‘The Witcher 3’ PS4 Footage Coming Next Week; Pre-Load Info And More

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt — As Geralt, gamers will make tough choices and face their consequences in “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.” Xbox News

For fans of “The Witcher” franchise, May 19 has never been so close and yet so far away. For nearly two years, developer CD Projekt Red has dropped hints, teases, screenshots and gameplay tidbits relating to its magnum opus, “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.” Because the studio has a special marketing deal in place with Microsoft for “The Witcher 3,” PlayStation fans have never actually gotten a good look at what the game looks like running on Sony hardware. That all changes next week.

Speaking on “The Witcher” forums, CD Projekt Red community and website coordinator, Marcin Momot, assured fans that the PS4 version of the game would look great. Momot also added that the team plan on releasing the very first footage of “Wild Hunt” running on PS4 next week.

“The game looks great on PS4. Real talk – I’m speaking from my personal perspective. Our team did an excellent job with console versions. It will be a few minutes of gameplay footage from the prologue,” he said.

Elsewhere on the forums, Community Manager Chris Priestly said that despite the absolute deluge of “Wild Hunt”-related content released thus far, there’s more to come. Priestly said that there’s a GOG livestream planned for next week, which would show off a lot more content. He added that hardcore fans who know they’re going to get the game can skip the stream, as the content is primarily aimed at casual fans and folks new to “The Witcher” universe.

Responding to a fan asking when they’d be able to download the game on PSN, Priestly said that a safe bet for PSN, GOG and Steam was one week before the title’s launch. According to GamingBolt, load times on the PS4 version of “The Witcher 3” are relatively lengthy, taking about 40 seconds when the player respawns or fast travels to a location. CD Projekt Red has stated in the past that “The Witcher 3” will contain very few loading screens, but the lengthy load times attached to death are likely to raise some eyebrows.

Wherever fans are getting their copies of “The Witcher 3,” the game is sure to be chock-full of content. CD Projekt Red has promised anywhere from 50-200 hours of content and revealed 16 free pieces of post-launch DLC, as well as two 10-20 hour paid, post-release DLC packs. The game will be available on PC, Xbox One and PS4 on May 19.