The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Preview

There’s a new preview for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt over at EDGE Online, seemingly covering a different demo than the one shown at E3. It wouldn’t be a GameBanshee preview post if we didn’t have a snippet to go with the link:

Geralt is a monster hunter by trade, however, which means many of his enemies will be too large or feral to wield swords. Our demo concludes with Geralt and an NPC companion taking on a giant in his lair. Enemy AI has been improved to the extent that our foe is aware of his surroundings, ripping stalactites from the ceiling to swing at us with abandon. Were we to move the fight outside instead, his attack patterns would be different. Using Witcher Senses a new ability, clearly building on the Arkham series’ Detective Mode you’ll be able to identify enemy weak points. Target them and you won’t just be depleting a health bar, but a moveset; hack off an arm, for instance, and your foe might lose his most powerful attack.

Witcher Senses are used outside of battle as well. We see Geralt turning a corpse and a bloodstain into a ghostly replay of the events leading up to them, then tracking a murderous giant back to its dank lair.

And while not entirely new, alchemy has also undergone refinement. Long-duration potions that buff stats and grant powerful boons are still brewed off the battlefield, but they can now be used during combat. (You trigger the effects of those potions whenever you like,) Szczesnik says. (We’re experimenting with that right now, so it’s not confirmed 100 per cent, but we plan to have those potions not wear off. You’ll just be replacing them when you drink another one.) Reading between the lines, it seems the change is being prompted by many players barely indulging their inner alchemists at all: (It’s a huge problem in every game I know. People tend to not use potions because they stack them they try to keep them for later.)