DF Direct Weekly #279: The Witcher 3 Remaster Reaction, Xbox Disc To Digital, Best of Gamescom 2026!

**Rich** (0:02)
Hello there, and a hearty, resounding welcome to this, the 279th edition of DF Direct Weekly, our show that typically discusses the latest gaming and technology news. So we've already gone in depth on Grand Theft Auto 6 But of course, there's been another major event this week, Gamescom 2026 I was due to fly out to Cologne on Monday for the event, but literally, my legs failed me, or my knees more specifically.
And with Alex still off, it was left to one man. One man can make a difference. And he was representing us at Digital Foundry at the Cologne Messe. So hello and welcome back, John Lineman.

**John Lineman** (0:41)
Why, hello, Rich. Yes, I'm tired. I missed you and Alex, of course. A lot of, met just a remarkable number of people, so many people. And it's always really great to see that and just talk to the folks that enjoy the stuff we're doing and developers and all that. And everyone sends their well wishes to you, to Alex.
Yeah. So your presence was missed.

**Rich** (1:08)
I'm doing better now. I'm not so good during the Metro 29 taping that we did, but I'm much better now.

**John Lineman** (1:15)
That's good. You would not have been better if you had been at the show, given that it's just non-stop walking, standing, etc. So I'm glad you're okay.

**Rich** (1:24)
I wouldn't have made it through the day.
Anyway. Yeah. So we're going to be covering some news and John's going to be talking us through his highlights of the show, but before we do that, a shout out to digitalfoundry.net, the web-based home of our enterprise. If you're not looking at our videos, or even if you are, it's a site that demands your presence. Of course, Patreon supporters get a completely ad-free experience there, and it's ad-free in our downloadable, high-quality videos, and the Direct itself. Ad-free too, in our private RSS feed. So yeah, patreon.com/digitalfoundry.
Anyway, let's crack on with the Direct proper. Okay, so let's kick off by talking about the end of Gamescom Opening Night Live, where Geoff Keighley revealed a brand new version of The Witcher 3 Well, a kind of another remaster. This is the second remaster, right John? Kind of baffling, but it kind of now makes sense, with the additional DLC coming, I think, early next year. And of course, there was the reveal of a Switch 2 version. So where do you want to begin on that?

**John Lineman** (2:29)
Yeah, so I guess we should talk about remaster, because it's kind of considered big news, I would say, and they've made some very big changes, and they're doing it for essentially all owners of the original game.

**Rich** (2:44)
Astonishing.

**John Lineman** (2:45)
Which is really great. I mean, we've seen stuff like that before, for sure, but I think it's cases like this very specifically that Cement CD Projekt Red is like a reliable great company, right? So like when they make a mistake, like what happened with the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, this is the reason people are willing to give them some space, because they do like to do right by their players. And I think that's awesome. There was no reason to do this. I mean, the DLC alone would have been fine with the current visuals that we got, and that already existing, quote unquote, next-gen patch, which added a ton of cool stuff as is. But now, they've taken it even further. Now, I would say this, I wouldn't go in expecting a complete revamp of everything, per se. I've seen this being played. I know what it looks like, the remaster. I think the visual upgrades are really, really nice. But at its core, you're still looking at Witcher 3 assets. So, the character models, animation work, it's largely what you would expect. Although there are some improvements in that regard as well.
But it's just the lighting, the scene densities, and things like water, I think. Like, the water is finally just absolutely gorgeous in this game. In a way that I can say it really wasn't. I mean, the next-gen patch helped, but it wasn't, that was always an area that I felt was disappointing, specifically with The Witcher 3 And the remaster really helps a lot. And you can see some of the streams out there of the DLC bit, and note right away that things like the water looks much different and much better, which is cool.
So yeah, I'm happy to see that.
And then it's also, I guess, coming to Switch 2 at last.

**Rich** (4:42)
Yes.

**John Lineman** (4:43)
And this is interesting, because I presume that, I mean, we kind of have an idea then that the PC version of this will receive additional niceties, as you would expect.