- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's open world isn't an open world in the classic sense (Skyrim, GTA, and the likes) with a continous world, where you actually can walk from one end to the other
- instead it's more of a pooling or combination of hubs i.e. separate regions
- according to Peter Gelencser the reason behind this approach is the vast distances between the locations (going from Novigrad to Skellige Islands would take one day easy) which simply would be impossible to fill with meaningful content
- how exactly one would travel from hub to hub isn't decided yet, but the devs are experimenting with different solutions
- one way to 'switch' between regions is fast travel (but only if they were visited before of course)
- all regions won't be accessible right from start, they're rather 'unlocked' as one progresses in the story
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt starts with a smaller hub which serves as the tutorial
- Peter Gelencser assures that there won't be any key prompts to press, the tutorial hub is more of a little sandbox or playground to put Geralt's combat skills to the test, to get a feel for how decisions affect the outcomes of quests and to explore the surroundings like one would do in the bigger regions later on
- Novigrad and surroundings is the size of about 8.5 by 8.5 kilometers = 72.25 square kilometers
- the Skellige archipelago is the size of about 8 by 8 kilometers = 64 square kilometers
- those two alone result in an explorable area of 136 square kilometers which dwarves Skyrim's 41 square kilometers
- and even when discounting the 2 kilometers wide 'ring' of visible, but not explorable panorama around each of those two regions you would still have respectable 78 square kilometers for two regions alone
- Novigrad & surroundings and the Skellige archipelago are obviously only two of 'several' regions to explore, and even if the other regions were considerably smaller the world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt would still be more extensive as the promised '20% bigger than Skyrim'
- Novigrad and No Man's Land are part of the same hub
- according to Peter Gelencser THAT huge tree (as seen during the Griffin hunt or while getting the bottle with Johnny's voice) is as high as a building with ten stories
- the boundaries of each region are most likely natural, like big bodies of water, unpassable rivers or mountain ranges
- there are 'interesting things' at the bottom of lakes, like parts of valuable Witcher armor sets Geralt is able to smith or craft by himself
- swimming is not possible everywhere, especially lakes on the Skellige archipelago are too cold even for Geralt
- Geralt can swim in the seas but shouldn't when there's a storm coming up, which could be lethal
- if there's particularly heavy sea Geralt can fall out of boats
- unlike in the Gothic series there are no creatures blocking off certain areas of the world
- the 'recommended potions' section in th UI is triggered when tracking (via Witcher Senses) a creature Geralt has encountered before
- noonwraiths appear only at noon (duh)
- there is no simulation of realistic Moon phases
- the lumps of mud the Water Hags are throwing trigger some kind of smudge effect on the screen when Geralt is hit by them
- the 'Igni-Flamethrower' skill variation can target multiple opponents at once (via upgrade)
- fellow Witchers become hireable over the course of the story (they have to be convinced to fight on Geralt's side)
- Peter Gelencser elaborates on a few possible scenarios to circumvent or overcome a roadblock (set up by Nilfgaard?):
a) Geralt might run across a farmer in a nearby village who while excavating in his basement discovered a cave system ridden with the undead that passes under the roadblock
b) Geralt might talk to the people waiting in front of the roadblock and, by giving them supplies, convince them to go up against the barricade and tear it down
c) Geralt might do the guards of the roadblock a favour for safe passage
- regions or hubs are 'unlocked' after one another by completing the tasks or quests in the preceding regions or hubs
- Geralt may return to previous regions at any time, it might be even mandatory to do so
- no comment on how much feature complete the game is (meaning that game mechanics and game elements are still being iterated on)