3,000 Improved Textures; The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Update Announced
It turns out that The Witcher 3 next-gen update is not the end of the development of the HD Reworked mod - its creator has revealed that the next version will debut next year. The result is expected to be a refinement of more than 3,000 textures and models.
Two years - this much time has passed since the release of the HD Reworked mod for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The latest version 12.0 is subtitled Ultimate, which could suggest that work on the project has been completed. However, this is not the case - the mod's author is persistently working on further improvements, which is expected to result in the next update, scheduled for next year.
The Witcher 3 even prettier
HD Reworked Project gained notoriety for replacing a huge number of original textures and object models with similar ones in higher quality. It was appreciated by CD Projekt RED itself, implementing it in the next-gen update for The Witcher 3. The creator of the mod, a Pole going by the handle Halk Hogan, posted a message on nexusmods, in which he revealed that he is preparing its new version. Here is the content of the message:
"Hello again Witchers!
Yes, the story of HDRP is not over yet. :) I can tell you that the upcoming HDRP version called NextGen Edition is really huge, the list of changes and new improvements is really long, and the quality of assets is definitely on a much higher level than you could experience in the last available version (12.0 Ultimate). I am very excited to share this work with you soon. The target version of the new HDRP is the NextGen game update (4.0), but a version for 1.31/1.32 is also possible. That's all for now, but you can expect a first look shortly. In the meantime, I wish you all a Merry Christmas! Thanks for amazing support and see you soon. :)"
The message is quite general, although some interesting facts can be extracted from it. The author announces a huge number of changes (more than 3,000 improvements to the original textures and models), which may suggest that he has been discreetly working on expanding the modification for the past two years. Moreover, mod will interact with both the latest versions of The Witcher 3 before the update, as well as the latest version with the "next-gen" patch (which is suffering from a number of technical issues). Compatibility with pre- and post-patch versions is good news. The release date of the new version of the mod is scheduled for the second quarter of 2023.
HD Reworked Project - highlights
We first heard about work on the mod in November 2015 (less than six months after the game's release). Over the following years, the mod evolved, until the end of 2020 - when the version 12.0 was released, which was implemented ini the "next-gen" patch for The Witcher 3. The modification is hugely popular - the nexusmods website has registered more than 1.5 million downloads and 13 million views.
