https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G6pEaTDeEg

Have you had enough of The Witcher 3 yet? The media blitz is getting rather intense, with new videos and screenshots popping up on an almost hourly basis at this point. Some of the most impressive of these new tidbits of information would be the freshly posted gameplay videos that are being uploaded to youtube. Some of these are showing off features that we’ve only heard about but have never actually seen, such as fast travel and the world map, which is a good thing if you don’t mind slight spoilers. (You’ve been warned)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9isrRWvKC8U

In the first video in this article, you’ll see an example of how fast-traveling works by skipping to 7:24. After that, you’ll be treated to a view of the in-game world map and see how it too works. Notice in the second video at 9:38 the undiscovered locations appear as question marks long before you’ve walked near to them. A first for European CRPGs that live and die by their rigid discovery and exploration rules.

Rounding out the day’s Witcher 3 news is an article on Gameinformer that talks about the weather with CD Projekt Red’s art producer, Michał Stec.

Hundreds if not thousands of hours of browsing through references: paintings, pictures, films, photos – everything, really. I remember this one time, Lucjan (one of the leads) and I were on our way to some party and he suddenly stopped the car, pulled a camera out of the glove box and started taking pictures of the setting sun to use as a reference. We drew a lot on photographs and movies. Sometimes we’d pull up a visual reference on our second monitor and not quit until the game looked exactly like the image.

It was the same with rain and other weather conditions. We often scrutinized even the little details, like how fast a storm should roll in, how clouds should move. I personally am a big fan of snowboarding, so I had plenty of inspiration and references to draw on for the peaks in Skellige [laughs].

On top of all that, we of course drew on the extraordinary talent and hard work of one of the best art teams ever. For the icing on the cake, we added special effects: lovely little cloud details, wood dust particles, fog, smoke plumes, etc. Add it all together, and you get amazingly believable locations.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is less then a week away from launch and has, not surprisingly, already hit 1 million pre-purchases. With the review embargo being lifted, expect to see even more details (and spoilers) emerge.