Category: Trailer-breakdown

Witcher 3 Official Gameplay Trailer breakdown

5/31/2015

Hi guys,
Today I will be tearing apart the new Witcher 3 Wild Hunt gameplay trailer that was released yesterday. As we draw nearer to the release of this epic game, both the information available and my excitement grows. In this new trailer, we get some new information and a more in depth look at some mechanics we already know about, such as the alchemy in the game. Without further ado let's get into it! I would just like to say that there will be a lot of speculation below, some of the things I will be talking about are in no way confirmed and are pure speculation on my part, please treat it as such.

Here is another look at the map of the world of The Witcher 3, it is obviously huge, but I wanted to draw your attention to this segment.

This is taken from the top right of the map, it seems to show all of the activities that you can embark on whilst staying in The Skellige Isles. Starting from the left, this symbol to me seems to show an assassination mission, which could then be rewarded with money, as the coin seems to suggest. There is then a small cave entrance, which obviously will lead into some kind of under ground area, probably filled with monsters of varying ferocity! Next along is probably the most interesting symbol, it is the small green sign post, which in my eyes will signal a village you can go to. The quantity is what is surprising here, as it shows 56 available to go to, it is more than likely that some of these villages will have been over run with monsters. As the trailer says later on, once these monsters have been removed(you will probably need to go out and find the monster nest and destroy it using a Samum bomb) citizens will start to move into the village and you will be able to trade with them, and they will probably have missions you can do for them! The rest of these symbols are beyond my understanding, and I feel it would be pointless to speculate on some quite obscure icons.

Here we seem to have a dark wizard summoning a portal to another world! Geralt will more than likely be attacked by any of the ensuing monsters clawing their way out of the portal. There is probably a townsman or villager somewhere who might have contracted you to take care of this wizard/portal, so there could be a reward at the end of the adventure!

Next we get a look at what I believe is a new monster, seemingly a Minotaur of sorts this monster will probably be a mini-boss of some sort, I would definitely expect to be able to take a trophy from this enemy, though fitting those horns on your saddle may be slightly difficult! This will probably be the type of enemy where you will need to learn how it acts/reacts in combat before you will be able to best him and take your reward!

Here we have a look at two of the humanoid enemies in the game, of both the water and air variety. On the left we appear to have a water nymph, though it is unclear at the moment whether these will be aggressive or passive!

Here we get one of our most in depth looks at the armour of the game. There were more screens of armour shown in the trailer, but I didn't think you would want to see them all. I have picked out some information, which I don't know if it is new, but it certainly excited my! Firstly there are four different types of armour rarity, there is Common(signified with no colour), Master(signified with a blue colour base), Witcher(signified with a green colour base) and lastly yellow(signified with a yellow colour base. It seems that the Magic gear(shown above) offers both a higher armour rating, and more bonus stats. Speaking of bonus stats, based on the armour pieces shown today, I can give you all a small list of the bonuses that can be offered on the armour: Resistance to: Piercing Damage, Bludgeoning Damage, Slashing Damage, Burning Damage, Damage from Monsters and elemental damage. There are also Attack Damage boosters, Adrenaline Point signs and Ard Sign intensity that can be boosted on armour, these ratings range from 3% all the way up to 40%! These armour pieces also come in types, with the traditional Light, Medium and Heavy armour making an appearance in The Witcher 3. All of the pieces shown have little baubles next to their icon, some pieces have no baubles and some have three. Although we don't actually know what these mean, other than the fact that they are all empty, I believe that these are slots either for runes(maybe to increase damage against a specific enemy), or enchantments(possibly to reduce how heavy certain items are).

Here we have something small, that I wanted to point out. It appears that Geralt should only be able to carry a maximum of 60 items(maybe different items take up more than one slot?), but he has somehow managed to stuff an incredible 184 items into his backpack. Leading me to believe that maybe once you carry over your limit(a limit which is upgradable based on previous trailers) you aren't stopped from carrying more items, you simply move slower whilst in combat, so it would be in your best interest to stay around the limit you currently have.

