Geralt tracks down the gryphon and shoots it with an arrow. The wounded gryphon flies away, and leaves behind a blood trail. On the trail for the gryphon, he passes by a group of bandits attacking a remote homestead. It is up to the player whether or not Geralt wants to intervene in this conflict. In the video, Geralt uses various spells and his steel sword to dispatch the bandits. Several spells Geralt can use were shown, including a fire spell and another spell that allows you to mind control your enemies and slow them down. The battles are bloody and quite gory. Geralt can literally eviscerate and slice the bandits in half. Geralt checks on the woman whom the bandits tried to attack and leaves to continue his hunt. It is up to the player whether Geralt wishes to check in on the woman later. The developers run through the gryphon fight, which was also shown at the earlier Xbox media briefing.
Another big part of the presentation was a good look at the environment of the game, which is a completely open sandbox. The world of The Witcher 3 is 35 times bigger than the last game. The developers emphasized how literally anything you see in the background is a place you can travel to. Basically, in The Witcher 3 you can go anywhere or do whatever you want. The next segment featured Geralt, after a successful hunt of the gryphon, traveling to the bustling city of Novigrad. This is a fully realized city full of non-playable characters and various civilians mulling about. The developers emphasized that the city and the people within live independently without the player. The Novigrad sequence was quite impressive, and it demonstrated a lot of the painstaking detail and work that went into making this such an immersive RPG experience.
Unfortunately, the demo did not provide any additional story or character insight for the game. So, we did not learn much about the role of Emperor Emphyr var Emreis (voiced by Charles Dance) in the story and his intentions toward Ciri, Geralt’s adopted daughter, or why the Wild Hunt are pursuing Ciri.
The demo also emphasized the environment’s dynamic weather changes and night and day cycles. Geralt actually has a special potion he can use to speed up time. This will aid him in his monster hunts in case a particular monster is weaker during the day. It appears as if CD Projekt Red has taken full advantage of next-gen technology to enhance the experience. The graphics and character models, as well as their movements, have improved by leaps and bounds since The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings. Even in the second game, the character movements were rather stiff and awkward at times. The physics and movements of the character models look way more fluid here. The game could probably have years of replay value, since it has over 100 hours of core and side-quest gameplay. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is due out in February 2015 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC.
