It remains to be seen if Wild Hunt will be bigger than Skyrim commercially, but CD Projekt RED spawned many a web article when it confirmed that its open-world is roughly 20% bigger than Bethesda’s epic RPG in terms of sheer size. That’s an impressive statistic, but it could easily prove a liability if Wild Hunt doesn’t furnish that space with enough excitement to make it feel dense and alive.
“We fill each region with stories that are just around every corner,” Szczesnik assures us. “It’s something very characteristic to Slavic mythology that partially inspires the game. In Slavic mythos, you don’t need to venture to far away lands to experience adventures – something really amazing can live in a nearby forest or hide deep in the cave you pass by when you travel. We populate the world with adventure and this glues everything together.” Huge worlds also mean big commutes, but in addition to your own two feet, Wild Hunt gives you the option of horseback, fast travel and even a boat for traversing its frigid oceans. We’ve been told those bodies of water are treacherous “and not only because of the weather” either…
CD Projekt RED claims that the game will redefine the genre, but haven’t we killed monsters and completed quests many times before? Szczesnik claims it’s what we haven’t seen yet that makes the difference, the way the game manages to weave the plot intensity from closed-world RPGs with the freedom of a dizzyingly vast open-world. That’s a lot of space in which the Fiend can hide, but we’ll hunt him down eventually. Those giant antlers will look amazing on the wall of the OPM hunting lodge.
