The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Short Article Roundup

I found a few more articles for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt this week as the game is entering full PR mode for launch next month. So lets get started.

The first article is a new interview from Polygon about game length.

Armed with insider knowledge that most players won't have, it still took The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's most experienced playtester 25 hours to complete developer CD Projekt Red's upcoming role-playing game — but that's not the whole story.

Fabian Mario Doehla, CD Projekt Red's studio communications manager in Germany, told Polygon that the playtester skipped all dialogue and cutscenes and was privy to the game's tricks, secrets and critical paths. Playing as he did, he turned The Witcher 3's layered narratives and interactions with non-playable characters into straightforward events. Without the nuances that players will experience, the playtester took a machete to branching paths to create straight lines.

In other words, he was speedrunning The Witcher 3, playing only in the most mechanical sense. And it still took him 25 hours to shepherd Geralt of Rivia through the trilogy-closing adventure.

The second article IGN who has another exclusive article/video about monsters.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is wonderfully obsessed with monsters, despite focussing on a protagonist who’s main calling is the extermination of such hideous beasts. It raids various mythology, theology, folklore nature, and literature, with a keen eye for the weird and hideous; it steals from all of them and blends them together, producing a rich and unusual bestiary.

And for last GameInformer talks about when Geralt overdoses on toxins.

Recently, a neat detail about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was revealed for the first time. CD Projekt Red has figured out how to dynamically grow Geralt’s facial hair during the game.

While this may seem like a small feature revealed by German magazine Gamestar, details like this enhance the immersion and help sell the reality of a game world. And, if you’d prefer to style Geralt’s hair yourself, CD Projekt told Eurogamer the free “Beard and Hairstyle DLC” will let you do that. Once you download it, Geralt's beard will stop growing.

We reached out to the developer to find out if this bit of immersion would be extended to other parts of the game. It turns out that Geralt’s face isn’t just good for telling time between shaves.

More information.

So… No 10 minutes speedruns?
Poor Kotaku, they'll have to write about an actual game. A sad day.