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Witcher III: Blood and Wine - May 10 Preview Info

Dmax3901

Member
Here's a dot point summary of all the big info from the new previews for Blood and Wine!

MODS: Feel free to merge this with a catch-all thread if such a thing exists.

The Numbers:
• 30+ hour adventure.
• Over 90 new quests.
• Over 40 new points of interest.
• Dynamic points of interest system.
Killing bandits in their main hideout will affect the number of enemies in surrounding camps.
• 14000 lines of dialogue (Hearts of Stone had 6000).
• 100 individual pieces of armour (including new Witcher sets).
• More than 20 new monsters.
• New Game + maximum level increased to 100.

Armour and Weapons:
• New Witcher armour class ‘Grandmaster’.
• New armour merchant who is the only one able to craft this level of Witcher gear.
• Can get
blue, hooded armour from Witcher 2, armour from Witcher 1, Ursine Witcher armour with furry pauldron that was in the artbook but cut from the main game.
• More than 30 new weapons.
• Can now dye armour. Dyes can be bought from a merchant, crafted or looted. Only obtainable in Toussaint. Pink is among the colours.
• You can acquire the
golden, plumed armour of the Touissant knights, and the same goes for Roach!

New Mutation System:
• Mutations. 12 new abilities. Mechanic is unlocked through a quest started by a letter from Yennefer. Examples:
Signs can have critical hits causing the enemy to explode, instead of dying Geralt is healed and has damage immunity, opponents knocked down by AARD freeze and die instantly.
Can only utilise one at a time.
• The UI resembles Witcher 2’s character customization screen. Basically they’re super strong abilities/stat boosts that require mutagens and skill points to unlock. Can only pick one at a time but you have to unlock earlier ones to get the others.
• Despite unlocking it at level 34+ (recommended level to venture to Touissant) the system and anything you’ve unlocked carries over to New Game+ so you won’t have to unlock it again.

UI Changes:
• Greatly redesigned User Interface.
• Can now rotate Geralt in stats screen.
• Books moved to glossary.
• Upon looting a readable item a little notification pops up in bottom left of screen. Upon clicking in the right stick (on Xbox One controller), you can read the text of recently looted books, letters, notes etc without having to go to the menu, inventory, finding the right book and so on.
• Option to remove fish-eye effect from witcher sense.

Home Base:
• Geralt gets his own motherfucking vineyard.
• It’s called Corvo Bianco.
• You can renovate it with large sums of money, the option I saw was for 5000 Orens.
• You can add a greenhouse of sorts where you can grow herbs for all your witcher potion needs, an armourer’s table, a stable for Roach (with its own stat bonuses), upgrade your bed, renovated interior and exterior, secret lab, guest room.
• Guest room where old friends will come to stay. They said the names
Triss and Yennefer, but were reluctant to reveal the names of anyone else who might visit. Surprise Iorveth/Saskia visit?Unlikely
• Scaffolding and workers will appear after you choose to build something. Each change takes a certain amount of in-game time to complete, but you can just meditate til everything’s done.
• Can display your armour, weapons, paintings and books.
• Some paintings can be bought, or specially made, others are obtained through quests.

Music:
• Over 2 hours of new musical content in the game.
• The title screen song is
a reworked version of the Bruxa song from the CGI trailer.
Other Tidbits:
• Can enter Geralt in a tournament, creating his own logo and team colours.
• Can enter under a fake name, although you may not fool everyone.
• You can of course race horses, but other events involve crossbow shooting and a grand melee. Seems like there will be more but they didn’t want to say.
• No new unique weather effects, but the lighting has been prepared specially to reflect the feeling of Southern Europe.
• No new hairstyles.
• As of the preview event (3/5/16) they were still working on the final boss fight.
• Grass has been optimised, more of it but less expensive.
• Improvements to cloth tech (see interview for more detail).
• New sword sheathing option. With this new option Geralt no longer automatically unsheathes his sword at the start of combat. Also, he no longer switches weapons to match the opponent. The player has to do it on their own.
• CDPR staff were given a sheet that says “We do not talk about Cyberpunk” for this press tour.
• Bioware staff apparently cheered when Witcher 3 was delayed out of 2014.
• Nilfgaard and Northern Kingdoms physical Gwents cards exist, unsure if they’re being packaged with this expansion.
• Release date May 31.

New screens:

NLPb.png


PLPb.png


OLPb.png


QLPb.png


RLPb.png


SLPb.png

UI Comparisons:
Here are the UI comparison shots.

 

CHC

Member
Just to get an idea of scale, the base game has about ~280 quests and Hearts of Stone had ~25.

So this expansion is no joke.

Edit: had totally the WRONG number for HoS. Fixed now.
 

Spacebar

Member
Please someone tell me if this will be released midnight on psn so I can take Tuesday off work. I don't want wait until Tuesday afternoon store update.
 
Hnnng, this is going to be sooo good.

I'll be so sad when I finish it though. Atleast Geralt will have his own vineyard to spent the rest of his days in :(

30+ hours is crazy. It's like getting a whole new game.
 

CHC

Member
Armour and Weapons:
• New Witcher armour class ‘Grandmaster’.
• New armour merchant who is the only one able to craft this level of Witcher gear.
• Can get
blue, hooded armour from Witcher 2, armour from Witcher 1, Ursine Witcher armour with furry pauldron that was in the artbook but cut from the main game.
• More than 30 new weapons.
• Can now dye armour. Dyes can be bought from a merchant, crafted or looted. Only obtainable in Toussaint. Pink is among the colours.
• You can acquire the
golden, plumed armour of the Touissant knights, and the same goes for Roach!

......

