The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Preview

While as far as I can tell there’s no real new information in it, I’m sure our reader won’t mind if I point this hands-off preview for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt from Official Xbox Magazine to their attention. Here’s a sampling to set the tone:

CD Projekt is changing much for this final game, pushing its technology to the limit. “Technology has progressed to the point where we can finally tell the story the way we want, with the visuals we want, in the world we imagined,” says studio head Adam Badowski. The team have built an entirely new engine, so they can make a truly open world for players to explore, that they claim is thirty times the size of the (admittedly small) Witcher 2.

What we’ve seen of it so far is impressive, straight out of the Lord of the Rings movies: huge draw distances, showing hills rolling down to the sea and high mountain passes covered in snow. Out there are distinct cultures, scattered across the land in villages and cities. In this world, like Skyrim and unlike Oblivion, enemies do not scale with the character – wander into a high-level area without enough tools or the right equipment and Geralt won’t live to regret it.

So far, we’ve seen two travel systems that can be used to explore this huge area. First off, there’s sailing. We’ve not seen how this works yet, or the mechanics of control, but the whole feel is that of a very dark Legend of Zelda, combining Windwaker and Ocarina of Time, with Geralt exploring the frozen seas of the North in a small dinghy, complete with other galleys and even whales. Second, Geralt is able to ride horses (which are probably the best-looking horses that we’ve seen in any game since Hudson Horstachio in Viva Piñata).