“Look out, Geralt! He’s played a heavy knight!”
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will contain a game-within-the-game in the form of Gwent, a dueling card game.
The Witcher series has always had little mini-games, ranging from dice to brawling, so the inclusion of another shouldn’t really be much of a surprise – but this one’s a little different. Despite sounding like a town in south-west Wales, in the world of The Witcher 3 Gwent is a card game devised by dwarves. It’s about armies battling it out, with each player taking the role of a leader and the cards representing their forces. Gwent contains four different factions – the Nilfgaardian Empire, the Northern Realms, the Scoia’tael, and the monsters of No Man’s Land – each of which has its own unique cards and combat styles.
There are over 150 cards in the game, including spells that control the weather or affect the battlefield, hero cards unique to each faction, and troops ranging from archers to knights and siege weapons. I guess that if hunting monsters, tracking down Ciri, and finding out what’s going on with the titular Wild Hunt isn’t enough for you, you can always take a break with Geralt and play some cards in a tavern.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is due out on 24 February 2015. You can have a look at five minutes of gameplay footage from Gamescom over here.
