Witcher 3 - Interview @ El33tonline

El33tonline has a new interview with Story and Quest Designer Mikołaj Szwed from GamesCom 2013.

Tom: With it being a multi-region, open world – what does this mean? Is it a set of islands or a big landmass – are there very different locations?

Mikołaj: At this point I can tell you that there will be three regions in The Witcher 3, so basically there are the Skellige islands – the location you actually saw in the presentation – this has a Nordic/Celtic feel to it so this is an archipelago – a couple of islands. And you’ll have Novigrad which is the biggest city in The Witcher world with its surroundings – it’s inspired by medieval Amsterdam and has a similar role to Venice during the 15th and 16th century. So it’s a very powerful, free city – richer and stronger than many of the kingdoms in the south. Then we’ll have Vellin – also called the No Man’s Land. So basically this is the area where the Nilfgaard clashed with the northern kingdoms and the front went north and south, and north and south, and what lies between is a desolate, destroyed land. People were killed, raped and hung there – everything that’s worst – that’s Vellin, that’s No Man’s Land.

Tom: I noticed just from the presentation that it seems like there’s a greater focus now on hunting beasts?

Mikołaj: Monster hunting was always a very important element of the Witcher games – it was already present in the Witcher 1 – in The Witcher 2 not so much but there were still side quests where you had to hunt the Endregas or the Nekkers or the Harpies. So basically we wanted to give it a more prominent place in The Witcher 3, so basically now that we have an open-world game there will be far more places to put all this stuff there. We also have this new system – like these Witcher senses – which will be used to investigate both cases connected with monsters as well as not. So basically you’ll be able to track the tracks of the monsters in the forest – not only visual tracks but also you’ll be able to listen to sounds. And there will be different types of monster hunting – for example, sometimes you’ll be able to come across a monster yourself without even knowing that there’s a side quest for this monster – you can kill it and then take the trophy and then it turns out that someone will pay for your trophy. In other situations you’ll have to, for example, gather information from witnesses about the monsters, so actually you’ll get to know what monster type it is and ferret it out just like the Leshen. So basically you have to know what the monster is in order to lure it out because some of the monsters – it won’t be possible to find them until you get to know how to lure them out from their lairs.