If The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt truly is the last Witcher game, the series is going out with a bang.
The latest entry was formally announced this morning, and promises to expand the series’ scope far beyond the previous games. The Witcher already played with non-linear storytelling by giving players agency over certain pivots in the story that drastically changed the outcome, but The Witcher 3 moves that a step further with a completely open world, a la The Elder Scrolls.
In terms of nuts and bolts, developer CD Projekt RED claims The Witcher 3 is 30 times the size of The Witcher 2, and is powered by the studio’s brand-new REDengine 3 technology.
As previously mentioned, CD Projekt RED is also claiming this will be the last Witcher game.
“We believe that we should end the series on a high note,” said studio head Adam Badowski. “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.”
We won’t be playing The Witcher 3 until sometime in 2014, and it’s being developed for both PCs and other “high-end platforms,” which is a not-so-subtle nod to the upcoming set of new consoles.
In case you haven’t played the other games, CD Projekt RED said it’s designing The Witcher 3 to be newcomer friendly. I found The Witcher 2 easy enough to get into, having not played the original. If you haven’t played either, The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition are 50% off on both Good Old Games and Steam for the next 72 hours. The Xbox 360 version is also now permanently $29.99.