The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Details: Geralt’s Beard and More

Geralt of Rivia better hope he finds a beard comb during his travels as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will have his facial hair slowly grow over time throughout the game.

The German gaming site, Gamestar, published a story where CD Projekt Red revealed Geralt's beard will grow as time progresses throughout The Witcher 3, Eurogamer reports. This Gamestar article was translated by NeoGAF user His Majesty and contains all sorts of juicy deets. One of Gamestar's journalists was able to play the game and reported on his findings, such as there will be no level scaling in the game, meaning certain monsters can one-shot kill you based on how high their levels are. Fist-fighting is back and won't play like a quick-time event anymore. The Xbox One version of the game will have a 900p display. Something that we loved hearing is that there aren't any cloned non-player characters found in the game, meaning every citizen will look different. Of course, you should take these details with a grain of salt, as they don't come directly from CD Projekt Red.

The NeoGAF post had the following gameplay details:

Gameplay

• There are 4 difficulties (easy, medium, hard and dark) which differ in the skill of the monsters you face. Hitpoints remain the same.
• You can bargain for more money after finishing your monster contract through some sort of minigame.
• The side quests are extremely well made with great writing and branching.
• Potions are a necessity on higher difficulty levels. You only need to craft a potion once and you can refill it if you have enough alcohol present. Potions are upgradeable for stronger effects. Stronger potions will increase your toxicity more
• Novigrad and No Man's Land are indeed one single map, much bigger than Skyrim. The isles of Skellige form the other big part of the game. Next to that, there are 5-6 other separated locations, including Kaer Morhen.
• No enemy respawning or at the least not very frequently
• Best items in the game must be crafted
• They were very impressed with the story branching and how it is not always obvious. Correcting 'wrong' choices by saving/reloading will be very difficult if not impossible.
• Contrary to BioWare games dialogue options are not good or bad, this you will have to figure out for yourselves.
• They really liked the in-game card game Gwent, praising its design.
• The game features two really big cities: Novigrad and Oxenfurt, both very lively.
• The are of No Man's Land features 25 smaller towns, some of which are the size of Flotsam from The Witcher 2.
• Geralt can rob people, although the system is too easy and feels a bit lacking.
• Journalist (level 7) was one shotted by a wyvern (level 24). No level scaling.
• Ciri sequences will be (in total) 5-10h and feel more like an action-adventure game than an RPG
• Extra storage can be made by crafting saddle bags for your horse.
• Many small details such as Roach stopping to eat apples from a basket
• All equipped items are visible in-game on Geralt
• Fist-fighting is back, this time no QTE
• World never felt empty
• Journalist didn't encounter any simple fetch quests

Technical

• 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.
• Journalist encountered no clone NPC's
• Controller feels superior to keyboard+mouse.
• The extremely annoying doors from The Witcher 2 are gone. Doors are now opened automatically, no button pressing. No loading times for entering buildings either.
• Day 1 patch confirmed
• Xbox One resolution will stay at 900p
• Geralts beard will grow over time
• Switching between controller and mouse (for menu's) is easy and fluid
• Most impressive dynamic weather system in any game he has ever played
• They encountered very few bugs, no crashes of freezes.
• Ultra seems to have a big effect on the quality of vegetation and character models[
• No slider for LOD
• Visual gore more prominent than in The Witcher 2

CD Projekt Red's Michal Platkow-Gilewski revealed that as time progresses, Geralt's beard has several diffferent lengths that he will occasionally grow into while game time continues. Platkow-Gilewski said that the final beard length is pretty lengthy, but not "Gandalf-long." He also mentioned that there will be some kind of free DLC that will allow you to stop the beard's growth at a certain point or shave it all off completely to restart the process. If CD Projekt is going into this far of a depth with The Witcher 3's details, we can't wait for the final product.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will continue the story of Geralt of Rivia starting on May 19 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.