I had no idea what to expect with The Witcher 2 when I first played it, and I definitely had no idea it would enthrall me the way it did. To say that I am hyped for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a gross understatement, and what I saw at E3 has only intensified my excitement.

White Wolf facing his nemesis. At least I think that's his nemesis.

Ride into the sunset and enjoy the open world.

I sadly did not get any hands-on time with The Witcher 3, but I at least saw new gameplay not previously shown. CD Projekt RED took us through one of the missions of The Witcher 3 to show us:

1) How combat works 
2) Just how friggin’ massive this world is.

The good news is that if you are already familiar with the combat from The Witcher 2, combat is roughly the same here. From what I could see, using magic, traps and bombs was far smoother and appeared to be more intuitive than the mechanics were from the last game. Switching to the different magic signs seemed simpler, and selecting which traps or bombs you wanted Geralt to place also appeared to be far easier and more fluid than the last game (That is good news – Ed. Vader).

CD Projekt RED repeatedly stated that the world of The Witcher 3 is absolutely huge and that they’re making it several times larger than the map of Skyrim, which reportedly leads to 100 hours of gameplay. You can read that and hear that all you want, but it never really clicks until you witness it yourself. With this mission they presented, my jaw hit the floor at the sight of the map. From where Geralt had to travel for this quest alone, the devs had to fast travel to a nearby location because they said riding on a horse down there would take over 20 minutes.

And if that wasn’t enough to blow my mind, they then said that there are no invisible barriers in the game. If you can see a place, you can get to it. There is no mountain high enough, there is no river deep enough. You can go anywhere in The Witcher 3 and do almost anything you like. So, I’m not sure what will take up most of that 100 hours, is it from the number of missions or just from wandering everywhere and finding everything?

In other words, my family is going to see nothing of me come next February when this game ships. I absolutely cannot wait for this game to release next year.