What's up with The Witcher 3 patch 1.61 on PS4 Pro?
CD Projekt RED's The Witcher 3 has recently received yet another upgrade, with patch 1.61 bringing high dynamic range support to PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro - a welcome bonus for a game swiftly approaching its third anniversary. With the release of the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X enhancements, this vintage 2015 title has never looked better on consoles. This HDR upgrade for PlayStation 4 users should have been the icing on the cake, but something's not quite right here - and it looks like the PS4 version needs one more patch before it's everything as it should be.
Let's kick off with the positives. The high dynamic range support is a real positive for PlayStation 4 consoles, and combines beautifully with the 4K checkerboarding on PS4 Pro. It gives it parity with Xbox One X in display support, and there's no question the new Toussaint area from the Blood and Wine expansion shines in particular. But the price to pay on PS4 Pro for this upgrade is significant: curiously, draw distances for foliage and shadows are visibly dialed back on 1.61 - notably on the console's 4K output mode. This leads to more pop-in of grass - almost as if it's sprouting from the ground a few metres ahead, while more shadows visibly fade in ahead of Geralt during traversal.
In the video embedded on this page, you'll see that we grabbed some fresh Witcher 3 capture from patch 1.61, and stacked it up against our library 1.50 captures - the degraded LODs are fairly easy to pick up on, and it's certainly been noticed by the game's dedicated community. And there's more - shadow draw distance in 4K mode has also been cut back compared to the original 1.50 patch the debuted Pro support.
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