Tải The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt First Look!

A living world wouldn’t be complete without a sprawling town.

Watch Dogs và Assassin’s Creed Unity, as current-gen examples, have given us more freedom in the xuất hiện world. Those titles provide far more buildings khổng lồ enter and explore, but the side nội dung didn’t hold player attention for long. Unity’s minimap looks like somebody dumped a bucket of icons on the screen, with so many things to vày that you could hardly see the maps underneath. Unfortunately, after running a few of these side missions, repetition sets in with the only variables being tougher enemies. Titles lượt thích Dragon Age Inquisition and Saints Row IV began to lớn rely on collection quests to fill their world rather than story-driven nội dung to expand their universe, watering down the open-world genre as a whole.

Rockstar’s Grand Theft tự động hóa V team built a living world where every mission is hand-crafted và story driven, but even that trò chơi had some filler nội dung like towing vehicles, xe taxi work, jogging, tennis and the like, though it seems lượt thích those were included for tradition as much as to further bring their world lớn life.

The Witcher 3 is right around the corner, releasing on May 19th for PC, Xbox One, và Play
Station 4. It is the first open-world title from CD Projekt Red, taking their otherwise linear Witcher series to lớn a scale far beyond its predecessors. With 36 endings, over 30,000 lines of recorded dialogue, a world 35x larger than The Witcher 2, 50 hours of main story, & another 150 of side content, The Witcher 3 is clearly looking to make a statement; but we’ve heard these sorts of stats out of other titles and found ourselves let down a bit on the other side of the release of those games. What makes The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt different from its contemporaries?

The World of The Witcher – Dangerous & AliveThe easiest thing to bình luận on is the most obvious — the visuals. Rather than dig into the incredible detail that went into every piece of gear, armor, sword, or hairstyle that Geralt sports, let’s take a look at the world. CD Projekt Red’s vast world was built opposite the usual methodology. I’ve been to lớn more game studios than I can count, và have seen the process of constructing new games frequently. More often than not, developers will sit down and craft the storyline first, creating panels for the beats of the lore. With the basics of that complete, they will begin to craft the larger spaces of the world. Villages and towns are erected, with surrounding landscapes built khổng lồ help create a personality, such as having a small outpost in the middle of a mountain pass with roads carved through the rock. CDPR instead created the world first, building a living landscape where those places might exist. This means those same towns and outposts may be perched awkwardly on the hill because it is the closest place the town could locate near a water source. It may also mean that the swamp isn’t simply ‘placed’ in the world, but instead is a result of lowland drainages that exist due to lớn the outflow of a nearby inlet. This creates an ecosystem, instead of mix pieces, for the player to lớn explore. Senior environmental artist Jonas Mattsson & his team have truly created a world that is as functional as it is dangerous and beautiful.

If you can see it, it is yours lớn explore.

We’ve seen a lot of attempts at dynamic weather. What this usually means is “NVidia invented a new way to bởi rain, so we are plugging that into our game.” Similarly, we often see a day & night cycle, with visibility being the only real difference between them. The Witcher 3 features a dynamic weather system that has to lớn be seen lớn be believed. If you’ve seen any of the screenshots on Ultra detail settings, you are aware of how much detail has been put into every stick, blade of grass, và tree. What you don’t see in those screenshots is that those things all move during a windstorm. Trees bend, whipping their shadows across the landscape, leaves shake violently, & muck reeds threaten to lớn pull miễn phí from their moorings. Violent wind whips the water into a choppy và dangerous path. Heading north gives way to lớn snow brushed mountains, complete with clouds settling in the edges. These aren’t merely aesthetic. All the way back to the first Witcher title, & certainly on display here, when inclimate weather strikes, the denizens of the world will seek shelter. Animals may become more scarce, & people will huddle together underneath nearby overhangs.

Beyond the construction of the world, each area of the trò chơi is vastly different. There are two main cities, Novigrad và Oxenfurt, but there are dozens of smaller towns & settlements to explore. The Skellige Islands could come straight out of Norse lore with rolling green grasses and hills buttressed by sharp cliffs. We’ve also seen harsh & frozen landscapes that look foreboding & dangerous. Swamps hide Drowners and other dangerous creatures in their shallow muck. Clearly the environments are a labor of love that also tell a meaningful story themselves.

A frozen tundra awaits discovery

Choice – Infinite GreyMost modern RPGs feature some cấp độ of morality or choice system. Often they are as binary as choosing good, evil, or neutral in dialogue options, và just as often they have little effect on the overall story arch of the game. Evil opens up reaction statements, lượt thích punching a reporter in the face, & occasionally new gear; but in the end the universe will over up saved, the princess will be rescued, and looking back very little changed in your wake.