Next up we have a rather interesting bit of the trailer, which covers the alchemy you can do in the game. What caught my eye were the oils it said you could craft, I believe I am right in saying we don't know what the oils will do, other than that you can apply them to weapons.(This being my first Witcher game I don't know if this feature has been in previous games) My thoughts were that these oils could be applied to your weapons and they would give you a damage buff against specific types of enemies, so the Necrophage oil could increase damage against any enemies raised from the dead. Possibly the Specter oil will raise the damage you deal against certain types of wildlife, these are just my thoughts though!

Here is one of the bombs you can craft in use, it clearly does a rather large amount of damage, as it seems to bring down 3 aggressive birds. We also see a rather stunning snow/mountains area of the map, which I can't wait to fully explore!

Next up we have the magic section of the trailer, the spell used above is one we have seen used before, and it looks just a deadly as before. It is unclear as to whether it is a passive or aggressive spell. Basically whether it will just push the enemies away from you, to get you out of a sticky situation. Or maybe it does damage to the enemies at the same time as pushing them away.

Now we have the incendiary spell which ejects embers out of Geralts arm, and seems to all enemies it touches. It is unclear for now what its area of affect is, or what its DPS(Damage Per Second) is, hopefully is does damage as well as frighting/staggering your enemies!

Here we have a spell which we don't quite know what it does, Geralt is fighting witch-like enemies at the time he deploys this spell, so it is possible it is a spell specifically designed to do large amounts of damage to this specific type of enemy. Note though the purple hour glass symbol which appears on the ground, as you will see it clearly signifys that a specific type of spell has been deployed!

Here we have a spell that will prove incredibly useful against singular large enemies, if you can't see what is going on here Geralt has deployed a magical shield which is blocking the attacks of this enemy. It should come in handy if you are fighting bosses that are on the ground! Note again that this purple symbol appears in the picture, I still don't know what it signifies, but it is clearly tied to using specific spells, maybe it is a warning to the player that they can't use that spell again for a period of time(though I don't know if any of the spells have cool downs on them!)

Next we have what I believe is the first in game look at how timed conversation options will look. Unless it has been changed since previous trailers, not all conversations will pan out like this, just the ones which influence the following action probably. The three options seem to result in very different paths, so we will have to see when the games has been released if these options are plentiful or quite sparse!

Now I want to wrap up this post and give you some of the little details revealed by the narrator of this trailer. Firstly the cities of the game will have sewer systems that we will be able to explore and find monsters in, there will probably be some missions tied into the sewers as well, so look out for them! Then we got our first look at the vampires in the game, it is unclear whether these will be available to fight or just present in cut scenes. There was a rather nice skill shown off for the swordsmen out there, Geralt is advancing towards some archers and he is deflecting their arrows with his sword, this will more than likely be a high end skill to unlock, as it looks to negate the problems posed by singular or small groups of archers! We then got a look at two newly announced mini-games that will be present in the game, firstly there will be card games, which look rather complicated, however I am assuming you will be able to make rather large amounts of money of these games! The other mini-game we saw was horse racing, I believe we have see this in a previous trailer, but this is the first time we have been told that it will be an actual activity, presumably you will be able to bet/make money of these races as well! Lastly nearly all of the gameplay segments we saw, we taking place with no UI(User Interface) on the screen, whether this was just for the trailer, or maybe the game will be more cinematic in moments of non-combat that at least I was expecting! Either way I am incredibly excited about this game, and I hope that this post has given you some knowledge about this game that you didn't know before!
The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt is released on May 19th, on the Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Thanks for reading,
Ed
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Witcher 3 Pax east 2015 trailer breakdown

5/31/2015

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Hi guys,
If you didn't know this weekend is an event in America called PAX East, this event always produces some interesting results. This year we have got our hands on a new 7 minute segment of gameplay for the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. This is my most anticipated game this year, so I am always interested to get my hands on new gameplay, and I thought I would bring you all a breakdown of some of the less noticeable features shown off during this trailer. If you are looking forward to the game,or like some of the things I breakdown today, why not share the article on Twitter?
Anyway, thanks for reading and until next time,
Ed

Getting straight into the dissection, here you can see what is almost a killcam of sorts. It describes how powerful your last attack was, and also tells you when you have killed what ever you are attacking. What is interesting is, why does it say "The fatal blow was dealt by Geralt". Now this may just be because you can play as a second character as specific points in the campaign. As a totally off the wall theory, could we be seeing online free roam mode where other people are in your world?

