Witcher 3 - First Details @GameBanshee
 

Our friends at GameBanshee updated their newsbit with many details from the NeoGAF forum.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be an open world RPG with 20% more space to explore than Skyrim!
Thanks to Ball_Breaker for sending this in.
More information.

hmm. How do they calculate the 20% more space to explore? The scale might be different. Their might not be counting all those mountains that you can't really climb too.

I'm mostly interested in the new engine streaming capabilities. I'm not sure I'm going to like the "crafting" approach. It annoyed me in TW2 with all the components everywhere. Although, with long term stash being accessible from the horse it might be more "manageable".

The support of "all next gen" consoles leave me a bit wary though.

Being more modern than Skyrim shouldn't be too much of a challenge as the game will come out years later and should have the higher horsepowered consoles. But bigger? Skyrim is enormous and both Witchers combined don't even have 1/3 of Skyrim's size. Unless they're just counting landmass and not the dungeons. You see, Witcher doesn't really do dungeons much. My bet is their 20% conveniently skips the interior cells of Skyrim when calculating size.

This certainly implies a much more open world and free gameplay that what I expected them attempting. If not sandbox like Bethesda games then at least similar to Gothic 3 or Two Worlds in terms of openess?

Anybody here remember the same promises about Two Worlds 2 being bigger than any Elder Scroll games? We know how that turned out. Fingers crossed is all I can say.

It's easy to get excited about this. They're only promising rainbows and sunshine:
- Enemies don’t scale to the player’s level
- No loading screens while traveling in the open world
- Can explore on foot, by horseback, and via boat
- Over 100 hours of hand-scripted quests
- Major events in the main storyline are “gates” for the state of the world
- Ex: village threatened by bandits might be abandoned after certain events if the player doesn’t help
- 96 animations for Geralt’s combat moves (last game had 20)

But too much ambition almost always lead to disappointment. If they can deliver all of the things they promise, then kudos to them. Because it sounds something special indeed.

The same thing was said about gothic 3.

I've been let down by other developers before (most significantly Bethesda) so I am normally cautious about such promised features.

But considering CD Projekt's track record, attention to detail, competency, ability to push graphic fidelity as far as possible and community support? I'm hyped! :)