is the most ambitious port of this switch so far? • Eurogamer.net

Nintendo Switch continues to delight and surprise with the quality of its console ports of the current generation – but the arrival of the conversion of The Witcher 3 is another. Developed by Saber Interactive in association with CD Projekt Red, the ambition is to provide all Witcher 3 experience, complete with all DLC.

Compromises are inevitable, of course, but what sets this game apart is how it is challenging for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, while the PC version challenges the processor, GPUs and even the memory bandwidth. As we have discovered in the past with our own tests, making this game work properly with mobile level power is a daunting proposition – but after using the Switch game, the end results are undeniably impressive .

A few weeks ago, the press was invited to the UK headquarters of Nintendo to taste the game exclusively in portable mode and to talk with the Witcher 3 senior producer, Piotr Chrzanowski, about the process of transferring the game to the game. Nintendo hybrid console. What we do not have The game was operating in moored mode, although we had between seven and eight minutes of direct food capture after the fact.

Comparing the PS4 with the Dock Switch – as we did in a zoom gallery on this page – shows the daunting challenges developers face in reducing gaming, but it's the wearable experience that sets it apart this conversion. CDPR was eager to show us the game as much as possible – to the extent that the preview code that we sampled included even save points that took us directly to the stress points we used to evaluate the PS4 and Xbox One versions in the game. past, including Novigrad and the famous Crookback peat bog. It's almost like they knew we were coming! How well is the Switch version designed?

First, let's look at the basic limitations that Saber and CDPR had to work with. A slim PS4 typically consumes around 80 watts of power in challenging games like The Witcher 3. The new Switch processor (based on the same 16nm process as the Slim) exceeds eight watts in docked mode. In short, it's a tenth of the power – but it's fair to say that you do not get a tenth of the experience. Yes, the resolution is the main compromise. The 1080p output of the PS4 becomes a dynamic 540p-720p in anchored mode, and even lower in portable gaming mode.

Like the other famous ports of Switch's current generation, the end result is a lot more blurry – and more "jaggier" on the edges, as The Witcher 3 does not seem to use the extreme anti-aliasing techniques that we have seen in the identifier of Panic Button. Tech 6 Switch conversions. The other major limiting factor on which the developers had to work is the reduction of the available memory of the switch. The five GB of RAM available on the PlayStation 4 becomes even more restrictive with 3.5 GB on the switch – a target with which the original game has never been designed. The inevitable result is that the quality of the texture is drastically reduced, which is not really a problem when you play wearable way through the tiny display, but that it's likely to # 39; be noticeable when it is anchored in a living room screen. What looks like a trilinear filtering of textures does not help the situation, which gives a shady look to an art seen from an oblique angle.

And yet, when you play the game as a handheld, everything gels – this is The Witcher 3 on Switch and basically it works. Portable mode performance seems to be in the range of 20 to 30 frames per second, depending on the complexity of the content. It is interesting to note that the dock mode capture provided by CDPR is usually locked at 30 frames per second. As a result, additional GPU clocks can really make the difference, or the short clips chosen are organized to show the game's best performance. Beyond the obvious changes, the other pinches and folds, especially on the draw distance, are managed intelligently. There are also good surprises: the number of NPCs in Novigrad is identical to that of PlayStation 4, but the penetration thresholds are reduced, while the half-rate animations are used further in the distance.

Geometry has not changed either, the CDPR telling us that the only real differences that you will probably notice here are the complete zero LOD models used in cinematics: it is not so much the computing power that is involved here. , but rather the memory limitations on Switch. Post-treatment also seems very decent. The light tubes are inside, while motion blur based on the screen and on the characters gives the shade. We found that ambient occlusion was absent in the E3 trailer, but CDPR assures us that it is implemented and present in the final version of the game.

Finally, The Witcher 3 is recognized on the consoles for its extended loading time. The switch typically has slower transfer rates than the PS4 and Xbox One, but in the case of The Witcher 3, compressed resources and low-quality textures help to balance wait times during loading. Moving to a backup from the title to the Novigrad market takes 75 seconds on the PlayStation 4, and 84 seconds on the switch.

The first impressions of The Witcher 3 are promising and the magnitude of the ambition is remarkable. With id Tech 6 ports, Panic Button had the "luxury" of halving the target frame rate from 60 fps to 30 fps, which helps enormously the CPU side of the porting equation. This is just not an option for Saber on The Witcher 3 – six threads available on PS4 and Xbox One translate into only three switches, with the 1.02 GHz A57 ARMs. Meanwhile, the game is complete. The open world seems to remain unchanged, the gameplay is the same – and despite the limitations of a 32GB cartridge, the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine extensions are also included.

Our first experience with The Witcher 3 made us want more. What we can say is that the iconic showcase of the consoles of the current generation is now fully playable and very enjoyable as a portable Switch experience, and we can do it. Do not wait to take a closer look at how this has been achieved and how the experience is accumulating in both mobile and docked configurations.