Geralt tracks a wyvern in new Witcher 3 gameplay footage

CD Projekt took the stage at Pax East on Saturday to talk about the challenges of open-world game development and to show off the latest build of The Witcher 3 , including a seven-minute play through of a quest to save some hapless villagers from a marauding wyvern.

The developers have spent a lot of time building systems and monsters that go about their days doing their own thing. Senior designer Damien Monnier spoke about a scenario where a deer might be killed, and the smell of dead deer permeates the forest. The game looks for monsters in the area that like the smell of dead deer. Those monsters start heading toward the smell and will fight over it with any other monsters they encounter. All of this happens without player input, and the result is a living, fighting woodland for Geralt to explore.

“We really wanted to build a system that is a living world,” Monnier said. “We saw the idea of the Director in Left 4 Dead, which looks at you and says ‘you haven’t shot anything in the face for two minutes, so here’s something and you can shoot it.’ We didn’t like that because it went against the idea of the living world. If everything was created based on what you saw or fought, it would be all messed up.”

The team also showed off seven minutes of gameplay that follows Geralt’s hunt for a Royal Wyvern, a squat, top-heavy dragon creature more akin to How To Train Your Dragon than Skyrim.

Witcher 3’s new release dateis now May 19. That gives us a little more time to upgrade our rigsand read through Wes’s previewa couple more times in anticipation.