I picked up The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered on Steam through the free update. A free upgrade to a game I already own sounds like an easy yes. On my CachyOS desktop, it is terrible.
What I expected
CD Projekt Red shipped the remaster on September 29 as a free upgrade for current owners. I installed it and figured I would ride through the game again with the new visuals. That was the whole appeal. Same Geralt, cleaner picture, no extra purchase.
What I got instead
The game is unplayable. There is an insane blur across the screen, like the frame never quite comes into focus. Under that, the lag is serious. I set the graphics as low as they go and it still cannot keep a pace I can play at. This is not a case of leaving one expensive option turned on. Lowest settings, and it is still a mess.
The card is the problem
People with AMD graphics cards are reporting no problems playing the remaster. I have no issues on my Steam Deck. The same update, on that machine, is fine. The desktop is the one that falls over, and it is the Nvidia card. That card is not Linux-friendly for this release yet.
Still checking
I keep going back in to see if a patch or a driver has cleaned it up. As of this post, it is still messed up. The remaster can sit until the Nvidia side of Linux catches up. The Deck already runs the game I wanted to play.