Ray Willmott previews The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt…
It’s been a painful wait for The Witcher 3 considering we’ve known about its existence for high-end new-gen platforms before those platforms were even officially announced. But after an uninterrupted three hour long session with the game, the good news is CD Projekt RED have created something that strikes the perfect balance between the games’ hardcore RPG pedigree, while also making it open and accessible to newcomers to the series.
There are your typical RPG staples here, such as icon-filled mini-maps, experience, talent trees, alchemy and blacksmithery. But while The Witcher 3 does all these things as well, if not better than the majority of others in the genre, there are few particular features which are certain to make it stand out.
With the world said to be 20x the size of Skyrim, it’s amazing to find that the side missions appear very focused and strongly narrative-driven unlike a chunk of the content found in Dragon Age Inquisition. Your actions will have direct consequences on the world, but the game will never act as the judge telling you whether those decisions are good or bad. That’s entirely up to your own interpretation.
Sometimes you’ll receive the full story when the quest-giver sets you off on your mission, other times you’ll find things out as you stumble upon them. One quest in particular tasks you with fighting a Wight terrorising a nearby Well. Blindly, I went into battle right away, charging at the spirit and even got a few strikes in. But just when I started to impress my advantage, the spirit vanished. Dumbfounded, I started looking around, trying to figure out where I went wrong. Using my Witcher senses, I discovered some tracks leading to a nearby house. There I found a clue as to the spirit’s origins and why it’s anchored to the well. It turns out that it’s the spirit of a young woman who had been ill-treated and brutally murdered.
This eventually led me back to the well, where I soon realised the girl’s body had been dumped into the water below. After using a Cats-Eyes potion – enabling me to see in the dark – I ventured into the dark below and swam through the murky waters to find the girl’s bones.
Submerging from the water and clambering my way back up, I then set fire to the bones in the hopes of bringing the spirit back for another round. It worked and suddenly the fight was back on.
This time, my intentions were different. With all this new information, I didn’t simply want to banish the spirit; now I wanted to give a tortured soul some peace.
But when the spirit fought back, I was quickly overwhelmed and defeated.
I’d decided to go at the fight without reading up on my opponent and made my first critical error. I didn’t know how to stun the spirit, therefore my blade was hitting thin air. It was a harsh lesson, but one I was determined to learn from.
The best way to defeat an enemy is to pay attention to the Beastiary. Every foe you encounter is logged in a journal, a full breakdown of their attributes documented. From the time of day they’re at their strongest, to their fears and weaknesses, paying attention to the Bestiary can save your life in difficult situations. For example, when you fight a werewolf at night and under a full moon, you’re probably better off turning around and going in the opposite direction. In the daytime, however, you’ll have a much better chance of defeating them.
Going into the Beastiary, I soon learned that I needed to trap the spirit with a circle sign. When the spirit is in the circle, it’s slowed and weakened. Only then can I hit it with my sword.
Using this new strategy, this time, I turned the spirit into dust. Admittedly it was a bittersweet victory, but I got the job done.
Combat is a combination of sword-fighting, archery and sign-casting. Geralt is deft with a blade, able to thwart goblins, wolves and bears with nimble, swift strikes and hard-crushing blows. But the key to effective combat is learning when to parry and when to dodge. Precision-timed parrying will enable Geralt to perform a quick, powerful counter when a yellow bar flashes on an opponent’s health portrait, making him more than a match for any opposition he comes up against in the wild.
But our Witcher isn’t just a one-trick pony. With the crossbow, you can easily focus on a target using a shoulder button and unleash a rain of arrows on the unsuspecting. In fact, using sign-casting in tandem with the arrows is also a perfect strategy, whether you choose to immobilise an enemy, making them vulnerable and susceptible to your arrows, or burning them if they get too close to you.
Like RPGs of old, enemy difficulty does not scale. Meaning, if you venture too far from a safe haven, your competency in combat will be sorely tested by a creature several levels higher than you. And just because you have a horse doesn’t mean you’ll always be safe. If you draw the horse too close to a particularly challenging area, their fear factor will rise. If it maxes out, they’ll leave you behind.
Amazingly, we’ve gone this whole preview without talking about the graphics in The Witcher 3. They are, as you might suspect, spectacular. Character models, in particular, are genuinely life-like. From the wrinkling of a forehead, to a droplet of sweat. These are the new-generation graphics we’ve been waiting for. At times, The Witcher 3 is simply mesmerising.
With over 160 awards already bestowed on the game before it even launches, there’s understandably a lot of hype and expectation on CD Projekt RED to deliver something truly special. Fortunately, it looks like they’ve got a firm handle on everything.
The Witcher 3 has Game of the Year written all over it and is almost certainly set to be the front-runner for every major award this year. While three hours is as generous as any preview we’ve ever been to, it still wasn’t nearly enough time to really appreciate the scope and scale of a destined masterpiece.
Ray Willmott
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qqtW2LRPtQY&x-yt-cl=84503534&x-yt-ts=1421914688&list=PL18yMRIfoszFJHnpNzqHh6gswQ0Srpi5E
