Console players of The Witcher 3 will be unable to transfer their saves to the Game of the Year edition, explains CD Projekt RED community manager Marcin Momot.
Earlier this month, CD Projekt RED officially announced The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Game of the Year Edition. After much speculation, the developer finally confirmed that its award-winning fantasy RPG would be getting a re-release, allowing gamers to play as Geralt of Rivia complete with all of the DLC bells and whistles. The base adventure will be packaged with the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions along with 16 free pieces of DLC, adding up to over 100 hours in gameplay.
While the GOTY edition, which launches on PC, PS4, and Xbox One later this month, has huge appeal to those who haven’t played The Witcher 3 before, the full package may appeal to players who’ve already tried their hand at the game. With The Witcher franchise’s card-game spin-off Gwent being delayed some fans may just want an excuse to spend more time in Geralt’s universe. However, existing players will be disappointed to learn then, that The Witcher 3 Game of the Year will not be compatible with previous console saves, meaning that those on PS4 and Xbox One will have to start the game again – though it appears that players on PC will be able to transfer their data over.
CD Projekt RED’s community manager Marcin Momot wrote on the game’s forums that “the save files on consoles won't be compatible between different game versions (GOTY vs regular version) as they are treated by systems as separate products," Momot also apologized, saying that “this is something that's not up to us” explaining that “this is beyond our control and results from the technical aspect of how games work on consoles.”
As a workaround, the community manager suggested that if players own the base game on PS4/Xbox One and are looking to upgrade to the GOTY edition, they should just buy the season pass instead. On Twitter, Momot also revealed that The Witcher 3 Game of the Year Edition will also feature a separate achievement and trophy lists to the original game, though there’s no word on what sort of unlockables will be on them.
Many will be disappointed by the announcement, especially as many fans planned to play the game on the same console that they played the original version on. A normal version save not working with the Game of the Year edition is not the same as, say Skyrim: Special Edition which requires a brand new save file and doesn‘t allow saves from the PS3 and Xbox 360 version of Skyrim: Legendary Edition to be brought over to PS4 and Xbox One, respectively. But as Momot stressed, there’s little the developer can do in this case but with both platform holders continuing to update their systems, perhaps this technical hurdle can be eliminated in future.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is out now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, while its Game of the Year Edition is set to launch on August 30, 2016.