The Witcher 3:Wild Hunt game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz has stated that the game will try to redefine the open-world genre by making "every inch of the world you'll traverse to be interesting and believable".

Here's the full quote:

“Think about closed-world games. Their storytelling is usually quite good because fewer possibilities for gamers mean that developers can plan more and concentrate solely on the finite number of locations in the game.”

“We want to take that quality and extend it to an open world. We want every inch of the world you’ll traverse to be interesting and believable. That’s our way of redefining [the open-world genre]. There was a time when open world gameplay meant that you just had to travel from point A to point B with nothing to do in between. Nowadays, there’s like a second game between point A and B. If you want, you can forget that point B even exists.”

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is slated for a 2014 release for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Source