The Witcher III: Wild Hunt preview GameGPU

Release date: February 24, 2015
Genre: Action RPG, Open world
developer: CD Projekt RED
Publisher: CD Projekt (Poland), 1C-SoftClub (CIS), WB Interactive Ent. (USA), Spike Chunsoft (Japan)

Seven years ago, the Poles from CD Project RED showed the whole world their vision of what a good computer role-playing game should look like. A series of games about a witcher named Geralt is based on the books of the writer Andrzej Sapkowski. And the developers have repeatedly said that the author takes part in the project when advice on the plot or a fresh look from the outside is directly needed. From the very first part of the Witcher series, it immediately became clear that this fantasy RPG would win the hearts of fans of games of this genre and those who were waiting for the continuation of the story about the hero from Rivia. 

You can, of course, endlessly describe how huge and beautiful the world created by the Poles is. But in this article, bringing together all the news and rumors about The Witcher, we will try to reveal what you will see when you launch Witcher 24: Wild Hunt on your PC on February 3th.

And so in order - first of all, the world around us, which, according to the developers, will be of colossal size. In March, at a presentation entitled “Optimizing Viewing and Streaming in the Game “Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” Using Umbra 3,” organized jointly by CD Projekt RED and Umbra Software, extremely interesting digital information about the size of some game locations flashed on the slides . For example, the area of ​​Novigrad promises to be about 72 square kilometers (8.5x8.5 kilometers), and the area of ​​Skellige is 64 square kilometers (8x8 kilometers). In total, it turns out that two game locations in Geralt’s new adventures will be three and a half times larger than the entire game map in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

It is curious that at the beginning the CD Projekt RED team promised that the game world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt would be 20-40% larger than the game world of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. So, at the moment it is not clear whether the figures presented at the presentation were indicative values ​​​​and not yet scaled to the game world, or whether Geralt will have to complete his journey in a much larger world than originally expected. One thing is for sure - the new Witcher will be fucking huge.

The huge size of the game world is also hinted at by the introduction of new ground transport and ships. For transportation, you can get yourself a horse, and for sea adventures, armed with oars, you can plow the surface of the sea. By the way, additional quests will be associated with horse racing. It is still unknown in what form they will be implemented. 

You won’t be bored at sea either - a merchant ship may sail nearby, and sometimes a whale’s tail flashes on the horizon.  

Since we're talking about TES V: Skyrim, it's worth mentioning that the first two Witchers only offered a relatively open world, which was divided into large, but still limited locations in which the player could move with some restrictions. This time, CD Projekt RED will not only offer us completely open territories, tens of times larger in area than the levels from previous parts, but will also breathe life into them. The developers see the main drawback of The Elder Scrolls series in the soullessness and “cardboard quality” of its vast expanses. The Witcher 3 in this regard, it is close to ideal: every square meter of space will live, interact with the player and react to his behavior.

According to community managers, there will be no auto-scaling of monsters in Witcher 3, which means that players may encounter enemies that can kill the hero if he gets too far without proper preparation. 

Completing the main storyline will take about 50 hours of play. Side quests will take about the same amount of time. During this time, the hero will be able to level up to the maximum level 60.

Additionally, The Witcher 3 will not force players to complete quests within a certain time limit. The developers want players to complete them at a pace that is comfortable for them. However, there may be plot twists that will make you move faster. It will also be interesting that for the first time in the series, so-called randomly generated events will appear. 

So, at one press show, the developers demonstrated the system randomly generated events In action. Geralt came across a village, in the vicinity of which a crowd of residents had gathered, discussing strange phenomena and metamorphoses that were preventing the villagers from living a quiet life. After this, Geralt, having talked and found out the essence of the problem, went to investigate. The whole mission looked wonderful and varied, but the question about randomen counters arises: will all be carried out according to the same scheme, or will the authors diversify them as much as possible so that they do not become boring after two or three tasks.

