The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Next Gen Consoles and PC (not) in 2014

- World supposedly 20% bigger than Skyrim’s
- 30-40 minutes to cross world on Horseback
- New streaming technology (RED Engine 3)
- Geralt’s Memory is restored
- No chapters/acts
- Dude is DONE fighting for everyone else
- Everything from solving MYSTERIES to slaying monsters
- Coming out on “all top-of-the-line” consoles
- The team felt it missed the huge freedom of open-world games like Skyrim
- Proper mounted combat still being tested
- Currently not a definite part of the game
- Horses will be in, though, since they’re important for navigation
- Ships float on the water in true physics interactions
- Team has doubled in size
- No chapters, acts, or any artificial break-points
- Geralt can seamlessly cross from one end of the world to the other thanks to REDengine 3
- No loading screens while traveling in the open world
- Can explore on foot, by horseback, and via boat
- Pursue your long-lost love, play the game of empires on behalf of the northern kingdoms that still claim independence, and thwart the nefarious Wild Hunt
- Fast travel: instantly revisit any discovered location
- Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz: “A huge goal is to keep the high quality of our quests, with all the cinematics and impressive events and moments.”
- Point of interest will always be in sight
- Players will be beckoned to explore dank caves, embattled villages, decaying ruins, etc.
- Over 100 hours of hand-scripted quests
- Quests: help villagers, engineer the succession of the Skellige kings, etc.
- Use monster hunting for adventure, incoming, and unique rewards
- There are mini-games based on the area of the world
- Ex: Skellige has knife-throwing
- Gain exclusive rewards from mini-games
- Don’t have to complete mini-games to proceed in the story
- Monsters, bandits, traders, animals, and more will attack anyone they deem hostile
- Enemies don’t scale to the player’s level
- Slaying monsters, fighting hostile humans in the different forms they come in, collecting items, leveling up are in the game
- World 40 times larger than the last game
- Three different aspects to narration
- Lowest level: free-form activities like monster hunting, crafting, individual standalone quests
- Second step: political situation and Nilfgaardian invasion is resolved through the core plotline of the major areas (Skellige, Novigrad, No Man’s Land)
- Each land has its own storyline
- Can abandon the storyline, but will have repercussions later
- Not doing a plotline is a choice the player has
- Main narrative: search for Geralt’s loved ones and conflict with the Wild Hunt
- Multiple branches of narratives that feed into each other
- Don’t have to do anything outside the main storyline to beat the game
- Could have help in a main-line encounter from an ally you gained in the Skellige archipelago if you’ve completed certain quests in certain ways
- Major events in the main storyline are “gates” for the state of the world
- Ex: village threatened by bandits might be abandoned after certain events if the player doesn’t help
- Weather effects are dynamically generated and fully modeled as real volumetric clouds rather than being simply painted on the skybox
- In contrast to the last game, Geralt encounters communities and individuals with monster-related problems that need solving
- There aren’t contract-like assignments this time
- Press the left trigger to turn on Geralt’s witcher senses
- Can glean information from a crime scene upon discovering it
- Within range of a scene of interest, the mechanic conveys clues to the player through the witcher muttering to himself and/or visual depictions of past events that represent Geralt’s reasoning
- Time of day and other conditions determine where monsters appear and their abilities
- Can strike critical areas in combat based on how much you learn about monster anatomy and tactics
- The team is deciding between using a handful of in-combat special moves for particular attacks and a slow-motion quick-time event style
- Monsters you defeat leave otherwise unobtainable alchemical and crafting ingredients needed for making of unique items, potions, mutagens
- These allow Geralt to gain special powers and upgrades in the new mutation development tree
- These kills serve as the witcher’s primary method of income
- Moving more toward romance and away from shallow sexual encounters
- “We want to treat it maturely like we did in The Witcher 2. We are not bringing sex cards back.”
- Witcher 3 doesn’t have completely different environments based on singular choices due to the open world, but there are similarly impactful decisions
- You’ll be involved with mutually exclusive storylines and situations based on certain momentous choices
- Won’t be on the same level as Witcher 2, however
- Game mechanics based on previous games, but the team is revisiting many details
- Backward difficulty curve being addressed
- Reworking the flow of combat
- 96 animations for Geralt’s combat moves (last game had 20)
- Game has a “weighting” system for the camera to help keep the biggest threats in frame at all times
- Combat system: three big changes to solve the problem of being locked into long animations
- Every button press mapped to a single strike
- Each move takes a roughly equivalent time to perform
- Can always interrupt your current action to immediately dodge or block
- Can block/dodge when out of stamina, but you’ll be staggered
- Team wants to make the combat “more intimate”
- “You don’t run – in the Witcher 2 you were running constantly. You walk, but your attacks are very fast. Your opponents also walk but they have charges and things like that.”
- Geralt’s dodge roll replaced by a pivot move
- It retains its defensive utility without game-breaking mobility
- Attacks faster than in The Witcher 2
- Enemy AI completely rebuilt
- No scripted boss encounters
- One boss: ice giant
- Roughly a dozen types of interactive objects
- Ex: Can irritate a wasp with the telekinetic Aard sign to make a damaging distraction for his foes and disperse the swarm with the fiery Igni sign once the wasp swarm becomes a problem
- Magical signs are retooled
- Each of the five signs has a basic form such as Igni’s new flamethrower effect
- If the player advances down the magic tree as Geralt levels up, can unlock a second form of the sign
- For Igni, would unlock a 360-degree blast that immolates anything close
- Yrdren’s small trap can be changed into a bigger field that slows enemies
- Player retains the use of the basic form
- Other two trees are based on swordsmanship and alchemy
- Swordfighting: can unlock new strikes and boosts such as improved stamina and parrying
- Alchemy: mutation mechanic moved off to a separate development path, independent of the level-up process
- Alchemy specialization is based more on potions
- Improvements available for the horse and boat
- These aspects are still in development
- One idea: players could access their long-term storage stash from their horse as well as from inns
- Team knows about frustrating inventory management in Witcher 2
- Crafting still important for enhancing Geralt’s capabilities
- Can customize crafted items
- Some components are can be substituted for similar things
- Ex: monster scales instead of leather in a piece of armor
- This affects the properties of the final item
- Can find unique components as part of monster hunts or questlines
- Combine these with special recipes to make artifacts of immense power
- Each armor piece has a unique appearance
- Armor has improved presentation and new cloth simulation
- Can visit a barber to change Geralt’s hairstyle

