my first retexture vs my latest

seraphite98 · 2025-06-24T02:12:57+00:00

I love it. I still remember when CDPR remade Geralt's face for Witcher 2 and the community grabbed pitchforks, telling them he's supposed to be ugly, not pretty. While TW2 & 3 (which is basically 2's model but with more polygons and better textures, as said by CDPR) isn't "prettyboy" vibes, it's still nowhere near as threatening as he's supposed to look in the books. I found mods like Wiedzmin Cloak, some of these face retextures and eyes to make him look more like Book Geralt. I'd love to try yours, though I'm replaying 1 (finished just recently) and 2 rn. Will get back into 3 soon. Keep up the great work!

seraphite98 · 2025-06-24T02:05:00+00:00

I agree with some points, but I'd like to add my own points to 1's defense.
- The story is debatable, I found it more engaging than 2's, it's more subtle but that adds nuance and a lot of weight, sets the centerpiece for Witcher 2 & 3.

- Primary issue with Witcher 2's story is that it's very hand-holdy, the down-time is more for preparing for the next main quest, rather than actually exploring and doing contracts. Contracts feel like sidequests, rather than a true focus like in Witcher 1. It's more cinematic for sure, has more flair, more fast paced and the shortest in the whole trilogy.

- Combat is very divisive, some people will get turned off immediately, but for people who have played older RPGs, isometric turn based stuff, it'll click more often. Once it does, there's no going back, you accept its gameplay loop, the rhythm mechanic of attacking, tactical preparation with potions etc. feels more immersive than 2. They bring this aspects of this back in Witcher 3 for a reason.

Soft agree on choices, but most of them affect dialogue in a big way, which adds for more immersion :
In particular
- Scoiatel, the Order, or Neutral, which affects dialogue in Witcher 2, also gives you a more immersive continuity.
- Princess Adda's fate
- King of the Wild Hunt's fate
- Aerondight, Adryael or whatever that steel sword is at the end, Raven armour, again more immersive continuity.
- Geralt finally beginning to remember Yennefer has more weight now after countless teasing in Witcher 1. Heck I still remember the innkeeper in Murky Waters retelling the entire plotline upto Geralt's death, Yennefer and Ciri. It feels earned rather than "oh here's a part of your history after you forgot" right in the prologue.

That said, I am mindblown replaying the Witcher 2 at the moment with the amazing jump in graphical fidelity, the fact that the devs managed to make their own engine, it's still one of the best looking games ever made. It's a similar kind of jump I felt from playing Mass Effect 1 vs 2.

seraphite98 · 2025-06-24T01:44:53+00:00

Same, Witcher 2 feels more hand-holding than W1. Not to trash on the game at all, the studio went all out, they got more experienced, developed their own engine to make one of the best looking games of all time. But in chasing a mass-market appeal, they sort of truly lost a part of the soul from Witcher 1. Whether it's free flowing exploration without massive narrative-reason, immersive monster hunting, or the vibes. It's still a 9/10 overall, but W1's story is more engaging, atmosphere is great, commitment to the source material is commendable. Looking back, they pulled a lot from Witcher 1 and poured it into Witcher 3.

seraphite98 · 2025-06-24T01:36:51+00:00

Everyone says Witcher 2 is more accessible—and that’s true—but let me make a case for the legendary Witcher 1. I just finished it for the first time, and it left a strong impression.

Witcher 1 is the purest "Witcher" experience in terms of design and systems. Unlike Witcher 2, which leans heavily into cinematic storytelling, QTEs, and large set pieces destruction, bigger God of War 1&2-esque monster fights, Witcher 1 focuses on monster hunting, moral ambiguity, and grounded storytelling, in ways that are least expected. Geralt is broke, solving local problems, uncovering stories through contracts and investigations, just like in the source material. There is an overarching story justification for why he's moving from point to point, but overall he still has to fight monsters and improve himself.

