'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt' Day One Patch Brings Improvements ... and Problems as Well

Following the release of "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" on Tuesday, May 19, for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and the PC, the developer CD Projekt Red announced that it would also release a large patch for the game. This patch weighs in at 482MB on PS4 console while it takes up 588MB of space on the Xbox One.

The patch includes major changes, DLC support, and fixing of stability issues. In the quests, fixes for journal objectives and quest mapping are included. Improvements in gameplay cover AI, strategies governing NPC spawn, combat and UI optimizations.

While this patch is yet to be downloaded and installed by most gamers, it has already been released to those who have been testing and reviewing the game. The testers and reviewers have provided details about the Day One patch, which brings the game to Version 1.01.

As the testers and reviewers installed the patch on their consoles, they noticed that while the PS4 performed better with the patch, the Xbox One version of the game actually handled worse than before. Some websites said these problems could be due to the "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" using dynamic scaling of resolution on the Xbox One which causes it to shift between 900p and 1080p.

The patch managed to bring minor improvements to the game on the Xbox One, in the form of better frame rates, and even helped solve many of the bugs in the game.

But it also brought some drawbacks in the form of shaky cut scenes. In the game, cut scenes are created from video files that have been encoded. These are present during the opening scene and the ending of the tutorial. They also serve to cover up the loading screens.

After the Day One patch was installed, the cut scenes were hit the worst and started running at around 22fps. This resulted in a "lurching" playback that became very prominent in sections. Other than this, Eurogamer said the patch impacted visuals and shadows in the game and not always positively.