In addition to creating a large and living world, the main tasks of the Poles included improving the non-linearity of the plot and expanding the branching of dialogues. The Witcher 3 will constantly present the player with difficult choices. There is no place for good knights here - Geralt is not trying to pretend to be a generous hero. Often we will be forced to choose not between a bad or a good scenario, but between two evils. And of course, every decision we make will entail certain consequences that may not appear immediately. Certain events will also affect the “loss” of one of several dozen possible endings.

Very little is known about the game's plot. Wild Hunt will tell a completely new story, almost in no way connected with the previous parts. Even if you have not joined Geralt's adventures before, you will be able to enjoy the adventure without misunderstanding. The hero left “big politics” and is now doing things closer to his calling. The plot is based on the confrontation between Geralt and the Wild Hunt - a group of ghostly horsemen with a pack of dogs that destroy all living things. All the main characters from Sapkowski's universe, including Triss, will help us.

Witcher 3's combat builds on the foundation laid in Witcher 2, but the team has put a ton of work into improving it and fixing past bugs. One of the results was an updated evasion system - players will be able to dodge, roll away and perform other pirouettes. It has not undergone any major changes and is a more improved system of sword fighting using magic. The main innovation in gameplay is special attacks. The developers demonstrated one of them when, in the presentation, Geralt fought a duel with a monster: he shot fire from his hand, burning the monster out like a flamethrower.

By the way, monsters now need to be hunted: the player must identify the victim before engaging in battle with it. Geralt questions the residents, collecting bits of information about the monster, tailors a unique arsenal to a specific enemy, and in his search he will be helped by special vision, analogous to the detective mode from the Batman: Arkham City game series. To summarize, to go hunting, you need to be properly prepared. CD Project RED showed how the whole hunting process takes place in the episode where Geralt was tracking down a goblin. Our gray-haired protagonist, using his special vision, followed in the footsteps of this monster and at the same time, like Batman, commented on every clue.

CD Projekt RED has also improved the game's inventory. Unlike Witcher 2, the new game's inventory is presented in a grid system - more details to come.

And finally, it became known that Witcher 3 will not have branching stories similar to those in the second chapter of Witcher 2. The second part of the Witcher is considered one of the best in the entire series, largely due to the fact that players had the opportunity to choose what how to go through a situation, sometimes from completely different points of view. And although The Witcher 3 will have a choice of consequences, as well as ways to complete quests and a dialogue system, you should not expect stories like in the last game.

The game has announced support for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC. CD Projekt RED is proud that their game is not only for PC, but also for next-gen consoles. The Witcher III: Wild Hunt will be compatible with all major systems of the Microsoft family Windows bit depth of systems 32 or 64 bits, also the Linux system is in the list of supported systems. The priority and main graphic API for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be DirectX 11. The game will work through the digital distribution service Steam. Pre-orders for the game are already accepted on Steam.

Currently, version resolution The Witcher 3 for Xbox One is 900p, but according to the project's executive producer they are working to increase this to 1080p: "900p is the minimum requirement for the console versions. We would like to achieve 1080p for Xbox One. That is our goal. Can we do it or no, I don't know, but we have to get the best out of the equipment." 

"Microsoft and Sony say that 900p is a great result and there is no big visual difference between 1080p and 900p, but it's a hot topic right now. So 1080p is our goal."

Meanwhile, the PS4 version runs at 1080p: "It's just a slightly more powerful machine, that's what we know, but I think in the long run everything will run at 1080p on both consoles. The developers just need a little more time because of the architecture Xbox One turned out to be more difficult than PS4."

"It's actually easier for us to work on Xbox One because we're PC developers. We create everything on PC for DirectX 11, and Xbox is also based on DirectX."

As for other changes, the Xbox One and PS4 consoles will use a less advanced SSAO system, and the water space will not boast advanced tessellation quality, in addition, there are other “tiny sacrifices” of visual design that have minimal impact on the graphical side of the game, but gave a huge jump in project performance.