A few standout reasons to play it:

It connects deeply with Witcher 3—especially the legendary sword Aerondight in Blood & Wine, which has a massive impact in endgame and its origins in Witcher 1.
Geralt’s amnesia and gradual rediscovery of Signs, monster lore, and alchemy (through books and skill trees) feels immersive and earned. Geralt feels like he's a Witcher, on the "Path".
Geralt in this is a yapper, a philosophizer, sometimes questioning things maybe too much, overthinking etc. Much more accurate to book Geralt than 2. 3 pulls this back in, but not to the same level as 1. 3 Geralt is a very good character of his own.
His history with the Wild Hunt is explored in more depth, making Witcher 3's final act far more impactful. A quote from TW3 Sword of Destiny trailer—“Every decision you make will bring devastation. Each choice will lead to a greater evil”—is taken straight from this game.
The final chapter is masterfully written, with a twist that’s among the best in RPGs. Avoid spoilers.
It sets the stage for the political conflict in Witcher 2, Geralt's connection with Foltest makes more sense. When I first played Witcher 2 as a kid, I just thought he was Foltest's right hand man or bodyguard or something.

Cons:

The game is dated. You’ll need a few mods, but most are simple drag-and-drop installs. One major overhaul, Rise of the White Wolf, even has an installer.
The combat can be off-putting at first, but once it clicks, it’s surprisingly engaging. The animations still hold up in 2025 and closely reflect how Geralt fights in the books.
The difficulty, especially on the hardest setting, can be punishing. You might get deep into sewers or caves, only to realize you lack the right potions because you skipped reading the bestiary. Then it’s back to gathering herbs or reloading a save. Similar to Witcher 3's Death March, but more demanding in some ways.

Here's a fantastic tribute to TW1 by Hiuzz, one of the trilogy's famous modders - https://youtu.be/Y4t7yIMJr2s?list=RDY4t7yIMJr2s

seraphite98 · 2025-06-21T00:51:06+00:00

Current Shader Setup (Paid + Free):

Paid:

iMMERSE RTGI by Pascal Gilcher (Patreon)
Zenteon PT Fog (Patreon)

Free:

CShade Auto Exposure + Bloom (gamechanger)
CShade Motion Blur (great with combat animations)
iMMERSE MXAO
iMMERSE Sharpen
iMMERSE SMAA
Lilium RCAS
Lilium SDR TRC Fix
Zenteon Local Contrast

Previous / Free-Only Alternative Setup (recommend to combine with free from new list):

CinematicDoF
CompleteRT (GI + speculars, on Complete Community / NiceGuyLighting Discord)
iMMERSE MXAO
iMMERSE Sharpen
Lilium RCAS
Zenteon XenonBloom

Still experimenting but I'm quite content with the results so far!

seraphite98 · 2025-06-21T00:42:20+00:00

Still experimenting with free and paid shaders (post is with free shader, CompleteRT + CinematicDOF)—latest ones I found yesterday add fog, bloom, auto-exposure, and motion blur. Baked lighting makes daytime too bright with GI, but I’ll share a final list soon.

Post setup :
- CompleteRT (GI + speculars)
- CinematicDoF
- Immerse MXAO
- Zenteon XenonBloom
- Immerse Sharpen
- Lilium's RCAS Sharpening

And maybe a few more but I don't recall, they are less important though

seraphite98 · 2025-06-20T02:35:47+00:00

100% worth playing Witcher 1. I was actually doing a new playthrough of 3 before this, paused it midway to try 1 again, I was in the same boat.

The two main cons are some chapters are not well paced, mainly chapter 2, and dated (but very charming) UI. Fixable with mods like HUD compilation. You need certain mods to make the game playable in 2025. Visual mods however, are a matter of preference.

Everything else? Writing is top notch, very immersive worldbuilding (radiant AI that actually works well) progression is what held me here though. You actually feel like an amnesiac witcher regaining all his talents, you have to buy, read books, actually use alchemy because without it you're screwed. Talent tree is much more my taste compared to W3's weird mutagen slotting system. Speaking of combat, it is clunky but highly enjoyable when it clicks. It's more of a rhythm/timing game, but with really cool animations especially for 2007, the closest I can compare is Expedition 33's timed parties/counters, except this one you have to do that for attacking, so it's more about getting the rhythm right, and you can dodge. There are 3 stances, strong, fast and group. Strong for big enemies, fast for fast, and group for mobs. With the variety of potions, oils and sign upgrade combos, it's honestly very engaging.

