The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s map can be pretty intimidating when just starting the game. Fortunately though,The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s map is just one part of the bigger Witcher Continent, which one fan has painstakingly recreated with the utmost accuracy.
From Kaer Morhen, the home of the witcher School of the Wolf to the north, to the Skellige Isles, a series of islands off the Continent’s western coast, players explore asizable portion of the Continent inThe Witcher 3. The Continent itself is a much bigger place though, that expands to the south and east, going to edges of most maps seen throughout the series. There is some slight variation in the Continent’s design between the various pieces of Witcher media, whether its the original novels, the video games, or the Netflix show, but they all generally depict similar locations and structures.The Witcher 3’s map is so large that it features multiple levels of detail, going as far as the continental scale, to as focused as individual buildings and towns.
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User HikiSWAG shared their recreation drawing ofThe Witcher’s Continent. HikiSWAG posted a video highlighting their project toThe Witcher 3’s subreddit, where it has quickly attained a lot of attention. The video alternates between timelapse clips that show the map growing like roots on the page, and shots of HikiSWAG actually drawing the piece, emphasizing the likely tedious nature of the project. HikiSWAG seems to base his piece off of theworld map used inThe WitcherNetflix show, but all ofThe Witcher 3’s familiar locations can be accounted for in the middle of the page.
As mentioned, the differences betweenThe Witcher 3and show’s map are mostly geographical in nature, with the land formations taking different shapes, but locations (mostly) maintaining proximity to one another. For example,the gulf that Redania is situated onis a bit more pronounced in HikiSWAG’s map as it extends further into the mainland than it does inThe Witcher 3. Furthermore, there is a lot shown HikiSWAG’s map that largely does not appear or play an important role inThe Witcher 3, like the Korath Desert or the Firey Mountains.
What is perhaps most impressive about HikiSWAG’s art is its consistency throughout. Looking at the litany of mountains and hills that dot the map, these were likely fairly simple to draw, but when repeated multiple times over, a single error would stick out like a sore thumb. To HikiSWAG’s credit then, whether it is the mountains, the desert dunes, the linework, or the stenciling ofThe Witcherfont, every level of the piece looks and feels likeThe Witcher. The section of the Continent that players experience inThe Witcher 3is rife with beautiful locations, but it is important to also capture the beauty of the textiles and other assets that further immerse the player.
The Witcher 3: Wild Huntis available on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions also in development.
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