News for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt couldn't get any better today (it went gold), but the impossible has occurred — the day just got better. A bunch of information on the game was revealed, luckily, none of the information spoils gameplay it just explains the game more.
Damien Monniet, the senior game designer for Witcher 3, had an interview with GameTrailers where he revealed a good amount of interesting information. What kind of information did he reveal? The best kind, items, quests and nudity!
You will never find an item in the game that you can't use because your level is too low. The items will automatically scale down to your level without losing any features (like being on fire). That means that you'll never have to wait for an item and you'll almost always find better loot as you level up.
Much to the relief of gamers, there aren't many fetch quests in the game. The developers don't like them and tried to make they few that are in-game be about developing characters that could potentially influence quests.
One of the most interesting details is that there was a lot of talk on whether or not Geralt would be fully nude. It makes sense, there's a ton of female nudity — so why not have male nudity? No one could decide on how many polygons would be used for his… member or who would animate it.
The developers decided on having a lot more male nudity in the game, but kept Geralt in his tighty-whities.
- The damage made to Geralt’s face when he’s intoxicated by his potion is actually displayed in cutscenes. White Honey cures it.
- Monsters can attack you while you’re meditating.
- The AI of normal animals like sheeps and goats is pretty basic. It will tell them that there’s a bush that they might like within their radius, so they’ll go eat it. The same goes for animals or entities they’re scared of, causing them to run away.
- If you kill that goat, it’s gonna produce a smell, and monsters may be attracted to it if there’s one that likes that kind of meat in the radius. If no one eats it and the corpse rots, a different kind of monster that eats rotten meat will be attracted.
- If there are deers in an area wolves will hunt them, but if you kill all the deers you may see some wolves patrolling, but there will be less because there’s less game.
- The reason why ice skating was removed from the game (very few things have been actually cut) is because creating a big fight based on a completely different set of mechanics that haven’t been explained or used before and that the players didn’t have the opportunity to master is a bad idea, as it gets people killed too easily and frustrated.
- In some cases when you kill the monsters in an area, humans will settle it. In the prologue there’s actually a cutscene that shows is as it happens so that the players understand the mechanic. It’s not always so simple, and there are different states. Whenever you go into an area the game will check what you have and what you haven’t done, who you helped, who you killed, the decisions you made during quests and dialogue. That can change a lot of things, including the people that spawn in a village. The mechanic is simple, but it can get complex because of all the branching.
- Monsters don’t scale with your level. If you’re way underleveled compared to a monster, you’ll do almost no damage.
- The level of an enemy is displayed, but is its level is indicated by a skull you better stay away, because it’s way too strong for you, and it might even oneshot you.
- The bestiary populates itself as you learn information and eventually it tells you where a monsterlives, at what times of day it appears, what it’s vulnerable to.
- Gear has been moved around very recently to re-balance it.
- You can use Axii on your horse to force him not to panic during combat. Quen can be changed from defensive to offensive, and it can explode and damage enemies when it’s penetrated.
- The Gwent minigame was designed to last ten minutes tops for each match. You can win money, new cards, enter a torunament with all the best Gwent players. There are even quests linked to the game.
Thank you Gaf.
Watch the interview here.