It feels like I’ve been waiting forever for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt , but it’s finally coming out next week. I’ve been with the series since its very first buggy and poorly-translated (and then fixed, because CDProjekt is rad) release, and I can’t wait to see how Geralt’s final adventure pans out. The Witcher 3 adds an open world to the series’ excellent storytelling and choice-and-consequence gameplay, making it one of this year’s most anticipated games. It also comes with some pretty steep system requirements for its gorgeous PC version, so many people are probably asking themselves which version of the game they should get. Let me help you decide with this quick and dirty guide.
To start, here’s a reminder of the PC system specs, direct from developer CDProjekt:
To translate these into English, you’re going to need a rather up-to-date PC in order to run The Witcher 3 at its “recommended” level. Even the minimum level is beyond what most older rigs and many laptops can produce. The most important things to look at are your CPU, your graphics card, and your RAM. If your CPU or graphics card is skirting the line, you might be able to get away with installing a few more gigs of RAM, by far the cheapest and easiest way to pop a bit more performance into your machine. If your graphics card is outdated and you’re looking to upgrade it, may I recommend an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970? That’s what I upgraded to after doing my research, even after years of using ATI/AMD cards, because it has a good balance between price and future-proofing.
If upgrading your PC looks like an expensive or daunting task, should you grab a console version or wait until you’ve saved up for a new rig? That’s going to depend on your personal need to enjoy the maximum possible shininess in the game. CDProjekt did an impressive job adapting The Witcher 2 for last-gen’s consoles, and The Witcher 3 will only be available for PS4 and Xbox One. You can certainly tell that the console version’s graphics aren’t as good as the best possible result on PC, but you have to ask yourself whether your own PC is capable or producing those results, or if you’ll be able to achieve similar results for a lot less hassle by popping the disc right into your PS4 or Xbone. If you have a current-gen console, your PC is near or below minimum specs, and you’re not a huge PC gamer anyway, grab a console version. Ignore the haters – it’ll still look great.
To get a general idea of what you’re working with, here are two videos of The Witcher 3 gameplay. The first is a PlayStation 4 video from the folks at PlayStation Access, while the second is PC gameplay (no doubt on a beast of a machine) from CDProjekt itself. Make sure to watch them full-screen at 1080p HD for the best results, and whichever version of The Witcher 3 you end up getting, let’s hope it lives up to the hype and provides the many hours of fantastic-looking sex, politics, and monster-slaying that we expect from the series.