Game News The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Revealed

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: CD Projekt; The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Gameinformer generously informs us about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, CD Projekt's upcoming, genre-redefining smash-hit.

Our March cover story gives a world-exclusive peek into the next generation of RPGs with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This standalone sequel takes the fascinating stories and characters, non-linear plotlines, and difficult decisions that the franchise is known for and puts them all in an open world 30 times larger than the previous game – an enormous setting even larger than Skyrim's vast expanse, made possible with the new REDengine 3 technology that developer CD Projekt RED is debuting with the game. Our huge feature dives into everything The Witcher 3 has to offer, and it's a lot: the detective work that precedes deadly combat when monster hunting, storylines that weave and twist together between political intrigue and otherworldly menaces, and a tired hero who wants to set things right but can't put down his swords until his conscience allows – if it ever does.

Coming in 2014 on PC and "all high-end platforms available" (CD Projekt RED isn't saying flat-out that it's a next-gen game, but it's a safe bet that new console announcements in the coming months will define the term "high-end platform"), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt stretches from stormy islands to war-torn forests and a sprawling dark fantasy metropolis without a loading screen anywhere to be found.

Then some details from the Gameinformer issue surfaced in this thread on NeoGAF (since Gamebanshee's Best of 2012 list shattered my faith in them, I do steal this particular newsbit from them only with greatest regret and hesitation):

World supposedly 20% bigger than Skyrim's, says development team. [Tentative, obviously]
30-40 minutes to cross world on Horseback
New streaming technology (CDRED Engine 3)
Geralt's Memory is restored
No chapters/acts
Dude is fucking DONE fighting for everyone else
Everything from solving MYSTERIES to slaying monsters
Coming out on "all top-of-the-line" consoles - I'd say that confirms next-gen is in.

So, bigger than Skyrim and more non-linear than The Witcher 2 I bet.

 

[Dexter]

EDIT: Full GameInformer article Scan is available here: http://pressakey.com/news,3269,The-Witcher-3-Wild-Hunt-Gameinformer-Titelstory-Erste-Screens,.html​

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Screenshots:​

As per the other thread, more info here: http://gamingeverything.com/39177/witcher-3-confirmed-is-next-gen-featured-in-game-informer/

I won't hide that I'm pretty hyped, especially since I liked The Witcher 2 very much.

Anyway, from the stuff mentioned in that article these are the most concerning for me so far:

- The team is deciding between using a handful of in-combat special moves for particular attacks and a slow-motion quick-time event style
- Moving more toward romance and away from shallow sexual encounters
- World supposedly 20% bigger than Skyrim’s

- DO NOT WANT Quick-time events in any way
- That was one of the best things about the Witcher previously, god shall hopefully righteously smite them down if they give any room to BioWarian design in any way…
- Bigger is almost never better, Skyrim was shit because most places, quests and NPCs didn’t have anything interesting to offer and if you have been to one or two caves you had been to them all. I hope they’ll keep in mind that one of the best things about their two previous games was that most of the content was uniquely hand-designed without much filler and grind

Gothic 1+2 and even Risen beat any game made by Bethesda. It depends how much I’ll like The Witcher 3, if they decide to go the carefully hand-crafted and thought-through Open World style with interesting characters, environments/level-design and quests like Piranha Bytes (and their previous game Witcher 2) or the “let’s fill everything with dragons and caves and shit, even if it’s all boring” of Bethesda. I’d much rather see mentioned that all their content is uniquely hand-crafted and interesting than “20% larger landmass than Skyrim”, I couldn’t give less of a toss about that if it is all boring filler or bad design.

That said, I’m happy that it also won’t have to suffer under 7-year-old console hardware this time around, since they obviously wanted to port Witcher 2 from the get-go and it influenced the design of the game in general a lot. The “Next Gen” consoles will likely offer a lot more “Open World” games in general and players can be happy to see the dreaded “loading screen” and generally cut-off areas you have to enter through doors and similar a lot less.

 

[aris]

Open world, not sure if I like it. The focus around the linear story of The witcher 2 served it relatively well. If open world is what I think it is, we don't need another sandbox game, there are more than enough to go around as is. But otherwise I trust that it's going to be a solid game, like both the witcher and the witcher 2 were.

Inbefore "LOL THIS GAME IS GONNA SUCK BECAUSE IT IS MAINSTREAM, POPULAR AND WILL SELL A LOT OF COPIES"-codex-hipsters.

 

[Minttunator]

AWWWWWWWW YEAAAAAAH! It's going to be MAJESTIC!

 

[Commissar Draco]

Romances? In My Witcher?! : x

 

[Trash]

That looks absofuckinglutely fantastic in almost every way. I want this.

Do hope this marks a return to the more pastoral setting and small-town vibe that The Witcher 1 had. I loved tooling up to enter a crypt to kill one or two ghouls. I digged taking on contracts to watch the waterfront and kill maybe three or four little critters. It felt more like being a genuine monster exterminator who was also trying to get back his memory than Teh Epic that was the 2nd game. An open world game would work splendidly for just that.

And they're going to release a toolset as well. Neat.

