PowerGamers

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Polish: Wiedźmin 3: Dziki Gon) is an upcoming action role-playing video game that is currently being developed by CD Projekt RED to be published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game will be the third in the series, preceded by The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, loosely based on the series of fantasy novels of the same title by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.

 

Development

The game was officially announced on February 4, 2013, via Game Informer, with a 2014 release on PC and "all high-end platforms available". The latter was then clarified to mean the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One on February 21, 2013 and June 10, 2013, respectively.

The Witcher 3 will introduce "a living open world larger than any other in modern RPG history." The setting is more than "30 times larger" than previous Witcher games, requiring players to catch a sailboat for some locations and ride horseback to others. However, fast travelling for the area of known locations is also possible. The Witcher 3 has been described as "20% bigger than Skyrim," and CD Projekt RED anticipates approximately 100 hours for the completion of the main story and open-world quests.

According to the official information from Microsoft, The Witcher 3 was originally not going to be available on the Xbox One in Poland, the country where the game's development process is taking place. However, this has recently changed as regional restrictions have been entirely removed from the Xbox One.

 

Game engine

The Witcher 3 will feature the new REDengine 3 game engine, developed by CD Projekt RED and designed specifically for nonlinear role-playing video games set in vast open world environments. It is supposed to help eliminate many of the game development trade-offs previous developers faced, allowing The Witcher 3 developers to create "an open environment with a complex, multi-thread story." As in the prior two The Witcher games, players are presented with a complex story featuring multiple choices bearing associated consequences. But REDengine allows for a complex story line without sacrificing the design of the virtual world. Consequently, The Witcher 3 features no loading screens, providing players a vast visual environment that allows players to freely explore and roam.