Fundamental changes were made to the deferred shading set-up for starters, with a much simpler g-buffer set-up, while 16-bit precision render targets were replaced with 10-bit equivalents on the console.įaced with a wholesale revamp of the game's rendering foundations, the studio adapted the content and in some respects, I prefer the overall look of the console edition. An entire year was spent redesigning the lighting for the Microsoft console to make everything fit within the harsh confines of hardware originally released in 2005. CD Projekt Red rewrote the entire post-process pipeline for The Witcher 2's transition to Xbox 360, and rebuilt the majority of the shaders. Just a few seconds of one cutscene shows a remarkable level of difference between the two versions, and inevitably, that's just the beginning. Here's how The Witcher 2 on Xbox One X stacks up compared to both the PC original and its remarkable Xbox 360 off-shoot. What's most impressive here is that everything holds up at 4K CDPR's work still looks immense at extreme resolutions, authored at a time when ultra HD resolution was nothing but the stuff of a madman's dreams. Side-by-side with Xbox 360 - and indeed the One X - it's clear that we're not getting anything like the full-fat experience on console. Just the arrival of one of Foltest's men in Geralt's tent at the beginning of the game sees the effects come thick and fast: bloom, god rays and bokeh depth of field paired with extreme quality textures. CD Projekt Red wanted its sequel to instantly impress and this area sees the artists throw everything at the player right from the off. Some of the starkest comparisons are found in The Witcher 2's initial flashback scenes. For its part, Xbox One X can't really compare to the PC version at its most majestic, but there are still plenty of 'wow' moments to savour, and similar to many of the other X-enhanced releases, side-by-side comparisons show a careful teasing of the original renderer to bring out the console port at its very best, albeit still within the confines of the Xbox 360's pared back feature set. Of course, there are aspects that date it somewhat - animation and facial movements in particular - but beyond that, it's simply beautiful. In this sense, the game's actually harsher in terms of hardware requirements than its sequel - and that's without the notorious 'uber-sampling' preset active.īut this is a game built for PC and it looks gorgeous, bespoke and like nothing else on the market and it even stands apart from its successor in many ways. Combine rich layers of alpha transparency textures with the game's still beautiful bokeh depth of field implementation, and even with a top-end Titan X Pascal, you'll still see frame-rates dip beneath 30 frames per second. Whether it's a driver problem, or simply the concept of running a game never designed for operating at extreme resolutions, the fact is that running the PC version of The Witcher 2 at max settings on a 4K screen is surprisingly onerous to say the least. So with that remarkable port now upgraded for Microsoft's latest console, how does it look running on 4K displays? And how does the PC original hold up running at an equivalent ultra HD resolution, almost seven years on from its initial release? The port had many cutbacks, of course, but in some respects, I thought it actually improved on its counterpart. The 360 release wasn't just a port, it was a top-to-bottom revamp of a PC original specifically built for the strengths of a far more capable platform. I was particularly keen to check this one out because CD Projekt Red's 360 conversion effort was absolutely outstanding and with its arrival on the X, you might describe it as one technological miracle layered on top of another.
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