Interview Monster Hunting In The Witcher 3: Returning to the Roots of the Witcher Concept

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Tags: CD Projekt Red; The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Game Informer's series of Witcher 3: Wild Hunt video interviews continues. In this video, two CD Projekt developers discuss the game's monster hunting mechanic. In keeping with the theme of Geralt's quest becoming more personal again, The Witcher 3 will see a return to the core concept of the Witcher as a "professional monster slayer".

Takeaways from the interview:

• The game will feature detective-style investigation of monster "crime scenes". Geralt will need to discover which monster from his bestiary is responsible for murdering townsfolk, before he can track it down to its lair and slay it.
• There will be a greater emphasis on preparation before monster battles. The developers imply that there will be multiple ways to prepare for each monster, one of them being learning its internal anatomical details (which kinda reminds me of the alien autopsies in X-COM).
• Another way in which The Witcher 3 will be returning to the roots of the Witcher concept is that monster hunting will be your primary source of income, and also your primary source of crafting materials and mutagens.
• There will be unique "boss" versions of monsters in the game, like in the original Witcher. The developers are quick to reassure that there won't be any arcade-style "epic" bosses like Witcher 2's infamous Kayran, though.

Sounds pretty good.

Sounds cool. What I like about the Witcher world is this "gruesome fairy-tale" atmosphere where for example a town is plagued by a single, mysterious threat that turns out to be a monster that lives in some nearby cave and abducts villagers. I really like the focus on single monsters, the need to prepare for those encounters etc.
The investigation part sounds intriguing, would love to hear some more details on that.

whats wrong with Kayran? I liked it
I hate this open world approach. I've yet to see an open world game that delivered in story plot memorable characters.

Hopefully learning more about monster weaknesses and properties means the combat will require a little more finesse and tactics than just button mashing

Edit: Lol just found the dice throwing thing

This sounds like !

Sounds like incline, can turn out to be pretty meh. Depends on the implementation.

Red Dead Redemption has both good story and memorable characters as an action game. Also Assasins Creed 2-3 is good on that parts too (minus the future part)
Gothic 1,2,3- Risen 1 are good canditates as RPG. There is even Dragons Dogma on consoles (OK this one mostly fails at plot and characters )

Sounds great. TW2 was good, but it didn't really explore the strengths of the Witcher setting in its political emphasis. If they maintain the eldritch ambiance of the first town in TW1 over the entire storyline, and manage to make the gameplay and story serve that end, it'll be brilliant.

Betrayal at Krondor

Didn't they say the same thing about "RETURNING TO THE ROOTS" with Witcher 2...?

Cinematic QTE crap.

Meet potato marketing.

Yeah, Witcher 2 did actually have some of that investigative vibe at times, for some sidequests, but it was just overshadowed by everything else.

In before quest compass.

Sure, just like the previous games in the series. Oops!

It all depends on how they implement all this stuff. It could all end up being a bunch of half-assed game play mechanics like most of the stuff in TW2.

Karyan vs. Ghost Dog in TW1 - which was the better boss fight and why?

If they expand on the ideas from TW1, make the process of learning monster weaknesses more intricate and worthwhile, then that's vastly preferable to hitting glowing hotspots in arcade sequences.

Don't you go all smartass on me, Infinitron. I bought both games on release and liked them a lot (even though W1 had a fucked up ending). I do hope they keep the no-quest-arrow approach, but my inner skeptic remains, well, skeptical.

Hellhound is lightyears better than Karyan. You can use any of your abilities on him including stunning it with Aard and 1 shotting its sorry arse.
Sadly there is only 1 (one) way to defeat Karyan, trap and "disarm".

Combat will be shit but the preparation and different tactics might redeem it. They should have gone TB.

Well at least it will look good. As for gameplay...lets wait and see.

I fear that this concept is prone to MMOification and farming.

We could yet see the PS4 becoming the lead platform on this, or the Xboxwhatever, tuning the game first for console gameplay and leaving pc as an afterthought. Probably not, but always a possibility.

Yet? Witcher 2 already had console gameplay.

Your right, but the console gameplay could possibly extend to everything else, from UI design to graphic customization, etc.