By now, gamers have come to grips with the sheer scale of “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.” The massive amount content in the base game will reportedly take anywhere between 50-200 hours to complete, with a speedrun taking a whopping 25 hours. But what will gamers be doing for all that time? How does levelling work? A new video attempts to answer just that question.

The new video, hosted on the Gamespot YouTube page, was shot on location in Poland, where the publication received access to a huge 12-hour slice of the game. This level of access allowed them to get a good taste of the game’s typical quests and combat, and provide an in-depth look at how the gameplay of “Wild Hunt” unfolds.

The first point of note is that like its predecessors, “The Witcher 3” focuses on branching story lines, which have definite consequences on the world around Geralt and affect how the main story ends. There are between eight to ten primary story-based quests in the game, but each quest is broken into two or three branching sub-quests. The main quests don’t scale, and each one has a recommended difficulty level.

If ten quests doesn’t sound like very much, Gamespot notes that a single one of the branching sub-quests took them at least an hour to complete. They also state that when they had obtained the information required to complete the sub-quest, they were free to continue down the branching story path or return to the main quest-giver and close the loop.

There are also dozens and dozens of side quests scattered around the open world, which can be obtained from notice boards in towns, via quest givers or which trigger randomly in the world as Geralt travels. One such example is the recently revealed Precious Cargo quest, which sees Geralt work his way to the bottom of a murderous mystery and bring the culprit to justice. Open-world aficionados will also be pleased to hear that quests left unfinished can be taken on and completed even after the main story wraps up.

CD Projekt Red added that the side-quests of “The Witcher 3” are built to tie into and impact the main story line. Gamers can choose to ignore them if they wish, but doing so will have definite consequences on the state of the game world, all of them have specific quest levels and none of them scale to the player’s level. CD Projekt Red added that these side quests can go as high as level 50, with Geralt’s max level somewhere around 60, though both levels are likely to get an increase when the game’s expansion packs are released.

Depending on the witcher contracts gamers take on and how they accomplish them, NPC’s and characters in the contracting village will also react differently to Geralt. Additionally, there are a number of self-contained side-quests which offer interesting closed stories for the player to experience.

Previously, Gamespot was able to gain access to the console versions of the game, viewing both the Xbox One and the PS4 version side by side with the PC version. The publication came away impressed, stating that the console versions compared favourably from a graphical point of view, while CD Projekt Red noted that they were still optimising the game.

Since then, the developer has announced that “The Witcher 3” has gone gold, meaning the master disc has been sent of for manufacturing and distribution. “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” is slated for release on Xbox One, PS4 and PC on May 19.

(Credit: YouTube/Gamespot)

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