The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Weather Interview

There’s a Q&A with The Witcher 3 art producer MichaÅ‚ Stec up on GameInformer today, with the primary focus of the conversation hovering around the weather implementation and effects in the soon-to-be-released RPG threequel.  An excerpt:

How often will the weather change as you play?

All the time the weather is constantly changing. This is a randomized mechanism; working it out took us quite a while, since it required a lot of testing, checking if how it felt in the game was okay, or if it was too much. The weights given to particular weather conditions change depending on the region in the swamps of No Man’s Land it’s practically always foggy and rains a lot, whereas in Skellige you can expect more thunderstorms near the coasts and sunshine up in the mountains.

What do you think the changing weather and day/night shifts add to the experience?

I think it’s really important it adds a lot to the believability of the world. We were able to create moments in the game like you get in life: You look at the sky and think, “Damn, it’s gonna rain, I need to find shelter and meditate till morning.” There are places in the game where you don’t want to go after dark dark alleys in the city, for example. Personally, I love playing at night, particularly when the moon’s shining brightly. Monsters act differently at different times of day, and so do Geralt’s skills noonwraiths famously are tougher around noon, and Geralt can acquire Abilities that, for example, speed up his Vitality regeneration during the day.