CD Projekt RED had a stream of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on Twitch earlier today, which saw level designer Miles Tost divulge a lot of details and information on the game. The long and short of it? The game looks absolutely amazing, and I am more excited for it now than ever.
The information we got included everything, from combat and how it will function, to stats and skill trees, to information about the game world itself. Below are all the salient points from what we got, recapped in one place for you to peruse:
- There are three armor types, based on weight: heavy, medium, and light. Each comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. For example, heavy armor provides massive defense, but slows down stamina regeneration.
- Speaking of stamina regeneration, it is a major factor in The Wticher 3’s combat. For instance, focusing on one enemy will deplete his stamina (displayed as a yellow bar under his life bar), which will prevent him from blocking your attacks further.
- You have two kinds of dodges- a long dodge (which is sort of a roll), and a shorter dodge, which is a side- or backstep. Think Bloodborne.
- Assuming you manage to time an arrow deflection from an archer perfectly, it is actually possible to send it right back at him and take him out that way.
- You can combine different skill trees, and are encouraged to experiment until you find a style that suits you best.
- If you focus your build on swordplay, you’ll have trouble casting many signs (for magic effects) in combat. You can compensate with runes and adrenaline (adrenaline points can be used to cast signs in battle, meaning they factor into play in a big way).
- Alchemy will be complex and require some thought. You can buy recipes, or get them as loot, and hopefully, once you get the hang of it, you find it rewarding.
- Every time you spend a point in the Sign Tree, your stamina regeneration goes up. This means maxing out the Sign tree effectively lets you spam magic.
- Your horse can have equipment as well, a trophy, saddlebags, a saddle and blinders. They all are visible on your horse. The saddlebags increase the weight limit you can carry, the saddle increases the horse’s stamina, and the blinders increase the threshold at which your horse will panic.
- Assuming you are playing on PC, your decisions will carry over from your save game of the previous games, but armor, weapons and items won’t. You can also choose not to import a save game, but really, you should import- choices from The Witcher 2 will be very important in The Witcher 3.
- Toxicity depletes over time, and plays into alchemy-certain effects happen only when you’re intoxicated.
- The time of the day within the game’s world is important. There are some quests that you can only accept or continue only during a certain time of day. Certain monsters also don’t return to their lair until a certain time.
- Side quest choices can alter how the main story plays out- so everything you do will have a consequence!
And that’s about it for now. You can choose to watch the full stream for yourself to catch more information, but I’d think twice about that- you want to leave something fresh for your first playthrough of the game, don’t you?
