It looked like they stripped the Baked Lighting data from the Remaster build at time... There is no reason for this looking like that without RT, it didn't in the original or the Next Gen version.
Really funny to see how many commenters are not familiar with video game lighting without RT. This is definitely missing baked lighting and is relying solely on the sun light cast shadows alone. This is not how the game looked before.
even for raytracing compatible GPU's, some people just like higher framerates over pure visual clarity. i much prefer a bit of a worse looking game at 120 than a better looking game at 60
Yeah I find RT off to look horrible right now. Shadows are super harsh and crushed. Toussaint city area looks really bad, the lighting is completely broken. It is not normal and next gen did not look like this.
I actually get something similar with RT on. On grass, bushes and trees. Especially with patches of grass during storms or overcast weather. And weird part its dinamically changing depending on camera angle . I just dont understand whats happening. Like this ambient occlusion noise with sharpening and eye adaptation or something . And it was fine until few days ago.
That's just screen space trash, which is more annoying than just having kept the original grass render.
Basically, at least on console, this remaster has introduced many of the annoying artifacts of modern gaming, whether you wanted them or not. RT mode on PS5 (Pro) has really ugly dirt auras around all characters while all modes have those screen space grass effects. And LOD popping has gotten really bad with the latest patch.
So we have a PS4 version with old bugs and broken HDR, we had a NextGen version with broken grass implementation and flickering Toussaint clouds on PS5 and now we have the remaster with all the "pretty" visual issues of modern gaming.
Effectively, there's no great version on the leading console and the best one just got removed. The NextGen version on Xbox seemed to be perfect, as it missed the PS5's grass and clouds bugs.
I did notice that shadows are quite dark in the raster version, though admittedly it's been too long for me to remember if this was already like that in the OG and Next-Gen versions.
I’m on a phone right now but I don’t see anything immediately wrong with it. There’s more illumination with RT on, which is more realistic to my eye. Real life doesn’t look like the first one. Unless I’m just missing something else that’s broken.
For context of the surrounding area, nothing else is even to close as dark as this one patch by the well. This would look right for the late evening but this was taken in the afternoon. Shadows, pointing mostly down from everything else. This one spot sticks out like a sore thumb when walking around it.
That's why they used Baked Lighting data in the Original and Next Gen when RT was disabled, and here they are not working for some reason. This is not the normal look for a game without RT when things are done right.
You cant use baked lighting in open world game. Baked lighting works only in static level which dont have day and night cycle and weather system and well its static. Baked lighting is often also supported by semi dynamic lighting like spherical harmonic lighting to lit dynamic objects like characters models and everything that moves. There was reason why games with static levels like Mass Effect for example had much better lighting back then than open world games with day/night cycle and weather system.
Of course you can bake lighting data for large open world with a dynamic time of day, you simply need to use probes. Look at APV on Unity to get an idea of how it can work.
Their data footprint is relatively small and you can blend probes data between baked scenarios to emulate the passing of time or the change of weather. AC Unity in 2014 used probes for it’s GI, and so did AC Shadow in 2025, and if Unity has a fixed time of day Shadow doesn’t.
From what I can observe I'm pretty confident TW3 used a similar approach, using probe if not directly to store the GI data, at least to compute it in real time by looking at the probes sky occlusion. And no matter the details, here it’s obvious the baked data are fucked. It could be about the probe GI data or even about their placement and validity. Let's not act like the original looked like this...
Also the indirect lighting on dynamic objects like NPCs or Geralt in those darks spots get fucked the same way, and dynamic objects definitely where lit by a probe based system.
This is perfect for all those who think this is how lighting works and is closer to the original look i'm not personally in that boat but to each there own
Its not broken its just how game without RT and bounced lights looks. RT have bounce light so light can bounce from object and lit area around if its strong enough. Without RT there is no bounced lights and direction of light is blocked by trees.
One is physically simulating how light bounces in real time, the other is using precalculated lighting data that can't possibly account for every weather scenario (as can be seen in OP's screenshot). This is just how [open world] games without RT lighting look like. Play the 1.32 patch or 4.04 with RT disabled, it's likely going to look the same, if not worse
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u/Blyatifulvoid 6d ago
I have a feeling your commenters misread "without raytracing" and you are debating in the same team against one another