The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was shown off at Microsoft’s E3 press conference last week, and while it did look good, there was instantly some concern that it prompted, notably because of how, well, easy it all looked, with Geralt disposing of a multitude of enemies with a lot of ease that made the combat feel more like the simplified button mashing of Assassin’s Creed or Batman: Arkham than the strategic combat of The Witcher 2.
According to CD Projekt RED, that was done on purpose, for show purposes.
“What we showed at the Microsoft conference was the easy way to play. We only had five minutes to show, so we had to play on easy and make the fights go really fast. You saw lots of dismemberment. It’s not going to be so easy to cut somebody in half when the game comes out. We were showing off some features there,” said executive producer John Mamais to Eurogamer.
“I was reading some feedback after the conference and people were saying, ‘oh, that looks so easy,’ but it ain’t gonna be that easy.”
He also confirmed that the demo was in fact running on the Xbox One.
“It’s actually easier to develop for Xbox One for us because we’re PC developers. So everything we do on PC is for DirectX 11. And Xbox is also based on DX. So for the rendering side it’s a more natural progression for us to go to Xbox,” he concluded.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launches next year for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.