The Witcher 3 is nearly upon us. Developer CD Projekt Red has been very generous with sharing extensive, in-game footage over the months leading up to the impending release. Now, in one final push to get us all excited, the studio has shared “A Night to Remember,” a gorgeous cinematic sequence that actually captures the game’s experience quite well.
Geralt comes upon a beautiful woman alone in the night, singing an eerie lullaby. First impressions are deceptive, though, and it quickly becomes apparent that this woman is in fact the target of Geralt’s hunt. She tries to distract him with her feminine wiles, letting down her hair and showing some skin, but quickly darts out of her clothes as a wisp of smoke into the nearby barn. Geralt downs a potion before following her in for a fantastically choreographed fight.
Although it’s a pre-rendered cinematic, the clip is actually pretty indicative of how the game will play – grim world-building, punishing combat, and a slightly puerile sense of titillation. Geralt is tasked with hunting down a nasty monster. He does a bit of research to find out how it will try to kill him and comes prepared. In this case he has a sparkle-bomb (almost certainly not what it’s actually called, but I’m going to roll with it) to cancel out her invisibility and drinks a potion that makes his blood toxic, knowing that she will go for a taste and be crippled as a result. Combat in Witcher games can be brutal, and diligent preparation is key to just barely eking out a victory, like Geralt does here.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt come out on May 19 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC. Unfortunately, we ran into technical issues with our PS4 debug console, and those are the only copies that the developer was distributing early. We should be getting our hands on the game soon, however, and I will post my impressions as I go.
