What The Witcher 3 achieved four years ago remains an incredible feat. It’s the best example of world building I’ve seen this generation – from the idyllic White Orchard, to the bustle of Novigrad, it’s crammed with detail. And yet, somehow developers Saber Interactive and CD Projekt RED are genuinely delivering something I thought impossible. A Switch conversion now exists – a Complete Edition that crams every DLC and upgrade into a 32GB install. It’s honestly the most technically ambitious game I’ve tested on the system since it launched. However, it also highlights – sometimes brutally – the limitations of porting a triple-A experience to a chipset designed primarily for mobile gaming.
This may well be a no-brainer, but if you’re looking for the big TV experience, other, better options are clearly out there. Even factoring out the enhanced consoles, the pristine 1080p of the PlayStation 4 version delivers a whole new level of clarity compared to the very blurry Switch version – and that’s before we factor in the visual cutbacks required to get the game running. But it does run, and reasonably well to boot – but the bottom line is that the inherent level of compromise required across the board makes this Witcher 3 conversion far more suited to mobile play.
Somehow squeezing The Witcher 3 into a 32GB footprint is a masterful exercise in compression, but it’s easy to see where many of the cuts were made. It begins with the compressed video files, which drop from 1080p to 720p. Again, it’s no problem for the portable experience, but the lack of clarity – and compression artefacts – don’t really hold up on a living room screen. In-game image quality takes some adjusting to as well: 720p is the highest we’ve seen the game render at while docked, dropping to 960×540 in our tests at lowest, seen while panning past the city in Toussaint.
In all honesty, it’s portable play that is the star of the show. It’s where Saber and CDPR’s work comes together; a justified use of the Switch. Handheld play works the same way as docked – a dynamic pixel count that adjusts based on load. Here Switch uses 960×540 as the top number, but drops steeply where it needs to. Pick a busy street in Novigrad for example, and the lowest reading comes in at just 810×456. For perspective, that’s 63 per cent on each axis of 720p, which does show up quite visibly – but the impact is far less pronounced on a smaller mobile screen.
Regardless of how you play, there are a swathe of highlights to enjoy, as well as a couple of drawbacks. The big plus, to start, is easily the NPC count. CDPR told me ahead of release that it’s the same as PS4 – or close to it – and it’s easy to back that up. Around the central square, Novigrad is teeming with townsfolk, guards, and entertainment. Jump to PS4, and there’s not a tangible a difference in NPC density, just going by eye. Of course, their draw distance is compromised on Switch, but the rendering range on NPCs is generous enough to cram everyone in. The only snag is that the frame-rate on characters is halved towards the distance. Even in portable mode it hits the same NPC count – which makes sense, given as a CPU-focused task, the clocks stay put either way. There is a price to pay in terms of performance, but it looks very impressive indeed.