Witcher 3 Remastered Saves and Achievements Carry Over — But There’s One Important Catch

The announcement of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered at Gamescom Opening Night Live came as a genuine surprise, and the immediate follow-up question from the community was predictable and reasonable: what happens to existing progress? CD Projekt Red’s official support account answered that on September 1, directly and clearly. Save files carry over. Achievements and trophies carry over. The remaster is treated as an update to the existing game rather than a separate release, so existing progress survives the transition intact. But there is one catch worth knowing about before you boot it up on September 29.

Witcher 3 Remastered

What Actually Carries Over

CD Projekt Red’s support account posted the confirmation in response to widespread player questions:

“Good news: your current saves will work with the upgrade, so you can get back on the Path right where you left off. Your unlocked achievements and trophies will carry over too!”

Community Director Marcin Momot elaborated on why this works: the Remastered upgrade is treated as an update to the existing game rather than a separate standalone product. That’s a meaningful technical distinction. Because it’s the same game receiving an update — not a new game entry — the platform stores (Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, PlayStation Network, Xbox) see your save data and achievement records as belonging to the same product. Nothing needs to be migrated or transferred. Your Geralt, your story progress, your inventory, your relationships, your quest states — all of it survives the upgrade automatically.

The achievement and trophy situation flows from the same logic. There will not be a separate achievement list for Remastered. The existing list from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the list. Any achievements you’ve already earned remain earned. Any achievements you haven’t earned yet are still available to pursue in the Remastered version.

The One Catch: Skills and Settings Are Reset

Here’s where it gets slightly more complicated. While story progress, inventory, and quest state carry over cleanly, skills and settings will be reset due to changes introduced with the Remastered upgrade. CD Projekt Red has revised the progression system enough that the old skill allocation data doesn’t translate directly — rather than applying a potentially broken or incorrect build to the new system, the game wipes the slate and lets you start fresh with your skill points.

The good news is that this reset is immediate and non-blocking. According to CDPR’s support page, your skills will be available to reallocate right after booting the game for the first time on Remastered. You won’t be dropped into combat with an empty skill bar and no way to fix it. The reallocation screen is the first thing you encounter after the upgrade applies, and you get all your points back to distribute however you want in the new system.

Settings — graphics preferences, keybindings, audio levels — will also reset, which is expected given that the Remastered version introduces new visual options and a revised graphics pipeline. Any settings you had dialled in for the current version won’t necessarily translate to the new one anyway, so rebuilding your settings from scratch is the right call regardless.

The Split Reaction to Achievement Carry-Over

The save file carry-over has been received almost universally positively. A surprising number of players were mid-playthrough on The Witcher 3 in anticipation of the Songs of the Past expansion next year, and the prospect of having to choose between continuing on the older version or restarting entirely in Remastered would have been a genuine dilemma. The carry-over resolves that cleanly — you can continue exactly where you are, immediately in the upgraded version, from the moment the update goes live.

The achievement carry-over has landed more mixed. For players who have already completed The Witcher 3’s achievement list — a significant undertaking given the list includes completionist challenges, difficulty-specific rewards, and story-branching achievements — the news that the Remastered upgrade doesn’t bring a fresh list means there’s no new achievement content to pursue. The remaster would have been a clean reason to replay and recomplete everything for a brand new platinum or 1000G. Without a new list, that motivation disappears.

For players who have never completed the achievements, or who haven’t even started them, the carry-over is straightforwardly positive — they can now pursue the list in the definitively best version of the game from the start. As with most of these decisions, where you stand depends almost entirely on where you currently are with your own playthrough.

What the Witcher 3 Remastered Actually Adds

The remaster was announced during Gamescom 2026 Opening Night Live alongside the Songs of the Past expansion reveal, and its September 29 launch date makes it the definitive way to experience the game before that expansion arrives in 2027. Here’s what CDPR has confirmed is included in the upgrade:

• Upgraded visuals — Rebuilt lighting, improved textures, enhanced environmental detail, and weather system improvements throughout Velen, Novigrad, Skellige, and Toussaint
• Enhanced combat — Revised combat feel with improved responsiveness and smoother animations. The signs system has also received attention
• Improved traversal and movement — Geralt’s movement has been refined to feel more fluid, addressing long-standing community feedback about the original’s somewhat stiff locomotion
• Both expansions included — Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine are part of the package. For new players, this is the complete Witcher 3 experience in one upgrade
• Songs of the Past prologue content — CDPR has suggested the Remastered release will include connective content that bridges toward the upcoming expansion
• New PC system requirements — The Remastered version requires more RAM and a more capable GPU than the current version, reflecting the visual improvements

The upgrade is free for existing owners on qualifying platforms: GOG, Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. It is also available for pre-purchase for new players on Battle.net and Nintendo Switch 2 — making September 29 the Switch 2’s first time receiving The Witcher 3 natively rather than via the existing Nintendo Switch version.

September 29 Is Going to Be a Big Day for Witcher Fans

The timing of the Remastered launch is deliberately positioned. Songs of the Past, the third Witcher 3 expansion co-developed with Fool’s Theory, launches in 2027. The Remastered upgrade drops September 29, giving players who haven’t played in years — or who have never played at all — roughly six to twelve months to work through the full game and both expansions in the best version before the new content arrives. It’s a smart sequencing decision that treats the Remastered upgrade as the on-ramp to Songs of the Past rather than a standalone product.

And with The Witcher 4 targeting 2028 with Ciri as the new protagonist, the window between now and then is exactly the right time for CD Projekt Red to bring new players into the Witcher universe and remind existing fans why Geralt’s story was worth 65 million copies sold. September 29 is four weeks away. If you’ve been meaning to replay The Witcher 3 — or finally play it for the first time — now you know when and why.

Witcher 3 Remastered — Quick Reference

• Release date: September 29, 2026
• Platforms: PC (GOG, Steam, Epic Games Store, Battle.net), PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2
• Price: Free upgrade for existing owners on qualifying platforms; new purchase required for Battle.net and Switch 2
• Includes: Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions
• Save files: Carry over automatically — story progress, inventory, and quest state preserved
• Achievements/Trophies: Carry over — no separate Remastered list; existing unlocks remain earned
• Skills: Reset due to progression system changes — immediately reallocatable on first boot
• Settings: Reset — will need to be reconfigured in the new version
• Connected content: Songs of the Past expansion launching 2027; The Witcher 4 targeting 2028

Four weeks to go. If you haven’t dusted off your Witcher 3 save yet, now’s the time to find it. And if you want to catch up on the broader Witcher franchise news, we broke down everything confirmed about The Witcher 4’s 2028 release window following the Gamescom announcement — including what CD Projekt Red’s ambitious new trilogy plan looks like across all three games.