The good news is that The Witcher 3, already a very good-looking game, is about to get even more good-looking when its next-gen update is released. The bad news is that, for anyone playing the game on PC, loads of your favourite mods from the last seven years aren’t going to work anymore.
As CDPR explains in a blog post, “updating a game means that we change various files, so the mods that modify those exact files stop working.” And when it comes to making those updates, CDPR has prioritised changes that make the base game better, over keeping older things the same for the sake of mods.
Acknowledging that it has been six years since the last major update to the PC version of the game, though, CDPR says that’s “a long time to get used to one’s favourite mods,” and so in an effort to make “this transition to be as smooth as possible,” has compiled a list of some of the community’s favourite mods, tested them, and shared which ones work with the next-gen update and which ones don’t.
Some of them work! Sadly loads of them, especially the ones reliant on scripting, don’t. As CDPR says, “Because we are changing scripts in the update due to the addition of a new quest, most of the mods that are based on scripts will error out.” For mod creators concerned about this, a team of “modding experts” from CDPR will be around to “provide help and advice to modders on forums post-release when possible.”
Helping to alleviate this somewhat, though, is an accompanying announcement that the next-gen update will be shipping with some fan-made mods baked into it at launch:
Additionally, we are including several popular mods in the update (they’ll be available depending on the platform). We obtained permissions from their creators, reimbursed them, and they’ll be featured in the credits of the updated game. The mods were reworked and assets optimised as needed, and the game adjusted to run with them. There was even a case when a dev got so engrossed in tinkering when including a mod that he ended up simply remaking that particular aspect of the game. So, in a way, the game comes with some mods already included.
That’s neat! Especially the reimbursement part.