Going into this year’s E3, The Witcher 3  Wild Hunt was on the top of the list of games I was looking forward to getting an update on. Last year it looked fantastic and I was very excited to see how things were going. We saw some of the game at the press conferences but the meeting I had with CD Projekt Red promised 45 minutes of gameplay. This was not hands on but it was one of the developers playing the game along a quest line. There is always a certain amount of skepticism in these instances because it could just be pre-recorded video with a guy pantomiming playing the game but in this case I sat behind the guy playing in the dark room and if he was pantomiming he was doing an awesome job of it. Also, like last year, there were moments when he was having a hard time killing some things and I doubt that would be in a video.

The Witcher 3 is the continuing story of Geralt of Rivia, a mutant human with special powers geared toward monster hunting for hire, who is out to stop a cadre of spectral hunters from wreaking havoc on the world called the Wild Hunt. This is a self contained story that does not require the player to have gone through the first two games but it does have personal ramifications for Geralt beyond just the notion of self preservation. The game play demo got into some of these personal stakes and showed how the story branches out from Geralt’s actions and how player choice can change the world around them.

Whereas last year’s game play demo focused mostly on the combat and hunting mechanics, this one showed a bit more story elements, user interface and quest types. As it opened we saw Geralt taking out a griffin through the hunting mechanic and taking its head to a contact from whom he needed information. That interaction lead to Geralt heading into the forest to speak to a childlike monster who may have seen the person Geralt is looking for. That interaction led to another quest to give the monster his voice back. This then led to another quest to do something for some other forest spirits before Geralt could get the information he needed.

This shows the branching, qiud pro quo sort of quest structure you can expect from the Witcher 3, a convention that some gamers complain about but the difference here is that the branching quests were interesting and contributed to the story in meaningful ways that range from simple story texture to more lasting impact on the world. An example of this is that one of the quests shown had you confronting a demon that needed to be destroyed. When Geralt gets to the demon it tells him that it has been trapped there and is unable to help the children of a nearby village who have been abducted. The demon claims to be misunderstood and needs Geralt’s help. The player can now choose to either help the demon or kill it. If he chooses to kill it, he is set upon by the demon’s minions and a fight ensues. Upon returning to the forest spirits, Geralt finds that the children have indeed been abducted which opens up another side quest he can look to if he wants to. This shows how much decisions affect the world around you and how difficult some of these decisions can be. We were not shown or told what happened if you released the demon but that likely carried with it its own set of consequences.

The combat shown was similar to what we saw last year with the ability to switch between melee and magic combat. It seemed smoother and easier to transition between the two than in previous Witcher games while still utilizing a sign system for the magic which can be changed through a radial menu on the fly. This seems to be less of a struggle than in Witcher 2 which always felt clunky to me in terms of combat and changing things on the fly. The addition of a new crossbow looks awesome and very helpful. The ability to use the environment in combat also adds an extra dimension to combat while making it feel more like a living breathing world than a static venue for bloodshed.

Outside of combat, the user interface looks a lot cleaner than in the previous game. There is still a lot going on in there but it is well organized and intuitive handling things like inventory management, sign arrangement and crafting. Crafting has been beefed up as well and offers a lot more options for weapons and armor than in the past. I am very relieved to see this as the UI was the biggest roadblock for me in the last game. Sure it could still suck but all signs point to it being intuitive and easy to navigate.

One thing the demo really drove home was just how large and explorable this world is going to be. There are no loads when going from outdoor to indoor like buildings or into caves which gives everything a connected feeling that won’t have the player waiting during these transitions. The addition of climbing adds to the feeling that if you can see to it you can go to it and makes for a world that feels truly open without invisible walls or restrictive environments. Swimming contributes to this as well and gives you a full range of horizontal and vertical traversal. Thankfully there is fast travel to cut town on travel time so the enormity of the world doesn’t screw you over.

The demo was interesting because it wasn’t especially flashy or go for surprises or overly dramatic cliff hangers, it just demonstrated what it is going to be like to be playing the game. That sounds like it should be obvious given it is a gameplay demo but that isn’t always the case. The take away from the demo as a whole is that this is a highly polished, gorgeous looking game that uses next gen processing power to do things that games have been trying to get right for years. The facial animations are amazing, the voice work is superb and the controls and user interface look like they are on point. Also, the story is pretty fucked up in terms of the things that happen in it but not in a way that feels like it is done for shock value. This is dark fantasy and it is dark indeed with moral ambiguity and characters with their own agendas and moral placement that are rarely shared by the player.

I am very excited to play this game when it releases in February of 2015 for PS4, Xbox One and PC. Everything I have seen so far suggests that it is making great use of the new consoles with new content and a vast world while also streamlining things that were issues in the last game. The only real problem I had with what I saw of the Witcher 3 at E3 was that I can’t play it right now.