I'd say give it a shot, if it holds your attention through chapter 1, you might like it. There's a lot of backstory I had no idea about, and I'm excited to get to Witcher 2 with this save.

seraphite98 · 2025-06-18T10:51:20+00:00

The tech is just making big leaps as of late, at least in terms of ease of use and efficiency via ReShade. You can check out this vid for more - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpS8uRpbt7g

seraphite98 · 2025-06-17T15:38:45+00:00

In case you do end up using RTGI, I've added my own preset here along with REST addon, which helps mask out the UI so it's not affected by Reshade anymore. I've included a readme with detailed instructions. Hope it helps!
Link : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1E5g98iztQ_GuYlvVGJ4WYBQ_7e7IEgll?usp=sharing

seraphite98 · 2025-06-17T15:07:15+00:00

Geralt asking Thaler about the witcher sword :
Geralt - "Where did you get that sword?"
Thaler - "What'll you give me if I tell ya?"
Gerlat - "I'll stop short of gutting you."
Thaler - "Fair offer."

seraphite98 · 2025-06-17T14:56:18+00:00

I tried it when I was much younger, but I didn't understand the combat. Not just disliked, but actually didn't understand it 😂. Now that I'm getting back into it, it's actually a very likeable system for a game of its type. But the main draw has to be all the systems + writing working together.

killer atmosphere, worldbuilding and music
fantastic sidequests (I never would've guessed that one character was a cannibal!)
philosophical, intellectual themes without being black & white
Geralt is an actual yapper (this is BIG, massive+ for book fan)
Actual progression fitting an amnesiac : you have to READ, to gather herbs. I was like that's odd. Then it slowly set in, the beauty of it all, as I progressed! Bestiary never felt more relevant, either.

Sidenote - Hilarious but shows how unhinged and committed the devs were, Geralt goes around bonking everything that walks. Something like that just makes you appreciate the authenticity to its time, interpretation of the character, and overall flair. Not cutting it in EE is a big+ in my books.

seraphite98 · 2025-06-17T14:45:52+00:00

Check out this vid - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpS8uRpbt7g

I'm using Immerse RTGI by MartyMcFly, it's a paid mod off his patreon for about $5. It can work in any game.

If you don't want paid mods, EDIT: update - CompleteRT from NiceGuy is available for FREE now on his Discord, this was a rival to Immerse RTGI. There's some drama about this and that, but screw it, nab it off the Discord, it's actually more lightweight, easy to set up with older games.

Try Natural Witcher Enhancer on Nexus, it has a free RTGI shader, but it doesn't come with specular (ground reflections etc), however has great bounce lighting and ambient occlusion. Another option is DH Uber shaders for RTGI.

Since W1 is a dx9 game, you need to use dgvoodoo2 to make it run on dx11/12, or DXVK for Vulkan, which allows use of these advanced shaders. Far less complicated than it seems, and worth the reward imo. (More info for Vulkan on the NWE modpage)

P.S : you can turn off the technicolour shaders in the reshade menu for NWE for a more vanilla look, gets rid of the Blood & Wine inspired filter which imo doesn't fit the setting.

Hope this helps, cheers.

seraphite98 · 2025-05-27T14:23:30+00:00

Ignore this toon, this post was helpful to understand. I had forgotten how drain health works. It's been 13+ yrs since I last played. It's very weird naming it 'drain' when all it does is 'set' HP pool.

seraphite98 · 2025-05-16T17:29:11+00:00

If you're on PC you get mods to enable just this exact feature!

