At the end of September, the remaster of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released on PC and consoles. The developers presented gameplay and graphics improvements. However, not all players appreciated the innovations.
Many noted that indoors, the picture could sometimes be very bright. After a recent patch, the situation changed. Now, members of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt community are posting screenshots and showing that CD Projekt RED has darkened some scenes.
For example, in the interior shown by Jax765, the lighting is "dimmed":
There is an opinion that such darkening of the scene is a side effect of ray tracing optimization. It is assumed that the developers of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt decided to reduce the number of calculated rays to reduce the load. It is also possible that CD Projekt RED simply made changes to the lighting settings.
Soon after the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, enthusiasts began releasing modifications for the PC version that "optimize" path tracing. The authors of such projects reduce the number of calculated rays (which reduces the load on the PC). It is noteworthy that when playing with such mods, a similar effect of "darkening" certain areas of locations can be observed.