Nothing massively new here, just the control scheme for console users. I might have preferred for R2 to be the button to hold for sprinting, but there may be an option in the game to change the layout of the control scheme.

This is what will pop up on your screen every time to reach a new "checkpoint" in a mission, so if you unlock new information, or have spoken to the person you were supposed to, this message will come up and tell you what to do next.

Here are some of the dialogue options that will be available whilst in a cut scene(also the transition between gameplay and cut scene looked instant and flawless. We will have to wait and see when the game comes out, but I wonder to what level you have control over the conversation. This will be my first Witcher game, so I don't know how it has worked in the past.

This experience was earned by talking to the people above, and progressing a little further into the side quest. It is nice that you are rewarded along the way in a mission, rather than just at the end.

This is the UI(User Interface) of the menu system, it looks very clean and tidy, it has every thing you might need, including the world map(which we already know is huge) and there is also the intriguing option of meditation. What this will entail is still a mystery though I would assume it is similar to the Witcher 2 concept of meditating to restore you health!

Just a look at our very own Geralt, and some more in-depth RPG style stats, I love it when a game does weapons stats by DPS(Damage Per Second) rather than the player having to work out how a slow hitting, high damage weapon will work out. We will also have stats for each of the two swords we have at our disposal!

A look next(I believe our first) at how our armour will be laid out, a few interesting things to point out here, the Chest armour has a green glow around the bottom of the picture, this could either be to indicate the rarity of the armour(as in many other games) or to show the user they have tweaked it by adding something onto it like in a future picture. There is also a slot for ammunition for your ranged weapon, which might mean we have different kinds of bolts or arrows, maybe you can earn fire damage bolts further into the game? There is also along the bottom where it says "Trophy", as you will see later on, you can take the head of large enemies and tie them onto your horse to take back to the city and maybe sell it. However it appears you can only carry one trophy at a time, maybe there will be an option to upgrade this further down the line

Here we have our level(a fairly high 30), and how much XP is required to reach the next level, in this case another 2965. We can also see that like games before it, we will have a cap on how many items we can hold at one time, for this character they can hold 150, whether this is items or weight is unclear!

You may not be able to see here, but the player is adding a modifier onto their sword(without having to go to a blacksmith!) which increased the damage by a whopping 22%(my maths may be slightly out), I love that this can be done on the fly.

In this particular engagement we are fighting either a mini-boss or a boss, either way the Royal Wyvern is clearly a big enough deal to warrant its own health bar across the top of the screen. Useful to know when fighting such a monstrous beast!

Here we have two types of potions that Geralt can take at any time, the Superior Swallow(Superior because it has been upgraded) appears to regenerate your health for the duration of the affect, in this instance 60 seconds. I am not quite sure what the Superior Thunderbolt potion does, but I am guessing it is offensive rather than defensive. It will be interesting to see if we can equip two defensive potions or vice versa. We also have the Crossbow, which according to this, has unlimited ammunition, which is rather nice as you won't have to always be looking at your ammo count. It is possible that the infinite ammo was because this was a demo and won't be in the final game.

Here we have another example of Geralts weapons doing a consistent, but very high damage against the Royal Wyvern, it will be interesting to see how your damage output scales to the enemy you are fighting.

We can see here that you have a nice clear indication of how much duration both of your potions have left.

You might just be able to see here on the side of the horse, is the head of the beast you just slayed. Linking back into earlier on when I pointed out the trophy slot in you inventory. It will be interesting to see what you can do this these trophys, hopeful it is more than just proof you have completed a quest, which is then taken off you by the quest giver!

Here is just something interesting I thought you all might like, we will have a horse stamina bar across the bottom of our screen when riding the horse. Interestingly this bar didn't appear earlier in the trailer where Geralt was riding his horse!

Lastly we are shown the artwork for the game, interestingly even when you buy the normal edition of the game, you are still given the stickers, game map, universe compendium, soundtrack and game manual shown on screen. CD Projekt Red do know how to treat their players!

One last thing before I leave you, I'm sure you are aware that is was recently announced that Witcher 3 would be receiving 16 pieces of free DLC, slightly sadly one of those 16 pieces is the side mission we saw in this gameplay trailer, not a huge problem. However I would have liked them to keep the DLC secret until we are given it, post launch!
Thanks again,
Ed

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Witcher 3 Official Gameplay Trailer breakdown

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