Gwent @ Gamescom 2016

Simon: To start off this article I should mention that I have not played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and have therefore next to no experience with Gwent. However I have enjoyed my fair share of Hearthstone and several non-digital card games. So I felt pretty comfortable getting into Gwent.

Kath: You did really well given your unfamiliarity with it! I have sunk many hours into The Witcher 3 so inevitably a lot of that time has been spent with Gwent; checking out the standalone at Gamescom was definitely a highlight of the week. We also had a chance to interview game animator Brad Auty after our hands-on, which provided some great insight into what to expect of Gwent.

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Simon: If you are like me and not familiar with the game, let me explain: Gwent was a minigame in Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, where you would put cards into three different rows to score more points than your opponent in best of three.

Kath: That pretty much sums up the basics – Gwent is a very simple game of beating your opponent’s high score, accumulated by placing cards with different values on the board. General card types include close-combat, ranged and siege cards, which are placed in corresponding rows. However, like all the best CCG’s, Gwent is easy to learn and hard to master. There are tons of variables to consider – certain cards will affect the board’s environment, and different factions will have certain perks and strengths.

Simon: Following the release of The Witcher 3 demand for a stand-alone version of Gwent was tremendous – we have heard tales of players who spent half their time playing The Witcher 3 on Gwent alone! In order to release a minigame by itself the developer had to massively rebalance everything. The minigame in The Witcher 3 was designed for Geralt to be the best player in the whole wide world. By the end of the game he was basically the Gwent god. This rebalancing is by far not the only difference.  The UI is completely redone in addition to all other visuals. During our presentation the developer called it Gwent 2000, as it’s the new and improved Gwent!

Look at this shiny new board!

Kath: Looking at the original board in The Witcher 3 beside the standalone’s style portrays the addition of so many details and layers to what was Gwent. One of my favourite new features are the Premium Cards, which are rarer versions of pre-existing cards – the difference being that they are 3D animated and look incredible! This is one addition that doesn’t influence gameplay, but immediately reminded me of shiny Pokémon cards. I must collect them all. Whilst they are apparently still working out the details, there’s no word yet whether a payment system will be in place to obtain those more unique designs; “We want to make sure people can obtain those premium cards in easy ways”.  This wouldn’t be the worst micro-transaction system in the world, given that the Premium Cards provide a purely cosmetic change. In terms of rebalancing, the best example we saw was the altered Spy cards; initially, placing a Spy allowed a player to immediately draw two random cards from their deck and into their hand, hugely valuable when Gwent rides on having the highest overall total. Now, Spy cards reveal two cards from your deck, but you can only select one to add to your hand.

Simon: The thing I am most excited about though, is the singleplayer. When I first heard about Gwent I thought it was going to be an extended version of the minigame with multiplayer and some new features slapped onto it. I did not expect a singleplayer featuring motion comic cutscenes, full voice-over and an open-world map you can explore. It’s mad! And did we mention that the game will be free-to-play!

Kath: It’s definitely positive that CD Projekt Red are taking on this very different project – moving from an open world RPG to an online card game – whilst maintaining a great understanding of their player base.

Simon: When you explore the world you’ll find different points of interest – a bandit camp, pile of dead bodies or some ruins, for example. You can choose to interact with them and engage in their stories. In line with the main Witcher series, some of these might force you to make hard choices. The developer told us that everything in the game is represented though a card. For example every member of the party we’re travelling with is represented through a card. Animator Brad Auty mentioned an example where cavalry could appear to aid the player. This would be represented through cards being immediately played on the battlefield, or you might get them in your hand. “The idea with the single player is that it’s representative of you growing your army.” Something I’m still very much excited about, but probably less so than die hard Witcher fans are the stories they are going to tell in the singleplayer.

Kath: You can be excited without being a die hard fan! One of the most appealing about The Witcher 3 was its new-found accessibility into the Witcher universe for those unfamiliar with it, and Gwent is obviously opening up that audience across genres. However, The Witcher’s humongous bank of lore will still be utilised in Gwent. Brad remarked that what we’ve seen of the single player is still very early days, yet it seems clear that each faction’s story will have a fixed leader that you command your forces as. “We’re trying to use characters from The Witcher lore, expanded from outside of the games.”

Simon: After about a 30 minute presentation we got down and dirty with Gwent and each played a match. Having basically no experience with strategy I chose the Monster faction. They seemed like a lovely bunch that were all about bombarding the enemy with units. The focus of the prepared deck I used were the weather effects. When I used the cold weather card it would summon a monster from either my hand or deck. They would also get buffs from the weather – so you’d debuff enemy units while strengthening your own. These are exactly the kind of dick-ish moves I quite like in card games. Another of one my units had the ability to summon other units of the same type. This made swarming the enemy incredibly easy and fun!

Some hero cards are also changed somewhat. For example there are different version of heroes. An example for this would be Geralt. In our interview Brad talked us through the three different Geralt’s currently in the game. First there’s Igni Geralt, who will scorch a cards from the melee row and counter the frost weather effect. The Aard Geralt pushes enemies one lane further down, whereas the Swordmaster Geralt is just really powerful. They also added some sillier cards – Roach, Geralt’s horse, for example appears when a hero unit is played. “We have a lot of these abilities that come from either the lore of the characters or what they’re known for in the game”.

Simon: The unit I’m most excited for though is the cow, as somehow it’ll transform into a powerful fiend, a nod to a fix for an exploit in The Witcher 3.

Kath: Initially, cow-massacre was a cheeky way to farm lots of gold in the game – until Projekt Red introduced a patch where a fiend will appear to avenge the poor cow!

There’s still plenty to be revealed about Gwent, but our inside look at Gamescom left us very impressed – probably helped by the fact we both emerged victorious from our games! Big thanks to Brad for chatting with us. The Gwent beta is set to launch on October 25 for Xbox One and PC, arriving on PS4 at a later date. Sign up here for a chance to be included!

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Tags: CD Projekt Red, Cow, Gamescom 2016, Gwent, PC, PlayStation 4, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Xbox One