The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Preview

The guys over at GamesTM managed to catch up with CD Projekt RED’s Maciej Szcześni for some one-on-one time with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and that’s led to this commentary-laden preview that calls the open-world threequel a “Skyrim killer”. An excerpt:

CD Projekt RED has said that the side quests will double the play time, and it’s down to the organic nature of exploration that makes travelling the world which takes roughly 40 minutes from one side to another on horseback a meaningful pursuit.

(In the Slavic mythos from which the game also draws inspiration, adventure is always around the corner,) says Szcześnik of the distractions littered across The Witcher 3’s continent. (You don’t have to venture on a quest to another part of the world to have the adventure of your life. Our idea of a living world is one that is dripping with stories that want to be experienced; stories that want to be told and listened to. They don’t necessarily have to be grand tales of saving the world; sometimes they’re very intimate or emotional. And they’re always very different. This is what fuels gamers to explore the world we’re presenting. In The Witcher 3, adventure is always within reach.)

The world in The Witcher 3 is 35 times bigger than what you saw in The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings. and that was a pretty big game itself,) exclaims Szcześnik. (Because of this, it’s more difficult to build environments simply because of the scale. Gamers can now see more of the Continent, which has many diverse environments the rocky Skellige archipelago, the murky and war-ravaged No Man’s Land and the beautiful yet corrupted Novigrad.)