Possibly to meet standards for the sort of gamer that CD Projekt RED expect to be playing The Witcher 3 when it comes out, it has been announced that it will be available with a hardmode setting: Dark Difficulty. This setting will ramp up the skill and difficulty of enemies and monsters and death is a one-time thing. Once you die, that’s it – game over.

An interview with VG247 CD Projekt RED dev Phillip Weber gave the reason for the difficult setting as being “Usually normal is easy, and easy is – well, you can be on your phone while playing.” Weber said. “We want it to be easy to learn but hard to master. Dark difficulty is something that many people in the company are very passionate about. Because they want a real challenge. If you die five minutes before the ending, it’s over.”

CD Projekt RED have decided that with The Witcher 3 they wanted something definitive for their game, and so have chosen to do it through a devillishly hard game setting with perma-death. Sounds exciting, but I can’t imagine playing through a game for hours only to lose it all at the last moment. I’d be devastated personally.

What about you? Does Dark Difficulty appeal to you or are you going to stick to Normal while you learn how to play the game?