Next-gen The Witcher 3 Will Fix One of the More Annoying Issues
A seemingly minor modification in the upcoming update for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt seems to be one of the most anticipated changes by fans.
The next-gen update for The Witcher 3 is expected to improve not only the appearance of this venerable game. The developers also promised bug fixes and various gameplay tweaks, although not much was said about these improvements during the recent stream.
One of the planned changes was revealed by Philipp Webber, campaign director for the third Witcher. He did it in a post on Twitter. CD Projekt RED is set to remove one of Geralt's more annoying weaknesses: the infamous "glass cubes."
White witchers can't jump
The premise of the witchers is that they are mutant monster slayers with considerable physical advantages over ordinary humans. However, it was easy to forget this in Wild Hunt if we happened to jump off a wall - or even a fence.
The Witcher 3 exaggerated the falling damage and Geralt happened to die after falling from ridiculously low obstacles. Especially by video game standards, although I guess even the biggest proponents of realism would consider that death after falling off the edge of a rather low bridge leading to the Crow's Perch is a gross exaggeration.
White Wolf's "glass cubes" surprised players as recently as last year. Just take a look at the following thread on Reddit. In almost any other game, a fall from such a height would result in at most a slight injury, and even in the real world it would not be lethal.
(Let's skip the comments of Internet users, as if the author of the thread had seen death in previous jumps as well).
Fall damage -> next-gen graphics
The video above also shows the only way to avoid sudden death: performing a roll on landing. In theory, this solves the problem, and there are always mods left on PC. However, it doesn't change the fact that Geralt's sensitivity to gravity qualifies as a travesty (it's also worth remembering that injury-protecting rollover mechanics were added in the update 1.08, almost 3 months after the game's release).
Nevertheless, many may be surprised that information about the improvement of this aspect sparked great enthusiasm among players. A thread dedicated to this change on the Witcher subforum on Reddit is the highest-rated topic dedicated to the The Witcher 3 update. At the time of publishing this news, it has 12 thousand thumbs up, 4-6 thousand more than the next most popular posts about the update.
Of course, Internet users wouldn't be themselves if they didn't wonder what exactly "improving fall damage" means. After all, the developers surely could have thought that they were too mild in the original, and nearly 100 year-old Geralt should break his ankles with a simple jump.
Other players mention their own experiences with this mechanic and the resulting "alternate endings" of CD Projekt's Witcher trilogy. From the unfortunate shortcut of jumping down low stairs to deadly (five-foot) chasms, fall damage has provided fans with many memorable deaths. Probably some will miss them after the debut of the update for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt scheduled for December 14.