UI Changes:
• Greatly redesigned User Interface.
• Can now rotate Geralt in stats screen.
• Books moved to glossary.
• Upon looting a readable item a little notification pops up in bottom left of screen. Upon clicking in the right stick (on Xbox One controller), you can read the text of recently looted books, letters, notes etc without having to go to the menu, inventory, finding the right book and so on.
• Option to remove fish-eye effect from witcher sense.

Christ I'm glad I only have to wait 3 weeks for this.
 

Mivey

Member
I wonder if these UI changes carry over to the main game. Also, the interview says something about UI screens "below" that are nowhere to be found. Is this from a magazine?
 
"Guest room where old friends will come to stay"

This is so awesome. This is literally exactly what I was hoping for when I heard Geralt got a home base.

30 hours for an expansion. God damn.
 

ironcreed

Banned
And $20 for those who did not buy the season pass. A price I will gladly pay, so just put the pre-order up on PSN already.
 

Woorloog

Banned
" New sword sheathing option. With this new option Geralt no longer automatically unsheathes his sword at the start of combat. Also, he no longer switches weapons to match the opponent. The player has to do it on their own."


Seriously? That's merely an annoyance, not an improvement.
I would not oppose that as an option but...
 

Virdix

Member
Time for my Deathmarch playthrough for the plat, been waiting for this. Heart of stone and Blood & Wine here i come.
 

epmode

Member
" New sword sheathing option. With this new option Geralt no longer automatically unsheathes his sword at the start of combat. Also, he no longer switches weapons to match the opponent. The player has to do it on their own."


Seriously? That's merely an annoyance, not an improvement.
I would not oppose that as an option but...

It IS an option.

Anything that brings this closer to Witcher Simulator 2016 is good in my book.
 

Dmax3901

Member
You mention an interview in all the info. Which one?

I wonder if these UI changes carry over to the main game. Also, the interview says something about UI screens "below" that are nowhere to be found. Is this from a magazine?

My bad, forgot to take that out. The interview is with Jamie Bury, CDPR's Lead Animator. I will be posting it later. The UI screens as well I didn't get around to uploading, thanks for heads up.
 

CHC

Member
20 new monsters? That seems crazy. What was the count in the main game?

There were ~80 monster types. Some were derivatives of other types (ie; most people won't really remember the differences between the types of endregas or wraiths, but they ARE technically different.)

" New sword sheathing option. With this new option Geralt no longer automatically unsheathes his sword at the start of combat. Also, he no longer switches weapons to match the opponent. The player has to do it on their own."


Seriously? That's merely an annoyance, not an improvement.
I would not oppose that as an option but...

Good thing it is an option!
 
God DAMN. Can't wait.

CDPR is one of the only companies I can blind buy DLC/season pass from and not have any worries. Fantastic.
 

Carn82

Member
Blood and Wine also uses new assets and engine updates:

new assets:

"Generally it is a graphics upgrade from the base game," senior environment artist Len de Gracia told me. "We have employed methods that we did not implement in the base game. You can literally bring your camera up to a wall now and the textures would be crisp - at least in most cases.

"80, 85, probably even 90 per cent of the assets - in terms of environment that you find in this game - are brand new. You can just look at the market stalls right now: you would never see the same market stalls in the base game. For the longest time we were like, 'I want this, I want that,' and finally we got this chance - we got this room to incorporate other people. We have probably 20 times the amount of vegetables we used to!

"We just wanted to show that we can actually push it to the limit this time."


engine optimisations:

"No, actually," Len de Gracia replied. "We also got really organised. It's like a fresh development. Blood and Wine we literally started from scratch. The mistakes we went through, in terms of perhaps optimisation before, we have covered them.

"For example: before, each and every prop had its own texture; this might require another draw-call or so. It impacts performance. But this time around we know we're going to group these things together so you have them representing same texture now, so we're loading less but maximising the quality at the same time

regarding 30FPS on consoles:

That means - hold your breath - Blood and Wine may run at 30 frames-per-second on console from the get go.

"We are still aiming for that but for the most part we have already hit it," said de Gracia. "In certain places we still need to run through stuff and try to optimise it the best we can, but in comparison to Witcher 3, production has been way smoother."

updates are 'stand alone' for now:

Toussaint is a self-contained "independent entity" separate from the base Witcher 3 game. That's how it could be built from scratch using new methods and optimisations. But because of that it makes the optimisations "very difficult" to retroactively apply to the base game.

"It would be very difficult," said de Gracia. "This time we went through a clean slate. If we wanted to change the base game ... we might run into a lot of problems. But maybe, perhaps, in future, they will be like, 'Maybe we could pimp up Witcher 3 base game.' We'll see.


http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...wine-is-a-graphics-upgrade-from-the-base-game
 
Wow this sounds amazing. I really haven't dived into the game yet on my PS4. Sounds like it's time make the time to play it.

Anyone know if some of these changes like the UI will patch into the base game, or is this strictly for the expansion?
 
Wow amazing. So is it a good thing that I haven't beaten most of the storyline on my first playthrough? In theory if I get the season pass could I just go through the story and experience all of the DLC in the right order?
 

CHC

Member
I bailed on that Gamespot preview. Thorough... but I want it to be fresh. I already know more than enough as it is right now.
 
So good...

Need to buy Witcher 3 again and get the expansions.

There will most likely be a expansion pack with both of the expansions right ?
 

Raven77

Member
So are these UI and graphical improvements going to come to the base game in the form of some sort of patch?

Also, do I have to have beaten the main game to play this? I keep going back to Witcher 3 even though it frustrates the hell out of me.
 

etta

my hard graphic balls
Holy shit, now that's how you do DLC.

Thank you CD Projekt Red for resetting precedents.
 
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