The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the defining games of this generation, but like most open-world RPGs of this variety, its load times aren't the best.
Fortunately, on Xbox Series X, load times have been drastically improved thanks to the system's SSD. In fact, in some cases there are no loading screens at all! The Witcher 3 is an example of this - with load times so fast that you won't even see a loading screen anymore when using fast travel.
The above example is courtesy of the YouTube channel, rubhen925, who clarifies what exactly is on display:
"This is some gameplay of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on the Xbox Series X. This is the Xbox One version of the game played on the Series X."
CD Projekt Red previously announced a next-gen version of the game but has not yet confirmed the release date. When it does arrive, it will include various visual and technical improvements - including ray tracing and even faster load times, along with both expansions and extra content.
Are you as impressed as we are by these lightning fast load times? Leave a comment down below.
[source youtu.be]
Comments 17
Waiting for the free Series S|X upgrade coming in few weeks.
I'm so excited for this. I hope that whenever Skyrim comes to gamepass it has the same effect as i loved that game but if i only had an hour to play it i would lose at least half that time to loading screens. Looking forward to trying this out on the series x at some point
Simple put, this is awesome. Exactly what I wanted to hear.
Oh that looks good! I picked up the GOTY version as soon as they announced a free upgrade, so I will just wait to play it then
@Senua what makes you think it will be coming in a few weeks? I suspect the developers are super busy with Cyberpunk 2077, so I expect this to drop sometime next year.
@graysoncharles fair enough! Still, if it were coming out in the next few weeks, I think they would have mentioned it by now. Hoping they will do an official patch for PC too.
@sikthvash They have outsourced the work to another team.
@Senua fingers crossed it's out before Xmas then! Will be a nice addition in the launch window ^_^
I'm very ready to play this game on Series X.
So, who gets the nextgen version? People who have the base edition, or the complete edition? Both?
@PhhhCough “As reported by TechRadar, Projekt Red has confirmed that the free upgrade will be available to owners of the base game, so you don't have to grab the GOTY edition or any other bundles.“
https://www.windowscentral.com/witcher-3-wild-hunt-get-ray-tracing-free-upgrade-current-owners
That seals it: I have to play Skyrim one more time.
Bethesda hasn't announced upgrades for any of their old open worlds. I expect there will be upgrades for Skyrim and Fallout 4, but not anytime soon. If the acquisition by Microsoft is approved, at least the upgrades will be free.
In the meantime, there are mods. Even my Xbox One X struggled with some of the PC-oriented graphics mods for Skyrim. Series should handle them fine and spark a wave of new ones. The main difference I want is improved draw distances. But minimized load screens is a great improvement.
@Senua They can't even get Cyberpunk out in the coming weeks.....I really doubt we'll see Witcher 3 updates before Summer at the earliest (and that's optimistic.)
I'd love to be wrong, but I'm setting expectations accordingly.
@Senua woohoo! Right on! Thank you!
Holy crap, it looked like it loaded before the GPU could even initialize and render the scene.
@SpacemanJupiter As this hasn’t been upgraded for next-gen hardware yet, the old animations cannot work properly with such speed.
@Krzzystuff Skyrim on 360 was the game that made me realise load times had become the #1 problem for me in gaming and it's taken almost 10 years to fix it on console. (yes I could have gone PC, but had my reasons not to want to)
It was so bad especially as your game file size got larger at the 60+ hour mark or if you hoarded. A classic example would be while out adventuring and you become over-encumbered and you needed to go back to Whiterun to sell, stash and craft some items. In gameplay terms this would be about 2 minutes of gameplay max. Yet it would take over 10 minutes. With 8 minutes of load screens.
It literally stopped me going back and playing the Special Edition. Looking forward to diving back in with this MAJOR roadblock removed.
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