The Witcher 3 Impresses Once Again - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 14 June 2014 / 4,846 Views
Having never completed the first two Witcher games (I've played a small amount of The Witcher 2) it's always surprising to me just how excited seeing more of The Witcher 3 can make me. There's something about this massive world that seems so unique and new that it makes it tough to wait for the game's release. This year I got another chance to check out The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and my excitement remains intact. I will try to keep things fairly general so as to avoid spoilers for a game where the choices you make and how they affect the story are a large part of what makes it great.
As the demo began, Geralt was riding a horse down an old road towards a large city. Strapped to the horse was the head of a griffin that he'd apparently killed just before coming back to the city. Passing by all of the different NPCs, the representatives from CD Projekt Red assured everyone in attendance that all the NPCs that we saw have their own lives and a day and night cycle that will affect their activities.
Easily the most striking thing about the promise of The Witcher 3 is just how massive the world is and how much of it you have access to. We were told that there were no artificial barriers throughout this metropolis or the world surrounding it. If you see something in the distance you can go to it, though it might take you quite a while. During the demo sign posts were used to fast travel between two different areas which apparently would have taken about 20 minutes on horseback to traverse. This could be seen as a detriment if the world wasn't so beautiful and packed with little optional things to do on the side to take your mind off of the lengthy trip.
Geralt was now in a swamp and he was accosted by enemies called Drowners (dead bodies that had been dumped in the swamp and sometimes come back to life), but they were easily dispatched by a Witcher. One tactic you can use is to light the green gas coming up from the swamp with an Igni spell which starts an explosive reaction. Combining environmental factors along with the character's innate abilities is one of the best ways to keep a game like this fresh.
Next he used his enhanced senses to pick up the trail of an NPC that would hopefully have some information for him. Of course nothing is free and he was soon given a task by the NPC after finding him. This eventually pitted Geralt against a pack of harpies, which was a great time to show off a new weapon: a small crossbow called Gabriel.
The next quest came with two different ways to complete it and I was happy to see that the morality of the choices wasn't simply black and white. I don't mind being “tricked” by not having all the information when forced to make a choice, because that's how it happens in real life, and I'm always happy to be given a choice that isn't “would you like to save this orphanage or kick this puppy?”.
I'm sorry if this preview ended up being a bit too vague for our readers, but I really don't want to spoil what I saw. What was on show was extremely impressive from the actually meaningful moral choices to the sprawling, fully explorable world. I'm not usually one to join a series halfway through but I'm definitely going to have to jump into this one when The Witcher 3 is released on PS4, Xbox One, and PC in February 2015.
