The Witcher 3 Remastered Launches With Path Tracing and DLSS 4.5

CD PROJEKT RED released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered on September 29, 2026. On PC, the upgrade is available through Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store and Battle.net, and existing owners on qualifying platforms can upgrade without buying the game again.

This is substantially broader than a texture refresh. CD PROJEKT RED lists changes across rendering, performance, combat, progression, animations, mod support and accessibility, while the PC version adds a more ambitious path-traced rendering mode.

NVIDIA's technical launch material says the Remastered PC renderer is now exclusively DirectX 12, replacing the hybrid DirectX 11/12 arrangement used by the 2022 Next-Gen Update. The existing ray-traced lighting, ambient occlusion, shadows and reflections have also been revised.

The headline graphics option is path tracing, which extends ray-based rendering across the lighting system rather than applying separate ray-traced effects selectively. That makes it a materially heavier rendering path than the standard rasterized or hybrid ray-traced modes, so the presence of path tracing should not be read as a promise that every supported GPU can run it comfortably.

For GeForce RTX systems, NVIDIA says the update includes DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction and updated Frame Generation. RTX 50-series GPUs can additionally use Dynamic Multi Frame Generation with up to 6X Frame Generation, while RTX 40- and RTX 50-series cards receive the newer Frame Generation model.

NVIDIA also says RTX 40- and RTX 50-series GPUs can use Shader Execution Reordering with path tracing. RTX 50-series hardware gets another specialized feature: Linear-Swept Spheres for path-traced HairWorks strands, intended to reduce the geometry and memory cost of tracing large numbers of individual hairs.

CD PROJEKT RED says the upgrade improves its shading model, textures and models, grass and foliage lighting, effects and other visual assets. Outside graphics, it revises the skill tree, adds transmogrification, changes combat and horse riding, updates monster AI and animations, reworks looting, expands Photo Mode, improves the quest log and UI, and adds accessibility features.

The Remastered package also includes Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine for owners of the base game. CD PROJEKT RED says the same modernization work will carry into the upcoming Songs of the Past expansion when it launches in 2027.

For returning PC players, the practical change is that the old 2022 Next-Gen configuration is no longer the top rendering path. Remastered creates a new ceiling with path tracing and newer reconstruction/frame-generation technology, while also changing the underlying renderer and many game systems.

That also makes old performance expectations less portable. A PC that ran the previous release at a particular preset is not automatically evidence for equivalent Remastered performance, especially once path tracing or newer reconstruction features are enabled. Independent testing remains the useful way to compare GPUs and settings after launch.