Time to go and find myself a copy of GameInformer March 2013 pdf I guess.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Open world could work for Witcher pretty well. Witchers are pretty much wandering mercs killing monsters here and there, and not some epic heroes. Even random quest generation could work in that context. I do worry about balance though, and hope combat will not be QTE-based.

 

[Trash]

- Enemies don’t scale to the player’s level
- Over 100 hours of hand-scripted quests
- Major events in the main storyline are “gates” for the state of the world
- Ex: village threatened by bandits might be abandoned after certain events if the player doesn’t help
- Witcher 3 doesn’t have completely different environments based on singular choices due to the open world, but there are similarly impactful decisions
- You’ll be involved with mutually exclusive storylines and situations based on certain momentous choices
- Enemy AI completely rebuilt
- No scripted boss encounters

And I'm once again loving the artstyle judging from those screenies.

 

[Untermensch]

So a team smaller than Bethesda is making a bigger game than Skyrim? Expect a world more empty than Skyrim.
Other than that(and QTE's) this looks interesting.

The Witcher 2 is certanly better than most action-rpg's, so this could atlest be worth the 50% discount price :D

 

[Captain Shrek]

This looks good. Looking forward.

 

[RK47]

oh god. Geralt has a beard.

 

[abnaxus]

- Enemies don’t scale to the player’s level
- Over 100 hours of hand-scripted quests
- Major events in the main storyline are “gates” for the state of the world
- Ex: village threatened by bandits might be abandoned after certain events if the player doesn’t help
- Witcher 3 doesn’t have completely different environments based on singular choices due to the open world, but there are similarly impactful decisions
- You’ll be involved with mutually exclusive storylines and situations based on certain momentous choices
- Enemy AI completely rebuilt
- No scripted boss encounters

wow it's like Fable 2/3 all over again.

 

[Infinitron]

So a team smaller than Bethesda is making a bigger game than Skyrim? Expect a world more empty than Skyrim.

Yeah, or maybe Daniel Vavra was right. I wonder how he feels about this news.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Please let this be better than Twitcher 2 :crosses fingers:

 

[Konjad]

Sounds interesting, but unlike most of the 'dexers I prefer not to judge games before they are released.

 

[Brother None]

So a team smaller than Bethesda is making a bigger game than Skyrim? Expect a world more empty than Skyrim.

Yeah, or maybe Daniel Vavra was right. I wonder how he feels about this news.

Hey, it's not hard to be more competent than Bethesda. And they did note expanding the team significantly.

Going from storyfag mostly-linear but with some nice C&C to open world is quite a gamble, especially if they want to keep C&C which is extremely hard to handle in an open-world format. Looking forward to it, hope they can pull it off.

 

[Hobo Elf]

That looks absofuckinglutely fantastic in almost every way. I want this.

Do hope this marks a return to the more pastoral setting and small-town vibe that The Witcher 1 had. I loved tooling up to enter a crypt to kill one or two ghouls. I digged taking on contracts to watch the waterfront and kill maybe three or four little critters. It felt more like being a genuine monster exterminator who was also trying to get back his memory than Teh Epic that was the 2nd game. An open world game would work splendidly for just that.

And they're going to release a toolset as well. Neat.

Time to go and find myself a copy of GameInformer March 2013 pdf I guess.

So very much this. I guess the best way to describe it would be that The Witcher 1 was more like a gritty pulp sword & sorcery tale while TW2 was closer to high fantasy. Less is more, especially when you are in a hick town with paranormal problems. Having yet another epic skeleton army invading the countryside isn't as cool as just one ghoul that creeps the town in the night and takes villagers one-by-one and it's up to you to figure it out.

 

[Infinitron]

So very much this. I guess the best way to describe it would be that The Witcher 1 was more like a gritty pulp sword & sorcery tale while TW2 was closer to Game of Thrones.

Fixed.

 

[RK47]

Sounds interesting, but unlike most of the 'dexers I prefer judge games before they are released. DA2.

 

[aris]

So very much this. I guess the best way to describe it would be that The Witcher 1 was more like a gritty pulp sword & sorcery tale while TW2 was closer to Game of Thrones.

Fixed.

 

[abnaxus]

- One boss: ice giant

Bros I think I'ma gonna spam Igni

 

[Hobo Elf]

So very much this. I guess the best way to describe it would be that The Witcher 1 was more like a gritty pulp sword & sorcery tale while TW2 was closer to Game of Thrones.

Fixed.

this works too

 

[Stinger]

Nice try. I've played Witcher 2, I've heard a lot of this bullshit before.

 

[garren]

Within range of a scene of interest, the mechanic conveys clues to the player through the witcher muttering to himself and/or visual depictions of past events that represent Geralt’s reasoning

So no automagical compass that points where everything is?

Fast travel: instantly revisit any discovered location

. Unless it's morrowind style.

 

[Konjad]

Sounds interesting, but unlike most of the 'dexers I prefer judge games before they are released. DA2.

Nope. I enjoyed any The Witcher more than any Dragon Age and overall I have much better opinion of The Witchers than Dragon Ages.

 

[Ulminati]

It's going to be shit and the potato nations will think it's the second coming of Jesus.

 

[hoverdog]

Wieśmin 3: Dziki Zgon : x