New Witcher 3 details: Ciri, cities, real-time beard growth

Did you know, in The Witcher 3 Geralt's beard will grow over time, and you'll have to visit barbers to keep it trimmed?

That and other glimmers of new information have arrived on NeoGaf, after translators on The Witcher 3 forums got their hands on a preview feature from a German magazine. Though rather second-hand, there is information of interest contained within. Here are the best bits.
  • No Man's Land features 25 smaller towns, some of which are the size of Flotsam from The Witcher 2.
  • The game features two really big cities: Novigrad and Oxenfurt, both very lively.
  • passages with Ciri are like a linear action-adventure, not like a RPG, plays differently and more action-fueled than Geralt's passages (no inventory, no skill tree, depending on the scene Ciri has certain skills)
  • Ciri sequences will be (in total) 5-10h
  • Many small details such as Roach stopping to eat apples from a basket
  • All equipped items are visible in-game on Geralt
  • best items in game must be crafted
  • mutagens can be very powerful, like 40% damage enhancer for signs
  • fist fighting is without QTEs now, it's just like normal fighting with hard and fast strikes and such
  • there are horseraces similar to RDR, biggest focus on stamina management during races, you can even buy better saddles for horseraces
  • Geralts beard will grow. You have to go to a barber after a few days
  • The HUD is fully customizable. Icons and quest markers on the map can also be deactivated. Audiovisual hints (e.g. people screaming for help) will be present if you wish to do so.
  • Fluid gameplay on 1080p with everything on maximum +nvidia hairworks on GTX 980
  • game loading time is extremely short on the high-end PC
  • Ultra settings are impressive, especially the rich vegetation and character models; there can be scenes where difference between high and ultra won't be that noticeable; lighting is impressive: for instance evening light falling on vast flower fields of a parfum-maker
  • there was indeed no slider or adjustment option for the draw distance/LOD
  • They encountered very few bugs, no crashes of freezes.
That last point is a relief. There were quite a few bugs when I played the game earlier this year. A griffon kept flying inside a hill to escape my swords—an ingenious survival strategy, but quite irritating. While everything runs nicely on a GTX980, I wonder how well The Witcher 3 will scale down. One thing's for sure, we've got it better than consoles. The XBox One version can only manage 900p. Test your rig against The Witcher 3's system requirements to see if you'll need an upgrade.

Contents Courtesy of PC GAMER

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