Some folks who saw the Witcher 3‘s gorgeous gameplay demo during Microsoft’s E3 conference weren’t all too impressed with what they saw, in particular the difficulty.
During the 5 minute demo, which takes place a full 10 hours into the game, the series protagonist Geralt is off to hunt griffins in the wilderness of No Man’s Land. The presenter equips him for combat in traditional witcher gear, with a set of buffing potions and a crossbow.
Geralt then proceeds to lay waste to a group of bandits and his feathered quarry, with a short combination of magic attacks and a handful of sword swings. If this all seems a bit easy to you then you are right, and that’s been the focus of complaints towards the developer CD Project RED.
Luckily the developer has quashed some of those fears, saying the the difficulty was kept low only for the presentation.
“The combat is complex,” he said.
“What we showed at the Microsoft conference was the easy way to play. We only had five minutes to show, so we had to play on easy and make the fights go really fast. You saw lots of dismemberment. It’s not going to be so easy to cut somebody in half when the game comes out. We were showing off some features there.
“I was reading some feedback after the conference and people were saying, ‘oh, that looks so easy,’ but it ain’t gonna be that easy.”
That’s not all though, as while the developer is trying to keep the traditional hardcore Witcher gameplay alive, a new difficulty curve will be added to help out new players to teach them how to battle, skillfully evade, dodge and defend.
“What we are doing in Witcher 3 is we’re really focused on making a really nice soft learning curve for combat and storytelling,” Mamais said.
“A lot of people are worried about Witcher 3, saying they won’t understand it if they haven’t played Witcher 1 and 2. Our philosophy is, okay, gameplay has to be a nice gentle curve, combat and story has to be a gentle curve.
“So, we’re going to reintroduce the characters in the beginning, and we’re going to spoon feed the gameplay mechanics you need to learn. So you’re not going to be thrown into the pit of fire like you were in Witcher 2. I think we made a mistake doing that.”
