Hands On With The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt

The Witcher series has been going for some time now, but sadly I never really had a chance to play it all that much, but when Wild Hunt was announced it did get my attention. I recently had the chance to sit down and play the game and I came away really impressed.

I was given a rundown of that I could expect by one of the developers and then I was let loose in the world and boy what a world. The first few hours of the game are prologue to the greater story, with the tutorial taking place within a dream that Geralt is having. It is here that I was instructed in the ways of the Witcher, including spell casting and sword combat and also introduced to some of the characters you will interact with. But if you want, you can skip over the tutorials and just jump straight into the tasks, however the game handles them really well, there is not a giant overlay on the screen telling you about them, but they are woven right into how the characters speak to you.

After the tutorial, you are tasked with heading towards a nearby town on your search for Yennifer and along the way you will encounter a trader being attacked by a griffin. This is where you can make your first real choice and in doing so, how the game will play out. After I saved the trader I was presented with two choices, take money or just take the traders thanks, in taking the latter the trader informed me that he has family who runs the local tavern and if I mentioned his name, I would be looked after. Which turned out to be true, the lady running the tavern was really helpful, the clientele not so much, which highlights a common issue in the game, Witchers are not welcome anywhere.

Knowing now that refusing to take the money made things easier for me in the tavern, I now want to go back and take the money to see how things would play out around there. Once out of the tavern, I was tasked with locating the soldier’s camp nearby and getting some addition information on my quest, but it was at this point I went off the beaten path. The town I was in held a notice board which can be used to take up additional quests and missions, but I had no time to stop and read it, I wanted to just explore the world. Thankfully I was able to do that a lot easier with Roach, Geralt’s horse, as running around on foot is not ideal, given the size of the world.

But it is the size of the world that was impressive, unlike other games who have large worlds, this one actually felt alive, there were people walking from other towns, soldiers on patrol, packs of wolves on the prowl and a host of other elements that together made the world feel lived in. Of course it is the interactions that I was able to have with the world that made it feel alive and they took place in a variety of ways, but the best was hunting down the griffin. Upon making it to the fort, I was tasked by the local garrison commander to kill the Griffin if I wanted to get any information on Yennifer.

It sounded simple enough, kill a Griffin, first big fight of the game, I thought it would be simple, but not really. First I had to learn about it and to do that, I had to locate a hunter who had stumbled upon the remains of one of its meals. So after heading to the hunter’s house, I had to then locate the hunter, who was off in the woods plying his trade. After assisting him with this trouble, he was able to help me locate the griffins nest, which using the skills of the witcher, gave me some insights into the creature, then after completing another task, I was ready to take down the creature.

But sadly it was not as easy as I thought, in fact I died multiple time before I was able to defeat the griffin, with one of the local pr guys admitting he had not been successful yet, which made me feel all that much better about my many tries, upon taking down the Griffin I was required to take the head of the creature up to the garrison to get my information, after a nice cutscene the prologue was done, coming at around 3 hours, it is quite lengthy and only made my desire to play it even stronger. The game is still months away from release, but as it stands now, anyone who likes rpg’s, magic and mythical creatures, needs to put this on their radar as it is going to be amazing.