FelipePrado0/gow3_pc windows-v2.2.0

God of War III Remastered for PC 2.2.0

on GitHub

Linux: the AppImage for 2.2.0 will be uploaded to this release in the next few hours. Until then, Linux players can keep using the 2.1.8 AppImage.

Game

• Black screen at the opening (#111, #208; probably also #21, #32, #144 and #150, please retest): the window opened and the FPS counter ran, but the picture never appeared. Cause found by @brunoweierich-ctrl from dumps of the stuck process: a deadlock between the emulated GPU and the game's EOP thread on the first flips (the GPU waited on a WAIT_REG_MEM for a signal the flip thread only writes after the next EOP). Fixed by the new Bug Fix - Startup Black Screen patch (#119). It is always applied, also when the launcher kept a patch selection from an older version, and it is not listed among the patch choices.
• In-game button icons that match the controller (#133, #173, #223): new launcher option Game → Controls → In-game button icons: Original, Match my controller, Xbox or Nintendo. The prompts, the move list and the QTE buttons show the chosen icons in every language. The icons are drawn when the game starts on copies of two game files in the port's data folder (about 70 MB); the game folder is never changed. With the option on Original nothing is generated (#192).
• FSR 1 removed from the in-game menu (Insert → Image), as it was from the launcher; a saved fsr1=1 no longer turns it on. Sharpening (RCAS) stays in the same tab.
• Frame capture (Insert → Diagnostics, GOW3_FRAME_CAPTURE_KEY) no longer crashes the game on the first captured frame (null read).

Launcher

• New layout: five pages (Home, Graphics, Performance, Game, Advanced) with a Save button that is active only while there are pending changes. Changes made from the in-game menu are kept when the launcher saves other fields; a failed save keeps the changes pending and does not start the game. Changing the launcher language keeps the page and the game status (#123).
• Temporal upscaling temporarily removed: the experimental switch and the FSR 3.1, TAA, FSR 4 and DLSS choices are out of the launcher while we analyze them further and work on a more satisfying implementation. They will come back in a later release. The game renders at the chosen resolution without temporal upscaling, also for players who had turned the switch on in 2.1.8 (#210, #211).
• The cover art at the top of the Home page no longer has the dotted fade, and the title id and version sit below the picture.
• Update folder and mods on Windows without Developer Mode: closing the game no longer leaves out\game-update-* folders behind (WinError 145), and a mod that contains a directory junction is rejected like a symlink instead of reading files outside its folder (#141).
• README in Spanish (README.es.md) (#215).

Known issues

Start and crashes

• Crash at start with the full 1.02 update (eboot.bin sha256 6e72330e...): Fault: write access to 0000000000007458 at ntdll.dll followed by STOP: guest raised debug exception code=0xa0020014 (#175, #213). Under investigation.
• Startup crash 0xC0000005 in ucrtbase!strlen right after the audio threads start (#46).
• Overwolf's overlay (ow-graphics-hook64.dll) crashes the game at start: close Overwolf before playing (#199).
• Runtime: cannot create 8128 MiB of guest memory (error 1450): enable the page file (#104).

Textures and lighting

• Ground textures turning yellow, orange or white after some time of play, often after Poseidon or the Heart of Gaia (#56, #59, #131, #138, #155, #193, #194, #200), and wrong lighting in the Heart of Gaia (#197, #206). Workaround: Performance → Deferred GPU readbacks off; it fixes the textures but some scenes stutter. Under investigation.
• Steam Deck and other RADV systems: block corruption on Kratos and the logo (#143, #204). Cause found by @hugouchoasborges (vkQueueBindSparse sent to a queue without sparse binding on RADV); the fix is not in this release yet.

GPUs

• Intel HD 630 (#35): 3D renders black or blue only. A test build is in windows-v2.1.8-intel-hd630-test1.
• Intel Iris Xe (#188): crash on the first level load, Fault: read access to 0000000000000008 at guest offset 0x160b8. Intel UHD (#216): Device lost during submit in the cutscene where Athena gives Kratos the blades. Other Intel graphics glitches: #205, #206.
• AMD RX 6600 and Ryzen APUs (#121, #142): the picture is drawn small in a corner. RX 550 (#196): crash Unknown data_format=15. RX 5500M (#181): ErrorOutOfDeviceMemory after 15 to 20 minutes.

Performance

• Large FPS drops with Spartan Rage, the Blade of Olympus and the Nemean Cestus, also on fast GPUs and at lower resolutions (#68, #118, #164, #182).
• The shader cache (user\cache\...\pipeline-binaries) can grow past 20 GB (#177).
• The performance overlay adds input lag (#153).

Progress and audio

• Reported progress blockers: the button prompt loops in the Hades and Scorpius fights (#110), an endless loading in one area (#114), a crash when jumping into a pit after the hammer statues (#170) and the floor not loading after the chain near the first meeting with Athena (#195). Please attach user\last_run.log and a save from before that spot.
• No music in some cutscenes (#77) and audio drifting out of sync in the cutscene after the River Styx (#167).

Linux and others

• Linux: prepare failed: expected PS4 SELF (#151); black screen on Ubuntu 26.04 (#221), probably the same deadlock fixed by #119, please retest.
• Android Wine/Proton (Winlator, GameHub) is not supported: the PS4 address range cannot be reserved (#139).

This release

• In-game button icons: the controller drawn in the pause menu stays a DualShock 4, switching controllers while the game runs needs a restart, and a few hints name a button in plain text.

Validation

• Python suite on Windows: 265 tests, all passing (the 5 Windows-only failures of 2.1.8 are fixed by #141).
• In-game button icons: generator checked on a CUSA01623 dump (all 19 textures replaced, WAD size, entry table and headers identical, game files unchanged by hash); Original, Xbox, Nintendo, remapped buttons and Match my controller played with a DualSense in the development build and in the release package.
• Update view and mods: both bugs reproduced on Windows with the old code and fixed with the new one, on a real dump.
• C++ tests graphics-settings, perf-overlay, orb-multiplier and stat-multipliers passed; the graphics-settings and patch tests were written to fail before the FSR 1 and black screen fixes.
• Release package built from main (af5930a) with MSYS2 CLANG64 and played on an RX 6700 XT with the intro on: the log lists Bug Fix - Startup Black Screen with a patch selection saved by an older version, the opening reaches the menu, and FSR 1 is gone from the in-game menu. The launcher reports 2.2.0.

Thanks to @brunoweierich-ctrl for finding the cause of the black screen at the opening; to @hmathsan for the in-game button icons, @devLucasEmiliano for the new launcher, @1M7md-CS for the Windows junction fixes, @jleandrocampos for the frame capture fix and @vitorinoluca for the Spanish README; to @hugouchoasborges for finding the cause of the Steam Deck corruption; to @Oxygen991 and @CoBEpeuH for requesting the controller icons; and everyone who reported and tested.

You still need your own God of War III Remastered game files. No game files are included.