Almost 30,000 dwellers, Geralt, not counting travelers; just imagine! Brick houses, cobbled main streets, a seaport, stores, shops, four watermills, slaughterhouses, sawmills, a large manufactory making beautiful slippers, and every conceivable guild and trade. A mint, eight banks and nineteen pawnbrokers. A castle and a guardhouse to take the breath away. And diversions: a scaffold, a gallows with a drop, thirty-five taverns, a theatre, a menagerie, a market and a dozen whorehouses. And I can't remember how many temples, but plenty.
You probably caught notifications telling you that Geralt was in The Bits or Gildorf, as the city's divided into several districts, or that you'd just stepped into Crippled Kate's or the Golden Sturgeon tavern. But did you look up all that often? At everything the game isn't explicitly telling you? I didn't, but after reading "Eternal Flame" and Dandelion's testimonial for the city, I wanted to see just how close CDPR's version of Novigrad was to the book—or, get a feeling for how much artistic license the poet might have been ladling on.Turns out, the game's Novigrad isn't particularly close to the book's list of sights and sounds, at all. And I've really been looking—pressing up against doors, trying to knock down walls, climbing dozens of ladders to nowhere.Starting at the western tip of the city, just past the docks, I circled its circumference before cutting up and down its main streets, darting in and out of alleys to peek into what might be there. Mostly, not much. It's certainly a busy place, although the repeated dialogue of passing NPCs sure as shit grates after a couple of hours, but what Geralt can actually do in Novigrad is a lot more limited than Dandelion implies.Turns out, the game's Novigrad isn't particularly close to the book's list of sights and sounds, at all. And I've really been looking.
Wandering the streets, there's more to be found than Dandelion describes. There's a hospital, and a morgue—both of which have a part to play in quests. A complex sewer system that I march around, sword unsheathed, only to finally, and totally accidentally, discover the sleeping "then fuck off" vampire from the gameplay trailer. There's no scaffold or gallows to be found, as such—but the stakes of Hierarch Square are a good enough substitute for any public execution.I found no mint, or menagerie—which I'm assuming, in this context, to mean a small zoo. There is a travelling circus camped to the south of the city walls, though, close to the Portside gate. I mean, it'll keep the kids happy for a while, just as well. Assuming they haven't all died of dysentery, that is, given the absolute state of Novigrad's poorer quarters.In conclusion, then, Wild Hunt's Novigrad—while a magnificent achievement of game design, and one of the medium's greatest virtual bricks-and-mortar (and mud and blood) creations—is very different to Sapkowski's initial vision for it. But then again, Dandelion's hardly the most trustworthy fellow, at the best of times; and he had a right thirst on while telling Geralt about the city, no doubt due to already being on the sauce for a good few hours previously. Which is to say: his exaggeration should take nothing away from what is a terrific place to spend several in-game hours. And also that I really, really wish I had the time to start The Witcher 3 from scratch, again. What a magnificent game it is.Follow Mike on Twitter.Related, on Waypoint: Wild Open Spaces: A Visual Guide to the World of 'The Witcher 3'