Update:

At Gamescom last week, CD Projeckt Red showed off the very same demo we saw at San Diego Comic Con. Since we weren't able to show the game to you at Comic Con, we've added the video to our recent preview and repromoted it for your convenience.

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Members of the team behind the upcoming The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt flew all the way from Poland to San Diego this week to deliver a full 30-minute live gameplay demo to the crowds at Comic Con. The demo opened up with the Witcher himself, Geralt, riding through the large town of Novgirad. He’s on the trail of Ciri, an ashen-haired woman fans may remember from the original Witcher who is now being pursued by the Wild Hunt.Geralt tracks down some information in town that leads him along a quest known as Ladies of the Wood. The first stop on his journey is Velen, a sort of no man’s land. There, his leads direct him to find Johnny, a magical boy with blue skin, golden eyes, and a crown of twigs wreathed around his head. While Johnny has the information Geralt needs, he’s also literally lost his voice. For Geralt to get the information he needs, he’ll have to find Johnny’s voice. This pattern runs through this entire quest chain: no one will help you with anything unless you help them first.Johnny’s voice is in a bottle in the bottom of a raven’s nest. To reclaim it, Geralt has to climb up a towering crag and battle a trio of harpies. The battle system in The Witcher 3 seems just a visceral and engaging as we’ve come to expect from the series. Movement and attacks are all very fluid and natural and there’s a real sense of connection and weight to the animations. Once the harpies are dispatched, Geralt finds the bottle, which Johnny uncorks to reclaim his voice.He doesn’t know where Ciri is, but he thinks his Gran, who lives nearby might be able to consult the Ladies of the Wood. These ladies are present as beautiful figures in a tapestry in Gran’s house. She beseeches them to help find Ciri but they, in true Witcher fashion, seem a bit pissy about it all and ask that Geralt first confront a mysterious power that has been causing at the nearby town of Downwarren. Once the problem has been solved, the Ladies say the Eoldarman who runs Downwarren will give Geralt a reward that the Ladies want. Gran gives Geralt a ritual dagger to give to the Eoldarman as part of the transaction.On the way to Downwarren, Geralt confronts four bandits, which gave us a chance to see thenew tactical wheel. This is a quick swap system that lets Geralt assign hot keys for key spells and weapon effects. It slows time a bit, which makes it easier to move, for instance between the Igni spell, which blasts enemies with fire, or Axii, which stuns them with a mental blast.Once in Downwarren, the Eoldarman tells Geralt that the recent war awoke a great power in the woods. This power has indeed been preying on the townsfolk, who have been wandering mindlessly out toward the Whispering Hillock. The Witcher heads out to the forest to uncover and confront this power.After dispatching four water hags who sprang up through the intervening swamp, the Witcher comes across a dead forester in the woods. Using his Witcher sense, he sees that the forester was clawed to death. Putting that detail together with the full moon, Geralt decides to make camp and prepare for a fight with a werewolf.In camp, Geralt can meditate and prep certain items and mutagens based on the challenges he expects to face next. For werewolves, Geralt takes a silver shrapnel bomb, which prevents werewolves from regenerating health. He also opts for a strength mutagen to help him do more damage. The mutagens have to be managed carefully, however; loading too many starts to result in unpleasant side effects.In the battle against the werewolf, we got to hear a bit about the game’s more flexible difficulty system. Rather than radically adjusting the strength of the individual monsters, the team is going to scale the difficulty of encounters by increasing the number of allies the monster has. So, for instance, an easy fight against the werewolf might just include one or two additional wolves, while a hard fight could include five or more.After the fights, we got to see a bit more exploration as the Witcher climbed up into a cave on the side of the hillock. The sequel also includes new exploration options for Geralt to dive underwater, which he does in the tunnels under the hill. At the other end of the underwater tunnels, Geralt confronts the Tree’s Heart, a massive, pulsing form that lies imprisoned in the roots of the massive tree on top of the hill. Assuming this is the evil power plaguing Downwarren, Geralt moves to destroy, but stops as the Tree’s Heart asks to be freed so it can help confront the real evil in the forest. Does Geralt just burn the Tree’s Heart? Does he trust it and give it its freedom? These are the choices the player has to grapple with.Without spoiling the details, Geralt does sort out the issues and the Eoldarman uses the ritual dagger to give him the payment the Ladies demanded. Once it’s laid on the stone outside Gran’s hut, the Ladies emerge from the tapestry in their true form, which, this being a Witcher game, isn’t quite what you expected. With this interaction, the Ladies of the Wood quest ends, and Geralt is off following the next clue to Ciri’s location.The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt is due out February of 2015.

Steve Butts is Editor-in-Chief and resident Game Master at IGN. Follow him on Twitter