The Witcher

The Witcher

Developers
	CD Projekt Red
macOS (OS X)	Virtual Programming
Publishers
	Atari
Poland	CD Projekt
Engines
	Aurora
Release dates
Windows	October 26, 2007
macOS (OS X)	April 5, 2012
Reception
Metacritic	86
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase
Microtransactions	None
Modes	Singleplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	Third-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	RPG
Themes	Fantasy
Series	The Witcher

The Witcher
The Witcher	2007
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings	2011
The Witcher Adventure Game	2014
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt	2015
Gwent: The Witcher Card Game	2018
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales	2018
Gwent: Rogue Mage	2022
The Witcher: Remake	TBA

The Witcher is a singleplayer third-person RPG game in the The Witcher series.

General information

Official Forums

Official Witcher Wiki (Fandom)

Official Witcher Game Series Wiki (Gamepedia)

GOG.com Community Discussions

GOG.com Support Page

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		TAGES Solidshield v1.9.5.1 and TAGES v5.5.2.8 DRM. DRM removed in the latest Patches.
GOG.com		Enhanced Edition Director's Cut. Provides high quality bonus goodies.
Humble Store
Steam		Enhanced Edition Director's Cut.
GamersGate (unavailable)
Origin (unavailable)

All versions can be registered on GOG.com even if a product key was not included; see here for details.

The GOG.com version can be obtained for free at any time if subscribed to the site's newsletter, as part of the Gwent Welcome Bonus.

Essential improvements

Patches

There are two patches available for download on the official page:

• Patch 1.4 upgraded the game to the Enhanced Edition.
• Patch 1.5 removed the DRM and fixed bugs introduced by patch 1.4. It also contains five community-made adventures.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CD Projekt RED\Witcher\Settings\
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux)	<SteamLibrary-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/20900/pfx/

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\The Witcher\saves\
macOS (OS X)	$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.cdprojektred.TheWitcher/GameDocuments/The Witcher/saves/
Steam Play (Linux)	<SteamLibrary-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/20900/pfx/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy		200 MB available
Origin
OneDrive		Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud		Approx. 954 MB available.

Video

Video settings.

Graphical settings.

Graphics feature	State	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen			Use the aspect ratio fix for the cutscenes.
4K Ultra HD			In-game AA must be disabled.
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed		Use Borderless Gaming with Auto-Maximize disabled.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)		Up to 4x MSAA; SGSSAA is available via 0x000010C1 flag in Nvidia Inspector.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		See Force Vsync.
60 FPS
120+ FPS		High fps cause hair physics glitch and crashing during all times along with the script issues.needs 60fps cap to prevent major issues with hair physics also with the gravity and all script-issues related.
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

HBAO+

Use Nvidia Profile Inspector
Open The Witcher driver profile via Nvidia Profile Inspector. Change Ambient Occlusion compatibility to 0x0000002D (MechWarrior Online). Change Ambient Occlusion usage to Enabled. Change Ambient Occlusion setting to high quality. Apply changes.

Input

Input settings.

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration		Negative acceleration cannot be turned off.[citation needed]
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Controller types

Logitech GamePanel

Information such as statistics, ammunition, health and items the player is currently holding can be displayed on the LCD panel or smartphone application.

Display	Notes
Arx Control application	Native support in Enhanced Edition.
G19 color screen	Native support in Enhanced Edition.
G15 monochrome screen	Native support in Enhanced Edition.

Audio

Audio settings.

General settings.

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		Music, battle music, SFX and voice.
Surround sound		Requires EAX
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support		EAX 4.0 only. In-game option may need to be re-enabled after every launch.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
Traditional Chinese
Czech
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
Polish
Brazilian Portuguese				Fan translation, Download.
Russian
Spanish
Turkish				Fan translation.download.
Ukrainian				Fan translation. Available to download.

Installation size can be decreased by almost one third by deleting voice files of unnecessary languages. By default, the game installs almost all languages. The voices_X_00.bif files in <path-to-game>\Data can be deleted for languages you don't use, with X standing for a number for each language. For which number corresponds to which language, see here.

VR support

3D modes	State	Notes
vorpX		G3D Officially supported game, see official vorpx game list.

Issues unresolved

Poor performance on AMD

There is an issue where the game caps at 20fps, at some point it might go higher.^{[citation needed]}

Crash at launch

On AMD: DirectX to OpenGL wrapper
Download wrapper from here. Extract d3d9.dll, wined3d.dll and libwine.dll to <path-to-game>\System.

Run witcher.exe in compatibility mode for Windows 7.

Minimum system requirements not met

Run witcher.exe with the -dontforceminreqs command line argument

The fix above is known to cause other issues. The game's resolution can not be changed above a certain limit, and the texture quality and antialiasing settings might be locked to the lowest settings. To avoid this, try the following.

