The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine Graphics Better Than Base Game

The Witcher 3's final expansion, Blood and Wine, releases later this month and will feature over 90 quests across more than 30 hours of gameplay. CD Projekt Red senior environment artist Len de Gracia has revealed in an interview with Eurogamer that the upcoming DLC will also feature better graphics than what's seen in the base game.

"Generally it is a graphics upgrade from the base game. We have employed methods that we did not implement in the base game," de Gracia said. "You can literally bring your camera up to a wall now and the textures would be crisp - at least in most cases."

De Gracia said that up to 90 percent of the expansion's assets are brand new and feature things that you wouldn't see in the base game. The artist mentioned that there is "probably 20 times the amount of vegetables" in Blood and Wine.

"We just wanted to show that we can actually push it to the limit this time," she said.

With the improved visuals, some may be concerned that the game may not run smoothly on consoles, which was the case when it released last year. De Gracia said that the studio "got really organized" and have "the mistakes [it] went through" covered.

"For example: before, each and every prop had its own texture; this might require another draw-call or so. It impacts performance," she explained. "But this time around, we know we're going to group these things together so you have them representing the same texture now, so we're loading less but maximising the quality at the same time."

De Gracia said that CD Projekt Red is aiming for 30 frames per second, "but for the most part [it's] already hit it."

"In certain places we still need to run through stuff and try to optimize it the best we can, but in comparison to Witcher 3, production has been way smoother," she said.

However, de Gracia says these graphical upgrades might not make it into the base Witcher adventure. "It would be very difficult," she says, noting that it could happen, though the studio "might run into a lot of problems" if it went that route.

Blood and Wine will be available to purchase and play on May 31 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC players of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. You can buy it and the previous expansion, Hearts of Stone, separately or together in the game's expansion pass.