CD Projekt RED, champion of all that is good and right and also a few other things that aren’t either of those things, has once more stood proudly in defence of the single-player experience.

“There’s no place for multiplayer in so strongly a story-driven game as The Witcher 3,” marketing head Michal Platkow-Gilewski told Eurogamer.

“We want to focus on the single-player experience, delivering more than 100 hours of truly immersive gameplay. Geralt can be only one.”

You may be surprised to learn that there was ever any question of the series going multiplayer, but a few months ago CD Projekt said it was thinking about something, although not necessarily a traditional multiplayer mode. Whatever it was toying with now seems to have been abandoned.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is expected in 2014.

Source: Eurogamer

Speaking to Kotaku, CD Projekt RED have confirmed that The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt will be completely DRM-free, in the finest tradition of CDPR games.

“We are trying to get rid of DRM,” said lead gameplay designer Maciej Szczesnik to Kotaku. “If someone wants to pirate a game, eventually he will.”

“Which is bad, of course,” added the company’s MD Adam Badowski . “But you can’t do anything about it, so. We want to give the best user experience possible. When we removed DRM, people on those torrents were actually asking people not to download our game, because we [weren't using DRM].”

If you’d like to know more about The Witcher 3, hit up Kotaku’s piece for a big run-down from GDC.

Local GON DRM watchdog PalZer0 could not be reached for comment, but sources close to the man describe him as “very happy” with the decision.

Source: Kotaku via VG247

Nobody has apparently told CD Projekt RED that 20 hours of gameplay is a “normal” length AAA game these days, because that’s the length of the “smaller” titles they’re reportedly working on in order to support their bigger releases.

The company has provided Kotaku US with a translation of a corporate report posted to their site last week, in which their plans for these smaller games are revealed, as well as improved modding support, a cross-platform mobile game and licensing of their engine.

The full list of plans for the company are…

(more…)

Previews of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt have begun to appear in German magazines such as PC Games and Gamestar, revealing some interesting new details about the promising-looking sequel.

Play-throughs are expected to take at least 50 hours in length, with 36 possible world states at the end of each play through.

Your save games will determine which characters are alive in your playthrough, but Geralt’s backstory will remain unchanged.

You can also use Geralt’s Axii spell to tame horses, and hunt animals who will appear and disappear based on day and night cycles in the environment. Townsfolks will rat you out if they catch you stealing, and Geralt can now level up to 60 — and even jump on command! The future.

In further excellent news, Geralt can also target individual body parts — and QTE’s have been scrapped.

Source: OXM

We’re all setting our anticipation nozzles to 11 thinking about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but what’s it really going to be about? Well, HERE BE SPOILERS.

Marcin Blacha and Borys Pugacz Muraszkiewicz, writers on Wild Hunt have sat down with Game Informer to have a chat about what the game will entail, storywise. It will be a personal story, they said, less of a world-changing political saga. Geralt will be searching for ‘the love of his life’, who has been missing in previous games, along with his memory. The latter having been restored, it’s time to go looking for the former.

If you haven’t played The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings, I probably wouldn’t watch the video over at Game Informer – there are some spoilers. If you have, though, and aren’t afraid of some very mild spoilers for the next installment, you should head over there and check it out.

Source: Game Informer

As you could probably guess, I’m spectacularly excited by the prospect of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — despite its somewhat cumbersome title. I’m excited by the idea of it being an open world game with a landmass a little bigger than that featured in Skyrim, and I’m eagerly awaiting the conclusion to the ongoing story of Geralt’s death, rebirth and amnesia, and why the hell The Wild Hunt keep sticking their bony faces into the White Wolf’s life.

More than anything else in the announcement (and Game Informer’s first look that accompanied it) the thing that made me happiest about the announcement of The Witcher 3 was the fact that it is the final game in the series. The end of the line. The last.

The third installment of The Witcher franchise was announced yesterday, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Today, CD Projekt RED have come forward to say that this will be the last Witcher game. According to a press release, the CD Projekt RED team want to end the series on a high note.

“Technology has progressed to where we can finally tell the story the way we want, with the visuals we want, in the world we imagined. This will be the ultimate fantasy RPG experience, and while we’re hardly out of stories to tell, we believe it’s time for us to look to new worlds and new horizons to keep pushing the boundaries of what we can create.”

To celebrate this announcement and to encourage people to play the other two games, The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings, both Enhanced Editions, are on sale on GOG.com and Steam for a very short while. If you haven’t played them, I highly recommend picking them up, especially at these criminally low prices. The original Witcher is $5 on both GOG.com and Steam, while Assassin of Kings is strangely $15 at GOG.com but only $10 on Steam.

Source: Press Release

The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt has been announced in the latest issue of GameInformer US. The third installment in the beloved mature fantasy franchise will depart from its usual structure however, and boast an open world to rival that of Skyrim.

The world itself will take 30 to 40 minutes to cross on horseback, its been said, and the landmass will be 20% larger than that of Skyrim as well. There are other departures from the previous games’ stylings, including Geralt’s complete lack of cares to give with regards to fighting for a political faction. His new honeybadger-like attitude probably stems from the fact that he has all his memories back now and would rather spend his days killing monsters and solving crimes.

The image of a companion of unknown race, gender and appearance still gives this reporter hope that The Witcher 3 will be a buddy cop RPG. As for platforms, the article doesn’t mention any one specifically but does say it will be released on “all top-of-the-line” consoles, while the cover of GI calls it “must see next-generation RPG”.

It all sounds rather delightful, apart from the fact that Geralt is now sporting a beard, which I can’t say I’m particularly fond of. Oh well, I’ll just mod it out. Here is a video that CD Projekt RED have made available for you! Speculation GO!

Source: NeoGAF via VG247