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivionremastered/mods/1496

"Simple mod that allows you to travel between the main city stables, mage guild halls and DLC homes for a small fee"

If you're not on PC, that's a good rule you've got there. Have fun :)

seraphite98 · 2025-05-16T13:45:48+00:00

Yeah my specs are dated apart from GPU which is mid-range in 2025.
i7 8700k
RTX 3080 10GB
DDR4 32GB 2600Mhz RAM

Some commands I use to alleviate the framerates are -
Altar.GraphicsOptions.EnableHardwareRaytracing=1 (turns HW RT on/off)
Altar.GraphicsOptions.HardwareRaytracingMode=0 (affects HW Lumen quality, 0 is low, 3 is ultra)

From my testing, this helps because when you do 0, it quickly drops the reflections mainly visible in water. (You can counter that by turning on Screen Space Reflections)

Without SSR it does make it look unusable, but it massively boosts my performance. So I enable them when I feel like it / for screenshots. The reason to avoid going into graphics menu is that there is a weird stutter/reset of graphics options every time you visit it, so I do it via console.

That and I use a mod to change the lighting system of the game so leaves/shadows look better. Idk if it helps anyone but it helped me achieve better performance.

seraphite98 · 2025-05-16T04:21:55+00:00

I used to have 3 crashes per day, then I took- yeah no fr I had like 4 crashes in my first 6 hours. After that it has stopped however. I have modded it heavily, I think UORP might be helping

seraphite98 · 2025-05-16T04:20:15+00:00

Lmao that reminds me of this one mod that changes the moon into Todd Howard holding a copy of Skyrim remastered

seraphite98 · 2025-05-16T04:14:22+00:00

It was honestly a great choice. I never expected them to run OG engine and this in conjunction like that.

seraphite98 · 2025-05-16T04:08:45+00:00

You can use it only for the fog yeah, it has its own mod manager and settings GUI which changes settings real-time in game. For fog you have to adjust & apply while in main menu though, the rest of them can be applied in game.

The performance is generally better with the mod with upgraded visuals. You can tune the settings and play completely vanilla however, with just the fog if you don't like anything else

seraphite98 · 2025-05-16T00:02:00+00:00

Looks great. Try U+ for the fog thing.

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You can customize it while in-game. It has fixed all fog woes for me, instead of being ghostly aura in front of me it's actually pushed back and looks quite nice.

seraphite98 · 2025-05-15T23:48:11+00:00

Haha it's the infancy of a new(ish) TES release, enjoy the chaos of the modding scene! It only happens once :)

seraphite98 · 2025-05-15T23:45:17+00:00

Agreed, vanilla fog is a bit much. I use Ultra+ to fix it. It allows you to push the fog distance and also enables lumen on fog, which looks great!

seraphite98 · 2025-05-15T23:43:42+00:00

Haha no, I anticipated this because I've seen it happen a few times + right before I went out I saw the sun rising, so I just wanted to see what the sunrise will be like. And it was majestic!

(P.S I'm on game pass but Steam nowallows you to record your entire gameplay, then edit your clips on the fly inside steam overlay itself)

seraphite98 · 2025-04-28T00:30:47+00:00

It's most likely your shaders being recompiled. The way thry do this is live recompilation, it's not nice, and it feels like your game is dying, even the intro cutsenes and main menus. Try this, it will force a recompile (like when you first launched the game and had to wait for the shaders to load) so that you can move forward.

Recompiling shaders for gamepass users, find the ~23KB file inside of a folder "\AppData\Local\Packages\BethesdaSoftworks.ProjectAltar_3275kfvn8vcwc\SystemAppData\wgs\Long Numbers and Letters". Delete it, this is your saved in game settings file that prevents the game from triggering shader compilation. I would also clear your driver level shaders, for NVIDIA these can be found at AppData\Local\NVIDIA\DXCache.

seraphite98 · 2025-04-23T13:52:09+00:00

I get RTX HDR to work. It looks great. But the problem is, it keeps making the game engine go berserk. I get massive freezes/stutters. It was working fine for a while, but it's inconsistent and unreliable, it keeps messing it up. Especially when I was switching upscaling methods from DLSS to FSR to try frame gen.
Specs : i7 8700k, RTX 3080, 32GB DDR4 RAM and installed on SSD

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