Jose Teixeira noted that the level of optimization for the console versions is even higher than what the developers expected. The creators have not yet decided whether it will be in the console The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt dynamic or fixed frame rate. In some locations, CD Projekt RED employees have already achieved stable 30fps and this figure will soon be achieved for all game areas.

The developers say that RedEngine 3 creates large-scale open worlds, improves the quality of graphics and, finally, the game will not have loading screens. They claim that RedEngine 3 is designed for future-generation platforms and will ultimately break down the boundaries between game graphics and CGI. The fundamental difference between RedEngine 3 and its predecessor is that REDengine 3 is designed to support open world games. The developers spent a lot of time calculating the functioning of the information transfer system and many other technical techniques that allowed CD Project Red to achieve the desired result, both in terms of story presentation and open world.

In RedEngine 3, the rendering was also rewritten to make the game work on DirectX 11, because it adds many interesting features that will visually improve The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. CD Project Red actively works to optimize performance, using a special tool that scans all files for excessive resource consumption, the presence of parasitic elements and other problems. The main goal is to achieve stable frame rates and, if possible, improve performance on all platforms. Small changes can result in a 5-6 frames per second increase. The team expects to be able to squeeze out up to 12 additional frames per second by the end.

Visual effects artist Jose Teixeira says that thanks to optimization, even an average PC with a GTX 660-level graphics card will be able to produce good images. At the same time, all consoles will have to sacrifice something, but this will not negatively affect the game graphics, but will stabilize the FPS. Regarding the effects in the game, Jose adds that the Igni sign includes thousands of individual particles bouncing off the surface of the earth and even setting grass on fire. In terms of detail, the effect can be compared to the particle system in Unreal Engine 4. 

According to all the same Jose, the city of Novigrad was largely made by hand - buildings, decorations and many other things were placed individually, at slightly different angles, to achieve realism.

Global illumination is the biggest challenge graphics programmers face. It's hard enough to find a solution that looks good on all platforms, so CD Projekt Red programmers decided to focus on things that would provide the best visual results in terms of lighting and shadows. Light itself plays a very important role in the game - it is based on a dynamic system, so there will be no "baked" light textures. Signs in Witcher 3 are not only light sources, but also have additional properties, such as arson. At the moment, the team continues to work on improving materials, in particular on wet surfaces.

The weather in Witcher 3 will be completely dynamic thanks to a system based on the likelihood of certain conditions occurring, such as rain or specific cloudiness. Rain has several types of intensity. The weather changes smoothly, so you won’t feel like you suddenly turned on a switch while it was raining and it immediately became sunny. At the same time, the clouds will also cast shadows on the ground. And when it snows, it can accumulate on surfaces.

In addition, the game will have a system for influencing the weather on Geralt’s condition - he will have to look for shelter and warmth so as not to freeze in bad weather. Otherwise, he may take damage or move more slowly than usual.

Also an important feature will be the new vegetation system. It is displayed much faster and is more diverse. Perhaps all this was thanks to one developer who is an expert in the field of plants and knows exactly what type of plants should be placed in a particular area.

Below we directly publish the video of the gameplay itself from the official website:

Based on the above material, we will draw some conclusions. Since the game is based on the RedEngine 3 engine (and the materials provided for the game), we can conclude that it will be quite resource-consuming. Despite the optimization, in order to see a beautiful picture you will have to upgrade. Apparently, for a comfortable game you will need at least four computing threads. Also, for the game to run smoothly, it will require about 4 or 6 gigabytes of RAM in the system. 

Well, if we think about the graphics subsystem that will be needed for The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, then in our opinion, sufficient performance will be provided by video cards starting from the level of NVidia GeForce GTX 680 or AMD Radeon HD 7970. Optimal performance, taking into account all the maximum settings activated, can be expected from NVidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti or AMD Radeon R9 290X.