Even weirder, in an early cutscene with the sorceress Yennefer, it seemed to entirely break the audio sync with the character models (pausing the cutscene and switching back to Performance immediately fixed it). I’m not sure if it was an interaction with my TV or an actual frame rate issue, but turning the fidelity-focused mode on seemed to introduce an actual stutter.

I wasn’t nearly as impressed with the update’s 30 fps ray tracing mode, however. The Witcher 3 still manages to make the vast majority of other open-world RPGs (most other games, really) seem lacking by comparison His characteristic “hrmms” and “uh-huhs,” with their attending slight changes of expression, have always been at the core of his character there is a cleanness to the game’s lines and movements in performance mode that draws those things out, and makes them all the more stylized, with well-defined edges and a slightly softer palette in between.

Watching Geralt’s facial expressions at 60 fps on a big 4K television is mesmerizing. They’re good frames, and although I know that PC players have been living in this world for a while, the experience of kicking back on the couch and watching Geralt of Rivia pirouette while cutting Drowners in half can’t be beat. The visual updates offer a performance mode that locks the game at 60 frames per second. The update, which I played on PlayStation 5, rests on three major pillars: visual upgrades, several fan mods that have been integrated into the game proper, and some new DLC that integrates aesthetics from Netflix’s The Witcher series into the game. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch.

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