Damn, I got the "bad ending" a while back. All that game time wasted on a gloomy outcome. Typical.

It seems the "best" ending is based on more of a middle ground, as being too much of a proper gent and a caring father to Ciri like I did can also lead to that less than satisfying conclusion at the swamp. Even though I did some good stuff such as not taking the money from her real father and letting her make that grave for her friend, the worst ending was still cemented due to having Geralt go along with her to see the Lodge and giving her that necklace at the laboratory(instead of letting her have a friggen temper tantrum and ransacking the place).

I may try and go back to one of my earlier saves to fix some of that, if I can(and it isn't too far behind). I shan't be screwed over!

I did a side quest for Keira Metz that involved exploring a mysterious tower.  Long story, short version, a mob of disgruntled townsfolk attacked and horribly murdered the local nobles, only one of said nobles wasn't dead.  She had taken a paralysing sleeping draught which only half worked, and she'd woken up surrounded by corpses and rats, who took rather a liking to her paralysed warm body and ate her alive.  She's a bit pissy about it, naturally, and asked Geralt to bring her remains to her Beloved, who had left her for dead, in order to bring her peace.

Thing is, I wanted to finish exploring the tower before doing anything, so I was running around with the Magic Lamp that lets you see ghosts and the innocent ghost suddenly goes all psycho on me, revealing herself to me a far more disturbing creature than she let herself seem.  I ran away, got her one-time boyfriend to come back and try to pacify her.  She wanted a kiss, and he obliged, despite her missing her entire lower jaw, most of her teeth, her eyes, hair and having a tongue a foot long.  So, he died anyway.

found Ciri.  I won't lie, I was choking up a little seeing Geralt's reaction to her lifless body, and more so when he flashes back to the little girl running into his arms.

It was also genuinely fun to see Ciri at Kaer Morhen, rushing to hug Vesemir and hearing Yennefer totally lose her cold, constantly-derisive tone and squeal like a schoolgirl at a pop star gig.  Probably.  Anyway, she then proceeds to lay a huge smacker on Geralt's lips, right before Triss arrives.   Interestingly, Triss refers to Ciri as "little sis."  Given that Geralt has the option of choosing Triss over Yen, he'd be banging his adopted daugher's elder step-sister.  That sounds like family drama worthy of Jeremy Kyle.  Glad I chose Yen.

Back to the scene where Geralt finds Ciri though, and damn, cinematically, the whole thing was beautiful.  The slow pause as he opens the door, the framing as he's silhouetted against the door looking at her unmoving body, the way he rolls her over, head in his hands and then hugs her, accepting she's dead.  Then she's not, and it's wonderful.  That's going in my top 10 gaming moments, without a doubt.

The Battle of Kaer Morhen was epic, a true multi-faceted encounter, and even having gathered all available allies (at least, I got an achievement for just that, even though I had a couple of people say no to me when gathering) the end of the battle still went a bit Pete Tong. Not sure if there's any way to prevent that, but given the strength of the cut scenes afterwards I rather suspect not.

Anyway, I've been trying to do things without a guide as much as possible, so I'm not sure what to expect from the end of the game, but Ciri convinced me to go with her to Velen and - finally - fight the Crones. They're utterly revolting, and having Ciri - who is, frankly, grossly overpowered at this stage of the game, and could only muster strength to run from them last time around - cut them apart was so damn satisfying. Almost as satisfying as Geralt smashing in Imlerith's head with his own hammer.

I was half expecting Yen to give me some shit for not taking Ciri straight to the Emporer, as I'd agreed to do, or for putting her in danger, but she was unusually cool with it.

Did a few more story related quests, including being taken through several portals to other worlds, some of which were gorgeous, especially considering they're in the game for mere moments, and then did the side mission where you help Dijkstra and Roche try to kill Radovid. Radovid is the Donald Trump of the North, persecuting mages and non-humans and generally being a colossal asshat, so I had no real hesitation in helping end him. The end of the quest did surprise me though; Dikjstra, who had previously been shown to have a relatively level head on his shoulders, decided to betray Roche and when I stuck up for Roche, he ordered his gang of four goons to kill me as well. What? You've seen me slaughter armies, why do you think a few goons will stop me? That seemed a touch out of character.

Now heading to Skellige to look for something to help me stop the King of the Wild Hunt, once and for all.

Got the ending where Geralt tells Emhyr that Ciri's dead, only to go and meet her in the pub in White Orchard a few moments.  They do a bit of Witchering together before going their separate ways.  Geralt and Yennefer live an untterly mundane life, but that's all either had ever wanted.  It doesn't make any mention of whether or not they had any further contact with Ciri, but given they're essentially a family unit, I'd be flabberghasted if they didn't meet up at least once a year.

Also, Ciri in the final battle was literally one-shotting everything, she's hilariously broken.