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[UNKNOWN]
speak the truth
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Hello and welcome back to GameSpot's coverage of The Witcher 3. In the last video, we introduced the world of The Witcher: its cities, villages, and landscapes.
But today, we're gonna unveil the gameplay of Wild Hunt.
Fascinating use of branching storylines that impact on the main quest.
It's new open war structure, its new systems for leveling and potions and Pokemon style collectible card game tournament.
Yeah, really.
All right, we've got a lot to talk about so let's get [INAUDIBLE] The Witcher games are a linear roleplaying series where making decisions at key moments makes the story branch from time to time.
Even in simple conversations, making decisions is key to the witcher, choosing the lesser of two evils.
This is the core of the Witcher experience, and it's retained in Wild Hunt.
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But Wild Hunt is also an open world game with dozens upon dozens of side quests, many of which will be main tough decisions in too.
And in today's video while tiptoeing around story specifics, lead quest designer Mattheus [UNKNOWN] is going to help us dive into what exactly you'll be doing
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during your time in Geralt's shoes
We are very focused on the storyline.
So, on the story of Geralt of [UNKNOWN], and Jennifer.
But, as we develop the game, we have designed the sides quest lines that were connected very strongly with the main storyline But we're branching off from it so to speak.
So, as you will progress through the main storyline, you will find that you can continue or ignore, like these big storylines of, local places or pubs, important characters that you meet.
What's the famous Djenge Frett need a witcher for?
War.
So, the main game has around eight to ten main story quests, but each of these evolve during two or three branching secondary quests.
So, for instance, early in our game, while trying to discover a piece of valuable information, I was pointed in the direction of two people who might have it: a local baron and a witch in a distant town.
Both of these were large quests in their own right, and took at least over an hour each.
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But as they reach their conclusions, and I receive the information I needed to complete the first part of my main quest.
These quests didn't necessarily end.
I was free to leave and continue the main quest, if I so wished.
Or I could continue down this branching secondary quest line.
But it's the way in which these secondary quests impact the main story line that's really fascinating.
Ignoring those can, they can cause some consequences in the world, as well as, I mean, participating in those.
It wasn't as if I was forced to complete the secondary quests then and there, but clearly these quests will impact on the main story line in some form or another.
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It almost felt like the optional missions in Mass Effect 2, which eventually had dire consequences on the main storyline.
It just wasn't explicitly explained how.
This is how The Witcher 3 embraces its open world.
The core story branches out, dragging into new areas, back across familiar land.
So you never quite know where you're going next.
As you roam from place to place you gather quests, from notice boards in towns, from random encounters, and from exploring the wilderness.
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If you decide to take home a Witcher contract in some village.
the villagers, later on, might react differently on Geralt, depending on what he did in this contract.
There are also some side quests that are basically
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Stories, in themselves.
So.
I, I think they are interesting for the players.
They will be interesting for the players.
You can never quite bank on [UNKNOWN] quests in many open war games.
All too often, they are generic or repetitive, or too short.
So, during our time, myself and producer, Andy [UNKNOWN], ran all over the map to see what we could discover.
We don't want to get into.
Spoiler-y specifics over what we saw and did.
But Matthias was more than happy to give us a decent overview.
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We also have side quests.
And they are not simple contract that you take from the notice board quest giver.
We have also some encounters and quests that happen basically as you pass them.
You will have the feeling that Bad things happen around Gerald while he travels through this world, through this living, breathing world.
Some of these side quests are short.
Some of them are part of longer quest games.
But the ones we played had multiple game-play elements: conversations, tracking, hunting, and so on.
But perhaps the most interesting about these side quests is that they're level For many open world games like the [UNKNOWN] mission progression behind ability barriers, and while there's a tendency in fantasy games to enable the NPCs to level up alongside the player character, The Witcher 3 has a straight off MMO style quest leveling system.
So, as you run around the world at level four, probably around five hours in, we ran into quests as high as level 33.
