While Elden Ring has been the breakout game of this year as it sold millions of copies to the surprise of its developer FromSoftware, and has been garlanded with the Game of the Year title from The Game Awards, it's a 2015 game that has come to usurp its position as the most highly regarded open-world RPG.
Well, it's a 2015 title that has been updated anyway. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been upgraded for current-gen systems with Xbox Series X and PS5 owners being treated to Geralt and The Continent looking that much more visually impressive. It's not just graphical upgrades as CD Projekt has improved performance alongside a host of tweaks, updates, and content additions. All this means the current-gen version of the game has been snagging high reviews across the board.
It is specifically the PlayStation 5 version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that has pushed it past Elden Ring in terms of rating (via Gamesradar). On review aggregation site Metacritic, the weighted average of professional critic reviews has given it a score of 97. The work that CDPR has put into the game, with fans waiting quite some time for this upgraded version, has clearly paid off since it now overtakes Elden Ring, which is sitting on the still very high score of 96.
But as Gamesradar notes, this is fairly early days for this version of The Witcher 3 and as more reviews come in the score could change and bring the Polish developer's title to equal to that of FromSoftware's great role-playing game or less.
In our impressions of the update, our lead features editor Jade King was impressed by the upgrades on offer, saying how "the newly implemented ray tracing turning once stale streams of light into blinding beams of fluorescence that adds so much more depth to each scene."
"The doorway leading out to the balcony is teased with an aggressive pocket of sunlight, leading to a glimpse at mountains awash with natural fog and pockets of forest, making an otherwise familiar landscape feel new again. Yennefer sits reading a book in the nude by candlelight, teasing her tub-bound hubby to get up and do something with his day instead of soaking around."
Tantalising stuff! The Witcher 3 became one of the most beloved games of the previous gen and with this current-gen upgrade those fans can come to wonder at The Continent CDPR created while the game could get a whole new set of admirers thanks to this worthy update.