From the very first Witcher title, the trò chơi is entirely about shades of grey. The town of Vizima in The Witcher spells hard consequences for almost every choice you make. Didn’t want lớn help Vesna get home? She dies. Did you believe the Scoia’tael’s claim to the weapons you were guarding? They’ll use them lớn kill a pivotal character in the second chapter. Abigail, the resident witch, has a situation that is so convoluted và horrible that only the town Priest’s story is worse. This isn’t a story that you’ll save & reload if you don’t lượt thích the consequences, because sometimes those consequences don’t come until dozens of hours into the game. Being as vague as possible, one example from The Witcher 3 had us making a very straightforward decision that seemed consequence-free, but ended up costing a village all of their children. That’s the sort of thing that weighs on you heavily, and something that Geralt will think deeply about during the stillness of meditation.

Speaking with the team, they made one thing very clear — this is living world. You can affect it, as you can in many open-world games, but if you choose not to do so, things vày not remain static. The world exists with, without, & around you — a point of realism in this fantasy world.

Sometimes the cause and effect in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is more binary. There are no restrictions in the game, meaning you can jump on your horse, Roach, & ride anywhere in the vast and xuất hiện world. Unlike other open-world titles, however, the trò chơi does not scale with you. This means the creatures, bandits, & other foes have their levels set. It also means that if you venture out và try khổng lồ hunt down the Griffin from the epic CGI trailer seen below you’ll end up very, very dead — cause, and effect.

It was recently confirmed that, other than the initial load, death, or fast travel, the game doesn’t have a loading screen. This includes heading into interiors. You can look into windows, scout out the inside, & then simply step through the door without suffering a loading sequence. The team is aiming for full immersion in a world with meaningful quests and real consequences, all with as little breaks in immersion as possible.

An mở cửa World of Consequences (side mission spoiler)Having recently played through The Witcher 1 và 2 again, it is amazing the amount of improvement between the two titles. That said, any attempts lớn describe the difference between The Witcher 3 & its predecessor can only over as vast understatement. Of all the features we’ve seen thus far, though, the most important difference is the way that the entire world, including content outside of the main thread, matters. The decisions you make, much like the real world, have consequences that are not always easy lớn predict. A scenario we saw featured a small village where a man named Armulf has been killed. The residents believe it’s because the Woodland Spirit has been offended. As the village argues on what to vày about the Woodland Spirit, we offer our services as a Witcher…for a price. Harald wants to preserve the old ways và offer sacrifice, but the younger man Sven wants to lớn destroy the creature. This Woodland Spirit, a creature called a Leshen, has an amazing ability khổng lồ regenerate by marking a human and then rising from the dead using their toàn thân as a vessel. This means, khổng lồ ensure the creature dies fully, we’ll have to lớn first deal with the person the Leshen has marked in the village. Sven offers that if we find the marked one (he believes it’s Harald) he’ll “handle the rest.” We use our Witcher senses lớn find out that it is in fact not Harald as he suggested, but a woman in the village named Hilde. We decide khổng lồ track the monster and figure out what to vì chưng when we know more.

Using our Witcher sense, we track this beast into the deep forest. We mở cửa the bestiary to lớn study this monster, telling us a little bit about its vitality, how much damage it can dish out, armor capabilities, vulnerability khổng lồ silver, regeneration, size, sounds associated (cawing of crows), special abilities và much more. Heading into the forest we follow the sound of crows – these should lead us to the Leshen totems that we need khổng lồ destroy khổng lồ reduce its power. The Leshen, to lớn defend the totems, takes control of the wolves in the area và tries lớn stop us, entangling our feet with roots. Unleashing our Aard sign và our blades, we dispatch the Leshen & prepare khổng lồ return khổng lồ the village. Harald and Sven had offered to either worship & appease the beast or destroy it, respectively, so they will want khổng lồ know the path we’ve chosen.

Travelling back khổng lồ the village we find a horrible scene – they’ve killed the marked villager Hilde. Cash in hand, we remind them that they’ve become murderers, even with the Lesher removed. The team gives us a look at something that would normally happen some time later – Geralt thinking back about this whole sordid affair. In a flashback it is revealed that the day after the beast was killed, the village was raided by their neighbors. We’ve made a big decision, people died, and the villagers only survived just 3 months longer than the trùm cuối they so feared.

(End Spoiler)

This sort of deep-rooted consequence-driven storyline isn’t new to The Witcher series, but it does bring into sharp focus the difference between what CD Projekt Red is doing, & what nearly everyone else is doing. CD Projekt Red is reinventing what it means khổng lồ have stories that matter. Not just the main thread, but everything else that sprouts from the natural progression of a living world…not just an mở cửa one.

Ron Burke is the Editor in Chief for Gaming Trend. Currently living in Fort Worth, Texas, Ron is an old-school game thủ who enjoys CRPGs, action/adventure, platformers, music games, & has recently gotten into tabletop gaming.

Ron is also a fourth degree black belt, with a Master"s rank in Matsumura Seito Shōrin-ryū, Moo Duk Kwan Tang Soo Do, Universal Tang Soo vị Alliance, and International Tang Soo vì chưng Federation. He also holds ranks in several other styles in his search to be a well-rounded fighter.

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Ron has been married to lớn Gaming Trend Editor, Laura Burke, for 27 years. They have three dogs - Pazuzu (Irish Terrier), Atë, & Calliope (both Australian Kelpie/Pit Bull mixes).