We heard they reached up to 50, while it looks like Geralt himself Can reach level 60.
But with the expansion packs on the horizon, we heard that these levels will likely increase.
And also this means that once the main story is complete, you'll probably still have a bunch of quests to do.
We were tempted to balance it in a way that you simply
Go to, from the level to level, and they are all evened out for your level.
But, but the, something is getting lost in between, you know?
I mean, I know it might feel irritating maybe, or it might feel weird when you encount, when you level [UNKNOWN] Six of five and the encounter level of [UNKNOWN] to quest, but I think this is something that players will come back to later on in the game, if of course, they will play that long [LAUGH].
And I think this is something to do in the so called end game.
It's not an MMO, obviously, but As I said previously, you can play after credits.
We don't want you to, have this feeling that you have to complete all side content before you engage in main story line.
For me it works like this in some games.
With playing, especially open world games.
Yeah.
I hold up playing main story line.
I do all the side quests if I can.
It's like.
And then I come back, and I'm like.
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Okay, what was it about?
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[LAUGH] Yeah.
You know?
And we wanted to avoid that very strongly.
Because, the main storyline is very important for us.
But all this monster hunting can be bloody exhausting.
Why not take a load off?
Sit down with a buddy and play some cards.
[UNKNOWN] May look like some boring **** card mini-game, but trust us for a minute.
CD project I'm doing some weird stuff here.
Well basically Grunt was present in the books, literature books and this is something we always wanted to have in the game.
Basically you can gather these cards in the world, you can buy them, you can win them from the players of course you have quests and battles.
You have this huge tournament in Gwen?
Yeah, even Pokemon or Magic the Gathering.
I like Pokemon I mean when we do have this one quest that makes you know jokes about it.
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In [UNKNOWN] [CROSSTALK]
Is there ever a situation where you can say okay look
If I beat you in [UNKNOWN], you'll have to do one.
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Without spoiling anything, I could say yeah.
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Okay.
Alright.
That sounds pretty cool.
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Of course, it's not all about Geralt's [UNKNOWN] from time to time, you also get to play as Geralt's prodigee, [UNKNOWN], who's on the run
These are linear episodes which pop in from time to time during the main quest.
As far as we know you don't actually get to play her in the open world, but then we've barely scraped the surface.
Ciri is most involved in the main story line, the sections, that we play Ciri are basically, closed off to the context of the open world adventuring
You didn't see everything yet from her abilities.
Basically, she develops as you play the game.
And so she gets stronger later on in the game.
It's fair to say that The Witcher Three: Wild Hunt, has a lot going on, and it should.
A few weeks ago, there were new reports detailing that the game had over 200 hours of game play.
And from our time with the game, I could certainly see that this could be the case.
But what's crucial, and where many open world games fall short, is that the gameplay needs to keep being engaged.
There a re a lot of gameplay elements in Wild Hunt, but it's how they're combined that give a game like this longevity.
We asked Mateus how important Who he felt this was.
We tried to, include all different game play elements in our, our quest to make player, to keep players interested in, in the game.
And, as we got these new tools, these new tools of transportation, we tried to incorporate, incorporate them in the quests as well.
You will have horse races, we don't have boat races, but there are some quests that involve sailing on a boat.
There are quests that will make you dive under the water and find stuff like hidden coves, hidden caves.
We were trying to do everything we can for the players to feel this awesome Basically this also feeling of exploration of this rich world.
We don't want the players to feel that, ok, there are the quests, right, and you can go on the quest path, but don't go on the side path.
There is nothing there.
No, we wanted to do, to make everything we can that it feels like living, breathing world.
Rich with things to find interesting to explore basically.
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Gamespot doesn't just pony up the cash and resources to fly across the world to check out any game, but from myself and Andy's time playing it in Warsaw, from our time talking to the developers, it's clear to see that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has all the
Makings or the ingredients of a really special game.
Whether it is or not I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
The game comes out on PC and [UNKNOWN] consoles May 19.
Cool.
