Tegan
Yesterday I was fortunate enough to play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for 4.5 hours (it was supposed to be three. Whoops.) and every second was glorious. As much as I would love to fan girl extra hardcore at you right now, I’m afraid I can’t until after the 26th of January. However, I promise that I will come at you with full force and many squeals as soon as the embargo is lifted! Until then, I can tell you that it’s absolutely gorgeous, the gameplay is excellent and the storyline will get you emotionally invested immediately.
In addition to getting my filthy paws on the game, I also had a chat to CD Projekt Red’s Quest Designer Philipp Weber. What I really loved about this interview is how truly passionate he was about the game. He matched my excitement measure for measure and clearly cares deeply about providing the best possible experience for gamers.
What can you divulge about the game so far?
“Wild Hunt will be one of the biggest open world games ever. But what has been most important for us is the story. We want to have an open world game where you still want to follow the story. Every side quest, every activity has that quality. We won’t have you going to the forest to get five wolf pelts. Every little thing will tell a story.”
Will Wild Hunt still be accessible to people who may not have played the previous games in the Witcher series?
“I always like to compare it to the James Bond movies. If you know them, you will recognize the cars, M, Moneypenny; but you don’t have to watch Goldeneye to enjoy Skyfall. I think that’s how we do it as well; fans will recognize many characters and there will be references obviously. However, if you’re new and haven’t played any Witcher games or read the books, which are actually very good (Tegan’s Note: Brad can attest to this), you’ll still be able to enjoy Wild Hunt just as much.”
Has there been any huge changes in the gameplay or the mechanics from the previous titles?
“The biggest change for us is that we now have an open world, so many of the quests actually work differently. You won’t have the case anymore where people talk about a monster roaming the forest and it’s like ten metres away from you – that will not happen in this game. In general, and as an example, the combat system is a very refined version of The Witcher 2. Its combat system wasn’t perfect. There were some complaints and we listened to them. I personally think that gameplay wise this is my favourite [of the series] and it works very well. I have a lot of fun with the combat system, which I always like to compare to a dance. You move a lot and there’s a rhythm – it’s pretty cool.”
I actually did find it to be a bit like that, and it was really fun! Speaking of combat, one of the things that I really enjoyed was that there was no level adjustment when it came to fighting monsters. You actually had to level up a little bit before taking on certain foes. What was the inspiration behind this move?
“We always liked that in old school games you always felt a sense of accomplishment after you overcame a certain monster that you maybe couldn’t defeat in the beginning. In many games that have been released in the last few years, monsters are always exactly as strong as you are at the time. For me personally it defeats the purpose of a role playing game because you improve your own skills but you also improve your characters. As an example, if the wolves in the prologue level give you issues, it’s a nice feeling that twenty hours later you can return, do that [he snaps his fingers] and they all fall down and die.”
Being the last title in the series, I’m sure a lot of the fans will be desperately wanting some DLC. Can you reveal if there is going to be any at this stage?
“We’ve announced that we are going to be having some free DLC! We don’t really believe in giving you something like an armour pack where we give you the armour and ask for $5.99. Basically we want to treat players like we would personally like to be treated as players.”
Is that part of the reason that you will be providing free DLC – to give something back to gamers?
“Yes, exactly. And if we were to ever charge for DLC then I think it would be more like what we used to call an add-on in the good old days. I think that’s the only way we could imagine making DLC that you would have to pay for – so you actually get your moneys worth.”
Of course one of the biggest announcements recently has been pushing the Wild Hunt release back to May. What are some of the tweaks you guys will be doing that will make the game more than worth waiting that little bit longer for?
“As you have hopefully seen today, the game already works [he laughs]. The hands on version that you played wasn’t just a single part. If you were to continue past the prologue you could play the game from start to finish.”
Great, I’ll just be slipping that into my bag on the way out then…
“[He laughs] We have made sure that everything is very secure! But yes, it’s just all the small hiccups. If there is a guy who is hammering and his hammer doesn’t quite hit the wall, then we’ll adjust it. Or as an example, we are still working on the horses so it feels a little bit more natural – like being able to evade the trees as a real horse would do.”
“It may sound naïve in a way, but we really want to make the best video game RPG ever, and that’s basically our stance. So if we can improve something, we will.”
Is part of that desire to perfect it due to it being the last title in the series?
“Yeah, it’s the grand finale. I mean many of us in the company are really, really, really big Witcher fans and we want to do it justice.”
Speaking of which, being the final in the series…are you guys okay!? How are you feeling about it?
“For us it’s still not over, but maybe we’ll feel a little sad after it is. Right now we still have a lot of work do to, so we don’t want to think about when it’s all over.”
And finally, what are your favourite aspects of the game? What do you love about it?
“What I love about it I think is the sense of exploration. I can go anywhere I want and I always find cool stuff. For me personally, I’ve always been a story guy. Even if you find a little ruin in the middle of a forest that maybe no one else will ever find, you can discover the story of that place. Everything in our game makes sense. Someone put this thing there, something happened there – and I just love stuff like that. Even with the really small stuff we tried to make it that way for the player.”
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