Last week at E3, CD Projekt showed a five minute gameplay demo of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, in which Geralt of Rivia hunted down a griffin in the forest before returning to the city of Novigrad with its head. In an interesting move, they chose to continue that demo from where it stopped in two subsequent private demonstrations with the folks from IGN and Gamespot.

The first part, at IGN, shows Geralt riding through Novigrad and meeting with Dijkstra, an important character from the original novels, to turn in the griffin head. In return, he receives a tip about the location of a creature who was seen with a certain "ashen-haired lass" who he's apparently after - Ciri, I assume. The highlight of this part of the demo is Novigrad itself, which seems amazingly large and detailed. According to the CD Projekt guy accompanying the broadcast, it'll have four different districts and be full of choice and consequence.


The story continues in Gamespot's demo, where Geralt arrives at a swamp and finds the creature he's after. It's a mute, child-like Gollum-thingy living in a burrow, which beckons Geralt to follow it through the swamp. This part of the demo isn't as interesting as the first in my opinion, but it does showcase some combat against the Witcher series' favorite race of trash mobs, drowners, and the new "dismemberment system" by which you will be able to chop them up into little bits. The CD Projekt guy explains that the game's combat system will be "tactical", but also "casual"/accessible, easy to learn but hard to master, yadda yadda.


It's all very next-gen. But seriously guys, don't use the word "casual".