CD Projekt Red has finally, officially announced The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Heading to all available “high-end platforms,” which presumably means next-gen consoles,  Wild Hunt will be an open world game, a first for the series.

Just how big will the game be? Pretty bloody big. Up to 20% bigger than Skyrim, even. Traveling from one end of the map to the other end will take 30-40 minutes on horseback, with areas streamed in live so as to avoid loading times. That's courtesy of CD Projekt RED's new CRED Engine 3.

The structure of the game encompasses crafting and monster hunts, important side-quests and an overarching main storyline in which Geralt attempts to rescue loved ones from his arch nemesis. Apparently, the witcher has now reached a stage where he is fed up with helping everyone else.

At the heart of the enhanced features is monster hunting, in which you source potion ideas and tactics from books and townsfolk with which to take on beasties. Time of day will also be a factor for some of these monster confrontations. Preperation is key.

All of this ties in nicely with the source material, as Geralt is a monster hunter. That’s his job. But in the previous games this element has been slightly underplayed. In Wild Hunt it looks like this is coming to the forefront.

Skill trees will be developed beyond those in The Witcher 2. Secondary forms of spells will let you add things like a 360-degree blast. Work is in place to make the swordplay more graceful, with new strikes and abilities that increase things like parrying and stamina. A new mutation mechanic has also been mentioned, but we don’t know any further details.

Building the story around Geralt himself? More monster hunting against big, gruesome beasties? A larger game with Roach, Geralt’s horse? Looks like we were thinking along the right lines when we wrote our What We Want From The Witcher 2's Sequel piece lat year.

All of this information comes from Game Informer, the latest edition of which has been summarised by NeoGaf.