In their latest development diary for The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, Polish developer CD Projekt RED revealed more about the world you’ll be able to explore while in Geralt’s hunting boots.
Right off the bat, it’s apparent this installment will focus on creating a vast open world experience. The exact numbers, in something along the lines of square miles, are hard to come by, but it’s been widely reported that the playable game map will be “20% larger than Skyrim.” So take from that what you will.
It shouldn’t be surprising that Projekt RED have added a bunch of new ways to cover that distance, besides just hoofing it. You’ll be able to call your horse over at any point (a la Red Dead Redemption). Alternatively, you also will have access to a boat - footage showed Geralt tacking around a snow-capped fjord full of waves. Some regions in the game can only be reached by sailing, though your boat can also reportedly be destroyed in a storm… or by angry sea monster. Oh, and Geralt has learned how to swim and dive beneath the waves since the last installment in the series, just in case you feel like fighting those sea monsters on their home turf.
Of course, as the name suggests, this is a game about hunting and slaying monsters. To the end, the developers talked a bit about Geralt’s abilities to track and hunt monsters, both through investigating clues, and questioning villagers plagued by all the horrors Projekt RED have come up with. As with other open-world titles, you can also be attacked at random while exploring the world.
While monsters are the main draw, the diary also showed a few brief glimpses of combat with other humans. To that end, Geralt will be able to fully interact with NPCs, up to and including threatening them with a drawn weapon. Your previous actions can also have an effect on how characters react to you, though we haven’t yet seen this in action. We’ll be interested to see how Geralt’s Witcher powers play out against human combatants in the game.
The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is set to be released on February 24th of next year for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Check out the full developer’s diary below and follow us on Twitter, Facebook for more up to date Witcher news as it comes.
Peter Yankowski
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