The Witcher 3: Five Things You Need to Know

There are five major elements that PlayStation Universe feels that we need to brush up on before putting in our pre-orders for CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and they’ve taken the time to elaborate on them in a new article. A couple of examples to whet your appetite:

2) Everything is hand-crafted.

CD Projekt RED’s development approach forgoes any procedurally generated content (think Skyrim’s Radiant Quest system) for a world in which is everything is built from scratch for a reason. “We’re very far from procedurally generated content being better than content designed and executed by flesh and blood developers,” Konrad says. “Having that said, we’re not enemies of an element of randomness in our game–not everything should be done by hand, but in terms of telling a story or engaging gamers–the more is part of a plan, the better.”

Of course, more hand-crafted environments, quests, and characters means more work for a team with more than one blockbuster game in development. “Our approach is definitely more demanding in terms of development. We had to double our quest design teams and our writers are always over their heads in work, but it pays off,” he assures me. “Our world is coherent and seamless. And it really pulls you in.”

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5) You can go anywhere (but you can’t attack townspeople).

As I watched CD Projekt RED demonstrate The Witcher 3 at a private E3 screening, I couldn’t help but stare longingly at a 300-foot cliffside as Geralt careened by on horseback. ‘Jump off me!’ the cliff seemed to say. And you can, if you damn well please. “You can go everywhere within our huge game world without invisible walls,” Konrad explains. “If jumping cliffs is your thing, you can break your neck as many times as you wish! The world you see is as seamless as we can make it.”

It’s evidence that CD Projekt RED is truly shedding the limited exploration of past titles for true open-world freedom, but a few things are still off-limits. “Currently you won’t be able to attack townsfolk, but this may change depending on the direction the team finally decides to take,” he continued. “It’s a question of the universe itself–Geralt has been trained to protect people from monsters and killing them would mean he’s becoming a monster himself. Killing townsfolk breaks immersion and derails the narrative–since we deeply value storytelling, we will always go with the option that supports it rather than giving you a choice that the world doesn’t benefit from.”

“If we choose not to give you the option to kill NPCs is not because we can’t do it, it’s because the overall gameplay experience will benefit from it in our opinion.”