changes to many areas of the game, visually reworking it, improving animations, and changing enemy behavior and the game’s skill tree. This is an extraordinarily generous thing from CD Projekt Red, I wrote after playing The Witcher 3 Remastered, especially for free so many years after the game’s release.