The Witcher 3 Remastered Broke Its 10-Year-Old Record

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered is finally here, and over 10 years later, this beloved cult classic RPG is still finding new ways to break records and, of course, hunt monsters.

A New Record for The Wild Hunt

Shockingly, with the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, the 10-year-old RPG has broken its all-time peak player count, meaning there are officially more Geralts running around than ever before. Within hours of yesterday’s update, Witcher 3 hit a new all-time record of 120,975 players on Steam. This beats not only the returning-player spike at the start of the first season of the TV show, but also its original launch numbers.

The reason is that not only does everyone already own The Wild Hunt, since it’s been on sale for under $10 for years, but this update was free. So the only ones who had to pay full price were the unlucky few who somehow didn’t have a copy.

Plus, this project also saw the return of many of the original devs from the initial release, so the ones who handcrafted this once-in-a-lifetime experience have returned to give it one more polish.

But this update brought a ton of changes, too many to name, actually. But some of the highlights are:

• Implemented an improved shading model.
• Updated multiple textures and models based on assets from The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project.
• Improved lighting and shading for grass and foliage.
• Updated the visual effects of Signs, including their upgraded versions.
• Added new visual effects for skills.
• Improved the skill system. Skills are now organized into a skill tree, and each skill has three ranks. Unlocking new skills now requires having the necessary prerequisite skills rather than spending a set number of skill points.
• Rebalanced the skill tree by refining skill bonus values, effects, and synergies.
• Renamed some skills to better reflect their effects.
• You can now Reforge your equipment to change its appearance without affecting its stats. Only master craftsmen (Yoana and Hattori) offer this service. Unlock appearances by adding new equipment and crafting diagrams to your inventory. Dyes from Blood and Wine applied to equipment will carry over to the reforged item.
• Polished the combat behavior of many non-boss monsters, including their attack patterns, counterattacks, movement, reactions, flight, and the application of effects.
• Added new finisher animations for Geralt.
• Added new idle animations for Geralt.
• Updated the Photo Mode UI and vastly expanded its features and options.
• Added Cross Platform Mod Support, an in-game tool powered by mod.io that allows you to easily browse and install player-created mods to customize your game.

The sheer number of engine upgrades has also raised the minimum and maximum requirements for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered. So, along with all of these monumental changes, here are the new system requirements: