Well we have another interview for The Witcher 3 this time from GamingBolt.

Ravi Sinha: Considering the amount of hype that it generated, superseding CD Projekt RED’s other big project Cyberpunk 2077, how did you manage to keep it under wraps for this long?

Paweł Sasko: I work as a game developer and know very little about PR and marketing. We have a small department of dedicated and talented miracle-mongers who know how to do such things. As a complete greenhorn, I can say that the hype generated around Cyberpunk 2077 served well as a distraction.

Thanks to that, we had time to prepare what we needed to confirm what some players had suspected for a long time – that we are creating the next-generation RPG, The Witcher 3.

Ravi Sinha: Considering the sheer scope of the game, it doesn’t seem possible that this will be the end of Geralt’s adventures. As a character, what is it about Geralt that allows for stories like the Witcher 3 to play out? How does he differ from other gaming “heroes”?

Paweł Sasko: Geralt’s legend was planned as a trilogy from the beginning. The story and its coherence are very important for us. We know the games are successful, but continuing this tale would water our initial message.

Ravi Sinha: Any lock on when exactly the Witcher 3 will come out in 2014? And can we expect some gameplay footage at E3 2013?

Paweł Sasko: We have something special planned for E3, so stay tuned.

Forbes has a new article/interview about The Witcher 3. The article discusses why the game is single-player only, and why DRM is the worst thing in the video game industry.

Single-Player Only

To many fans of the series, the Witcher games are some of the last great single-player role-playing games being made. Recently there have been murmurings of a possible multiplayer mode in CD Projekt RED’s upcoming The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This speculation has led to some understandable worry.

With companies like EA abandoning single-player games altogether, and many beloved franchises like Dragon Age and Mass Effect seeing tacked-on multiplayer elements, it would be pretty painful to see the same thing happen to the next Witcher.

Good news, then, for fans of Geralt of Rivia and the Witcher universe.

CD Projekt RED has told me in no uncertain terms that this is not in the works, noting that “the game will be an epic, story driven, single player, open world RPG experience” and that they “strongly feel that this final saga of Geralt has no place for meaningful multiplayer.”

Truth and Piracy

“In my opinion,” Tomaszkiewicz tells me, “DRM is the worst thing in the gaming industry. It’s limiting our rights to play games owned by us. Let’s imagine that you have a game that requires internet connection to prove that you actually bought it. What if you lose your connection because of your internet provider? You can’t play anymore. It is worth mentioning that many people in Poland or even in the US and other countries still don’t have an internet connection or have a very slow one. I was in such a situation once and I really didn’t understand why I couldn’t play games that I had bought. I believe that as long as people feel that companies are cheating them by selling games they cannot play freely, limiting their rights, and making unfair DRM, then they will fight against that.”

Piracy, he adds, “is often an example of trying to fight the system. Do you know that there are people on pirate forums raging on guys that downloaded Witcher 2 from torrents and didn’t pay for it? In fact, they try to convince everybody to simply buy the game. Our fans out there really appreciate that we trust them and that we treat them with honesty and respect. For us, they are friends and we treat them so. We believe that DRM is not stopping piracy but can be a real pain for legal users. And if this is the case, why would you want to punish your customers instead of supporting them? We are receiving a huge number of letters from people who think alike and support us. I believe that we are slowly changing the way the game industry thinks. There will always be people who don’t have money and will download our games from torrents. But I believe that if they will have more cash in the future, then they will buy our next titles to help us fight for gamers’ rights.”

OXM has a preview of The Witcher 3. Enjoy and yes I know the website is for the XBOX 360. The article is still informative.

What we've seen of it so far is impressive, straight out of the Lord of the Rings movies: huge draw distances, showing hills rolling down to the sea and high mountain passes covered in snow. Out there are distinct cultures, scattered across the land in villages and cities. In this world, like Skyrim and unlike Oblivion, enemies do not scale with the character - wander into a high-level area without enough tools or the right equipment and Geralt won't live to regret it.

So far, we've seen two travel systems that can be used to explore this huge area. First off, there's sailing. We've not seen how this works yet, or the mechanics of control, but the whole feel is that of a very dark Legend of Zelda, combining Windwaker and Ocarina of Time, with Geralt exploring the frozen seas of the North in a small dinghy, complete with other galleys and even whales. Second, Geralt is able to ride horses (which are probably the best-looking horses that we've seen in any game since Hudson Horstachio in Viva Piñata).

That's not all that's been changed though. There's a new tutorial system, making up for the incredibly irritating opening of the first game, a new targeting system, which makes combat slightly more friendly, and a brand new animation system that makes it easier for Geralt's combat moves to flow between styles, and gives you a chance to break off attacks that simply aren't working.

Beyond these changes, we're betting that The Witcher 3 will offer the same mix of slightly overlong dialogue trees, truly challenging monster-hunting and exploration. Each monster has to be tracked to their lair, a process that should teach you how to defeat it - information that'll be displayed in combat using a new 'Witcher Sense'. "Monster hunting will be the main source of income for Geralt," says Ziemak, "not only in terms of gold but also crafting ingredients which can be later used for crafting the most powerful items."

CD Projekt RED has also confirmed this is the final chapter in Geralt's story: there'll be three different epilogues, depending on how you've played the prior title, and how you end up playing this one. As Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz puts it, Geralt has to finally find and protect those who are "important to him in his tumultuous, grimy, morally-questionable life." In this moody open world, with its twisty morally-grey plot, we can't think that either the man or his kin have much of a chance for happiness - but we're looking forward to trying.

Gamingbolt has a very small, but brief interview about Witcher 3.

We spoke only Quest Designer Paweł Sasko about how much better they look, especially in relation to the current crop of next-gen titles. He stated that, “It all comes down to the fact that CD Projekt RED loves challenges. With tunnel-like, linear levels created by a talented team, it’s relatively easy to deliver eye-candy graphics, because it’s always clear where player is looking.

“But when the game has the size of The Witcher 3 it becomes an incomparably bigger challenge and this is what makes our artists totally excited. Screenshots that we’ve shown are from an old build of the engine that ran using a dated renderer. Much of it is already rewritten and judging from the effects, we are aiming for CG quality of in-game graphics.”

“But this is not only an achievement of our programmers,” he says. “Our art team is one of the best staffed departments in the company, mostly because the guys and gals have been with CD Projekt RED since the beginning of The Witcher 1. We also know that in many cases with canny art direction it’s possible to do more than using monstrous textures and having them loaded and displayed flawlessly. We are aiming for the title of prettiest RPG of all time.”

So while The Witcher 3 will bring forth tesselation, improved multi-threaded and all the whiz-bang features of DirectX 11, CD Projekt RED wants it to stand out as an artistic achievement as well.

Pure Sophistry have an interview with Jakub Rokosz about The Witcher 3.

Some quotes:

1:30: Romance options are limited- only if you did appropriate choices.

3:00: Most of the story arcs and side quests are accessibel to everyone- outcomes different.

3:30: Three completely different Epilogues

4:33: The Core of the RPG experience is the Choice- 1 final decision- leads to three different epilogues...
Sacrific Geralt, Selfish Geralt and mixture of the two.....this leads to hundreds of endings.

The Koalition has a new interview with Jakub Rokosz, Senior Quest Designer for CD Projekt RED for The Witcher 3.

DJ: Can you first tell me a bit about where Geralt is at both in terms of the story and just mentally as a character, near the start of The Witcher 3?

JR: Geralt has grown up as the world changed around him.  He has seen a lot in his days – he helped kingdoms rise and fall, killed many enemies. He was forced into a lot of these events, now he is just tired. He wants to return to his occupation as a “simple” monster slayer and find his lost love.

The war changed everything. Those once in power have lost it and are no longer interested in Geralt. New players, however, arrived on the scene and have plans for the Witcher. Such transitional times are really dangerous, but at the same time there is a much greater threat looming above all nations.  A cavalcade of ghastly specters, the Wild Hunt, appears in the sky and will again cross its path with Geralt.

DJ: Which elements do you think The Witcher 2 was missing that held it back from being the fully realized vision that you're planning for The Witcher 3 to ultimately live up to?

JR: From what I’ve already mentioned we changed the difficulty curve. It doesn’t mean we’ve dumbed the game down, but we adjusted the difficulty curve so that it increases at a gradual and more natural rate. The last game started pretty tough, but by the end there was little challenge at all.

Also we designed the user interface with every specific platform in mind. Many players complained about the inventory system, and this time it will not be problematic at all we hope.

But I feel like the most important change is with the open world. At last we can fully show what being a Witcher - the monster hunter - is all about.

DJ: Are you making any major changes to gameplay that you want to talk about? The jump from Witcher 1 to Witcher 2, in terms of combat specifically, was very large.

JR: The open world is definitely something new in the franchise, so this introduces new gameplay mechanics and activities.

The game will have no chapters and you will be able to go everywhere all the time, with no loading times in between.  New means of exploration will be introduced. This doesn’t mean you should go everywhere all the time – some regions might be too dangerous when you start. But it means that if you want to check out new settings you don’t have to wait until a chapter is complete.

DJ: Do you plan to maintain the same mindset with DLC and additional content post release, or will you be changing your approach to DLC and DRM for The Witcher 3?

JR: We won’t do anything that tempers the experience of our fans. You can be sure that The Witcher 3 will have no DRM on PC, for example, thanks to GoG.com.

Softpedia has an interview with Mark Ziemak the Gameplay Director of Witcher 3. The article discusses various topics of the game.

Softpedia: Will The Witcher 3 close all narrative threads for the series or will mystery persist in some instances?

Marek Ziemak: You’re asking us about the ending of the game. That’s called a major spoiler. We can just tell you that there are 36 different possible world states at the conclusion The Witcher 3. These endings are preceded by 3 different epilogue sequences.

Softpedia: The game is supposed to be more open than ever. How big will the consequences be for player choices?

Marek Ziemak: The game world is open – you can go anywhere you want from the beginning. In scale it will be 35 times bigger than the whole Witcher 2.

As for consequences, creating choices which result in world-changing events were always our focus. This won’t change in an open world. Every action the player takes will have its consequences and the world will not be a dead one but an interactive place in which you will be able to affect everyone and everything.

Softpedia: How will the game deal with those who are newcomers to the series and lack the lore info that veterans discovered in the first two titles in the series?

Marek Ziemak: The Wild Hunt is a separate tale and doesn’t require the player to be familiar with previous installments of the franchise or the books. Veterans will mostly find some old friends, but newcomers won’t feel alienated by these reunions. We’re also working on a new tutorial system that will allow all new players to more smoothly immerse themselves into the games world. This will definitely change the learning curve so all new players will enjoy the game from the very beginning, slowly learning all the basics and more advanced options.

PCGAMER brings you a first look at The Witcher 3. Enjoy there humorous first play style preview.

I know this is exactly what a brooding fantasy RPG anti-hero would want you to think, but Geralt really is misunderstood. At first glance, The Witcher’s reticent protagonist is a walking cliché. He has silver hair, a scar over one eye and two swords permanently fastened to his back. If you asked an artist to sketch a typical troubled, dark-fantasy badass the results would look suspiciously similar, but these aren’t frivolous artistic embellishments – they’re the marks of a man who has survived for decades in the gloomiest of dark fantasy worlds.

The Witcher 3 is the final entry in Geralt’s saga. Freed from the political obligations and baffling amnesia that bound him in The Witcher 2, he’s searching for lost loved ones in a world on the brink of a calamitous war. But for all his vagrant tendencies, Geralt has a knack for becoming embroiled in the squabbles of the rich and powerful. He’s responding to a summons from Jarl Crach, who needs help with a personal matter.

Whether developer CD Projekt RED can master the world-building techniques that make Skyrim such a fascinating place to explore remains uncertain, but from what I’ve seen here, their huge open world setting has done nothing to dilute the intrigue, ugliness and dark humour that make The Witcher games so strange and memorable.

CD Projekt RED game designer Maciej Szczesnik has confirmed that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the developer's ambitious open-world RPG will be completely DRM-free.

According to Szczesnik, “We are trying to get rid of DRM. If someone wants to pirate a game, eventually he will.”

Not that the developer wants or is even courting piracy. In fact, it's something they hope gamers won't do.

“Which is bad, of course,” managing director Adam Badowski stated. “But you can’t do anything about it, so. We want to give the best user experience possible. When we removed DRM, people on those torrents were actually asking people not to download our game, because we weren’t using DRM.”

Thanks go to Strategy Informer.

IGN has talked to Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, Game Director as well and Thomas Tomaszkiewic,
the Lead Quest Designer at CD Project RED about Wicther 3.   They talk about Geralt's motivations,   promote the new Witcher Senses, denounce level scaling, and talk how long
the game wil be - and much much more. As always a quote - this about Geralt's changed memories:

"Geralt has changed his priorities," says Mateusz. "He has regained his memory, so he remembers that he had a family once, he wants to find his long lost love - Yennefer, the sorceress. He doesn't care about politics any more - even less than in previous games. There will be moments where Geralt will get involved in [political] things, but this time we have divided the plotlines of The Witcher 3 into a few categories. The first category is the basic main storyline of the character, of Geralt - looking for his Yennefer, amongst much else. This is the plot that is very personal to Geralt, and this is the main driving force for the entire game.

Adam Badowski, managing director of CD Projekt Red, interviewed by Robert Purchese at Eurogamer. The interview includes info on the open world design, PS4, no QTEs and some possible multi-player.

"What's next?" he mulled. "I have a lot of thoughts in my mind, but for now we don't have any strict plan." Is it possible to continue without Geralt, I asked. "I didn't tell you that we want to kill Geralt!" he replied.

The Witcher 3 is due at the end of next year and there's still much we don't know about it. For instance, will it have multiplayer (a first for the series)? "We're thinking about something," Badowski answered, "but I cannot explain it now. You can expect some information later on. Sorry for that!" I probed about whether it could be something similar to the Dark Arena mode in The Witcher 2. "I don't think so," he said.

You can be fairly confident, though, that CDPR doesn't have MMO ambitions for The Witcher series. "The story is not perfect for MMOs," said Badowski, and joked about how out-of-fiction it would be for 10 white-haired Geralts to be running around before him. "There are many different types of games that can fit better to the universe or lore," he said.

In the second interview on the Witcher 3 the focus is on combat, sex and choices.

RPS: In Witcher 2, especially before you patched it a lot, the combat was really hard. Witcher 3 sounds like it’s being designed to be quite empowering, to say the least. But are you still going to have that element of sometimes merciless difficulty? And what does all of this mean for the learning curve?

Michał Platkow-Gilewski: We learned a lot from Witcher 2. We know that our learning curve wasn’t the best in that game. This is one of the most focused parts of the development of Witcher 3, the learning curve and the difficulty curve for players. In many aspects. The combat was hard at the beginning and became too [routine] later on at the end. The plot could be, for some, a little bit too complicated at the beginning.

Right now we’re taking a different approach. For the quests, for example, I believe we can say that we have a kind of rocket science behind it. I’ve seen huge graphs showing how much information we can put into players’ hands at any given moment of the game. We don’t want anyone to feel like they’re overloaded with information, but on the other hand, we want to keep everyone interested. The same goes for the combat. You’ll learn some moves during the game that you wouldn’t ever think of at the beginning.

Dagon interviewed Maciej Sosnowski to talk about The Witcher 3. Scroll down for the English version.

Your previous games were quite rich, and were generating some reflections on our current society, but features also epic fights and were also technically impressive (especially The Witcher 2). Which way will you take for The Witcher 3 ? Is there a focus determined yet ? What sort of game do you seek to achieve in The Witcher 3 ?

Telling an epic tale is still the centerpiece of our game.  All gameplay elements serve this purpose, to present Geralt’s  legend. We won’t turn away to difficult, modern world problems in the fantasy setting and this won’t change. I don’t actually see the difference between the approachces you mentioned. Player immersion is achieved by presenting issues the player knows from the real world and you can tell a captivating plot only if the player is in the game and is emotionally engaged.

Since you mentioned boss battles from The Witcher 2, there won’t be any in the new part. I mean there will be pivot points, large enemies, but the gameplay won’t change. There will be no scripted events in those battles or QTEs. All such battles will be resolved with normal game mechanics and nothing unusual will occur. This reflects our return to core RPG mechanics, your stats and skills will be the most important thing during a fight and not a simple QTE.

RPS interviewed CD Projekt senior quest designer Jakub Rokosz and Michał Platkow-Gilewski on The Witcher 3.

RPS: I’d like to start with the most important question. Why does Geralt have a beard now?

Michał Platkow-Gilewski: [laughs] That’s a tough question. When it came to redesigning the character, we made a survey of the company. We asked all the girls here, what’s the sexiest thing about the guys in the office? They all said the beards are the sexiest. So we came up with this breakthrough design change and added the beard. No, just joking. A few months have passed. Geralt is on the road, you could say?

Jakub Rokosz: Right now he’s pretty much a man left on his own, after what happened in Witcher 2. He basically wanted to get a little alone time. I think the beard signifies that, that he spent some time in the wild. He didn’t really have to worry about looking good for the ladies out there.

 

RPS: That’s interesting. I think a lot of games just treat quests as a checklist of things to do, and if you don’t do them, well, you just didn’t do them. It sounds like you’re focusing on having ramifications for inaction or indecision.

Michał Platkow-Gilewski: Yes. I don’t believe in a structure like A-B-C-D-E-F-G, you’re finished. The main storyline needs to be connected with everything that’s going on in the world, to a bigger and smaller extent. Of course, you just go out to somewhere in the woods, in the wilderness, and you can focus on monster-hunting. Maybe you as a gamer just love to hunt monsters, like the Witchers are supposed to do. You can focus on the undead if you want. So you can do whatever you want. For me, this is the definition of an RPG. Do whatever you want.

The German Gamestar site has more info on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. In this newsbit they state that the game has 50 hours of playing time. There are a total of 36 instances of the game world that will materialize or not depending on your choices with a total of 3 different endings. Also, depending on the instances that materialize in your game a selection of characters from previous Witcher games will be available.

Geralt can hunt animals and use their skins. Which animals are available depends amongst others on the day and night cycle.
The cities should have more people in them and they are watching your more closely. If they find you stealing from them the city guards will show up.

In this article on the same site it is stated that the side-quest alone will be 100 hours of playing time, which doesn't match the earlier mentioned 50 hours, but I guess both could still be true.

Here are 12 screens of The Witcher 3. Click on any of the images and browse through the rest. Enjoy!

Game Informer has done another video interview for the Witcher 3 game.   This time they've talked to gameplay designers Maciej Szczesnik and Marvin about how monster hunting works in Witcher 3.

RPG Codex has a summary of 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.

Thanks RPGCodex :)

Strategy Informer has penned an editorial about what they think CD Project needs to do in the Witcher 3 game.   They've made a list of 11 things they want to see, here's the second thing they think would be a good idea in Witcher 3

2: Don't try to be Skyrim

Frankly, I am terrified by the open-world concept. Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz comments in the announcement video, "everyone likes open-world games, we should go this way." Should they? I'm not so sure. Aside from the tremendous difficulties Point 3 brings up, there's the fact that while there's only really been one series that has truly made open-world RPGs work - the Elder Scrolls games - their exploration value hides a lot of flaws, most notably in storytelling. While I like the idea that CD Projekt have looked at Skyrim and gone "we want to do that", Bethesda have been perfecting the art of open-world RPGs since 1992 and they still haven't gotten it perfect. The idea of marrying the incredible openness of Skyrim to the attention to detail of The Witcher is an intoxicating idea, but only as long as CD Projekt know what they're getting into. In short: don't make another Skyrim guys, make your own great open-world game. And finally...

And here's their idea # 11:

9: Actually tell us about important Witcher things

Thanks to CD Projekt’s work I am now a fan of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s excellent original novels too, but you can’t assume that all players will be familiar with them. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films still tell and show us why Mordor is a threat, and HBO’s Game of Thrones has done a great job making sure TV viewers are scared of the White Walkers as George RR Martin fans already were.
Therefore, please CD Projekt tell (or better, show) us why we should hear the name “Nilfgaard” and shudder as we utterly failed to do in either of the games. Nilfgaard is a brutal empire that inspires fear and is regularly at war with the rest of Temeria in Sapkowski’s books, but they’re just a random location with an ugly ambassador in The Witcher 2. Let players know these things, and if Witcher 3 fails to explain who Yennefer is properly I’ll be cross.

The next Witcher game will come not only for the PC but for the PS4 too, said CD Projekt. And of course for all next gen consoles. Simultaneously. So await an XBox 720 announcement soonish.

Current gen consoles aren't mentioned, but it would probably make economic sense to port it at least to the XBox 360.

Found on GamersGlobal, but other sites also ran this.

Another video up for The Witcher 3.

The climax of the gameplay demo had CD Projekt RED showed us for last month's cover story had Geralt battling an ice giant in his lair. As the lead character artist, Pawel Mielniczuk leads the art team at the studio in the design of all the game's characters and monsters. Combining all disciplines within the studio, Pawel says that designing the monsters for the game is one of the team's biggest challenges.

The third installment of GameInformers's exclusive interviews is out. This one discusses the new open world design.

Some fans might be worried about The Witcher 3's leap to an open world, that the tightly-constructed narrative of previous entries might be sacrificed to appease a growing trend in the industry. Rest assured, the development team at CD Projekt RED is confident that they have created the perfect fusion of exploration and narrative.

Watch the video interview to hear the game's director and lead quest designer talk about converting the world of The Witcher and what lessons they have learned from games like Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas, and Assassin's Creed 3.

Earlier in the week GameInformer continued their Witcher 3 series with a video on the story. Spoilers from the first two games apply, so be warned if you haven't played them:

CD Projekt RED has been lauded for the studio's implementation of a mature and gripping storyline throughout The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Despite the new open-world structure for the third and final game in the trilogy, the writers behind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt are hoping to make the story in the new game the most satisfying yet.

Watch the interview below to hear the writers for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt explain where the story of the game begins and where Geralt's new perspective on life will bring him.

Game Informer has an video interview with lead quest designer Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz as well as director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, director for CD Project RED.  In the interview they talk about which features might make it into the game based on the feedback from fans who played The Witcher 2.  In the third Witcher game, we might then get  see this: a less, political story, a new tutorial which is part of they storyline, combat being more responsive, a not so steep difficulty curce as in Witcher 2, more side quest and much much more.

CD Project RED issued a press release a couple of days ago announcing this game, as we told you here.  Reading through the press release we learn that:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the final episode of the award-winning RPG series and the last part of the legend of Geralt of Rivia. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the most robust and breathtaking game ever created by CD Projekt RED. Open world free-roaming exploration is an adventure in itself as the player will gallop through war-ravaged lands, sail misty waters and track down dangerous beasts for money.

Thanks to Lemonhead in our forums for catching this as well. 

Thanks also goes to our forumites who are discussing the features in the game here.

Here's a trailer/dev video from GameInformer on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

...and Eurogamer has some screens.

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.

GameInformer will cover the now officially announced Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in their upcoming print issue. The title is slated for a release in 2014 for PC & nextgen consoles...