Use replacement TexSettings.d2a
Download TexSettings.d2a. Move the file to <path-to-game>\Data\Override (create the folder if not found).

No mouse in the main menu

Press ⇧ Shift[citation needed]
In some cases (when the intro cinematic is skipped or if opening the Steam overlay), the mouse cursor does not function on the main menu. This can be fixed by holding the key that releases the mouse in Over the Shoulder view (⇧ Shift by default).

Frequent game crashes

Set the game to run in windowed mode[citation needed]
Use a program such as Borderless Gaming to force the game to run in a borderless window.

Disable Steam overlay[citation needed]
Disabling Steam overlay fixes the crashing.

Pre-rendered cutscenes do not display

Audio will still play, but the video will freeze to the last displayed frame.

Lower the lighting setting[citation needed]
Go to Advanced Settings. Set Lighting to low. Cutscenes should now display correctly. The lighting setting can be reverted afterwards. However, the setting will need to be altered before each pre-rendered cutscene.

In-game cut-scenes appear pixelated

Use any 16:9 resolution[citation needed]

Lights visible through walls

On some systems with SLI enabled, light sources are sometimes visible through walls.

Change SLI rendering mode[citation needed]
In the Nvidia control panel go to "Manage 3D settings." Hit the tab "Program settings" and add <path-to-game>\system\witcher.exe. Scroll down through the settings to the one called "Multi-GPU rendering mode" and change it to Force Alternate frame rendering 2. Click Apply.

Broken physics/Constant crashing when attempting side quests above 60fps+/script issues above 60fps/exiting to desktop frequently due to extremely broken scripts above 60fps/runtime errors when attempting to start a quest/

High fps cause hair physics glitch and crashing during all times along with the script issues.needs 60fps cap to prevent major issues with hair physics also with the gravity and all script-issues relatede^{[citation needed]}

Limit the framerate. to 60 FPS

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	9.0c
OpenGL		OS X only.

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	ARM	Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)				Build compatible with macOS 10.15 (Catalina) added on 27 July 2022 and at the same time 32-bit binary was removed. Native ARM binary added on 20 November 2023.

Modifications

Setup

Prior to modding The Witcher, make sure you have an Override folder in your game's Data folder. You will need to create the folder if you do not have it already.

While not necessary, it is highly recommended to unpack mods into their own separate folders within Override for organization and troubleshooting purposes.

Several mods contain specific installation and usage instructions that should be reviewed before attempting to use them, failing to do so may result in your game breaking.

4GB Memory Patch

Improves RAM management in The Witcher 32 bit engine.

Skip intro - straight to the Main Menu

Removes all Witcher intro videos.

AI Upscale Textures

More detail in textures thanks to artificial intelligence.

School of the Wolf

This mod aims to differentiate all Witchers in the game, with unique looking armor and high quality character retextures.

A couple of characters faces are now more in-line with their Witcher 3 models.

Includes unique cat-like eyes for all witchers.

If you use W1 Vanilla remaster, you will need to remove or overwrite the textures provided in that mod. Most of the textures are the same resolution, so there should be almost no visual difference apart from character's new appearances.

Project Mersey - The Witcher Fix Pack

This mod focuses on bugfixes and restoring cut content.

Also provides general quality of life improvements.

TW1 All Herbs

All herb spawn amounts are increased.

Also Fixes the Han plants giving Berbercane bug.

Geralt Random Speed Fix

Fixes a bug that causes Geralt to have a different running speed every time you load a save or enter a new chapter.

The Witcher Enhanced Walk Enabler

Adds a missing option in OTS view that allows Geralt to walk instead of run.

Permanent Bodies Mod

Stops the disappearing of dead bodies where it is not lore-friendly. Certain creatures bodies, such as Ethereal beings, will still disappear.

May cause performance issues.

System requirements

Windows

macOS (OS X)

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	XP, Vista
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz AMD Athlon 64 2800+	Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3000+
System memory (RAM)	1 GB	2 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	15 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce 6600 ATI Radeon 9800 DirectX 9.0c compatible	Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX ATI Radeon X1950 XT
Sound (audio device)	DirectX version 9.0c-compatible sound card

macOS (OS X)
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	11.0, 12.0, 13.0
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core i5 Apple Silicon M1/M2	Intel Core i7 Apple silicon M1/M2
System memory (RAM)	4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	14.5 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce GT 650M AMD Radeon HD 6750M Intel HD Graphics 5000 256 MB of VRAM	Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX AMD Radeon HD 6970M Intel Iris Pro 5200 512 MB of VRAM
Other	Not recommended to use native Retina resolutions

A 64-bit operating system is required.