The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Announced and Detailed

 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been announced. This new game is going to feature Geralt as usual, but this time around his memory is back. And he’s done fighting for others.

What’s more exciting is that the game will be open world. There will be no chapters, acts, or anything else that will make the game play pause. The game in itself will be very big, it will be 20 percent bigger than Skyrim, and 40 times larger than The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. It will take approximately 30-40 minutes to cross the land on horse, although you don’t need to do this manually for locations you’ve already discovered. For locations already discovered you can use fast travel. Although, you can of course walk across the land, or take a boat.

As previously stated, the game will allow you to cross the open landscape without any loading screens, much like what we found in Skyrim.

When you travel you can always see the points of interest. There will be many exploration possibilities such as exploring dark caves, embattled villages, decaying ruins, and more. There will also be certain mini-games in various locations, these will give you exclusive rewards should you complete/win them.

Apparently there will be three different narratives in the game, as posted by Gematsu:

• Lowest Level: Free-form activities such as crafting, monster slaying (which seems to be more extensive in the third iteration), and going on quests. (There are over 100 hours of hand-scripted quests. These include helping villages and engineering the succession of the Skellige kings. Though, I think the latter would apply to the Next Level.)
• Next Level: The political situation of the Nilfgaardian invasion is resolved through a core plot line for each area, including Skellige, Novigrad, and No Man’s Land.
• Final Level: Geralt’s main storyline, his search for his loved ones, and the chase of the Wild Hunt.

Choices will be made in this game, and even though the player may skip making a choice, that in itself will be counted as one.

Additionally, each land in The Witcher 3 will have their own storyline. Certain events in the main storyline may be “gates” for the state of the world. A village might be abandoned if Geralt does not help them. The weather will also have a bigger part this time around as it’s not just some clouds painted on a skybox. Apparently the weather is dynamic.

You can be attacked by any monster, creature or people. Enemies won’t scale to your level, though. The game will feature a completely new AI, and scripted boss scenes are a no-go.

The monsters you hunt will also be revamped. Information about these monsters can be found from either books or townspeople. The importance of potions and similar magical items have also been stressed. Furthermore, the monsters may boast different abilities depending on what hour of the day it is. The information you have collected is very much going to affect your capabilities of killing the monster. If you know about its weak points, you can manage to kill it within two strikes, as opposed to hitting it with everything you got.

Once the monster is defeated, it will drop loot which you cannot find anywhere else. This loot may be chemicals or crafting materials required to make unique potions, mutagens, and other forms of item crafting.

Geralt can also change his armor in a few ways. If you got the required skills and material, you can easily craft a new armor or enhance your already owned one. That being said, you can also find armor in the world. Each change will be noticeable in the world due to new cloth simulation tech. Furthermore the barber will stay in the third and final installment  Although you cannot dye Geralt’s iconic hair.

The Witcher 3 will feature  96 combat animations, as opposed to The Witcher 2 which only had 20. Other changes involves a “weighing system” which allows the most dangerous enemy to always stay in frame. You can always block or dodge an attack even if you’re out of stamina. However, doing so will stagger you.

Mounted combat is apparently in the testing stages, and not a lot is known about whether or not they’ll make it into the final cut. Horses will of course be apart of the game as previously stated.

The inventory system is also going through an overhaul in the standalone sequel. The sequel will apparently not be connected to the other games.  The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will launch in 2014 to  PC and “all high-end platforms available”.