The Witcher 3
The Witcher series is rare in the video game world: it’s genuinely mature rather than superficially “adult”, a detailed, violent, politically intricate fantasy that doesn’t let itself down with leaden dialogue, embarrassing voice acting or emotionally overwrought storytelling. It was one of the best games of 2011, and along with Skyrim and Game of Thrones that year, it brought adult fantasy very much back into vogue.
We won’t be seeing The Witcher 3 until 2014, and we won’t see a glimpse of it in action until this year’s E3. But the Tomaszkiewicz brothers – Konrad, the game director, and Mateusz, the lead quest designer – recently spoke to IGN to shed light on the game’s vision. This is the most open-world Witcher game yet; technology has liberated it from artificial boundaries. It’s also the first Witcher game that will launch simultaneously on consoles and PC – and considering the amazing job that CD Projekt did even with the ageing Xbox 360 technology for The Witcher 2, the PS4 and Nextbox versions are a very exciting prospect.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s grand idea is to marry true open-ended role-playing with the confident, subversive storyline and writing that the series excels at. “I think this is the next step for RPGs – the combination of a strong storyline and open-world gameplay,” says Mateusz. “Previously Skyrim has shown that Bethesda are masters – they can create a full-of-life, unique world with a huge amount of events and small story quests, and as I’ve mentioned before in other interviews I admire this game very, very much - the only thing missing was a strong storyline.”
Unlike Skyrim, The Witcher 3 won’t do enemy scaling. It’s an open world more like that of Dark Souls, where if you wander into tempting new areas you’re likely to get your arse handed to you by whatever awful creatures live there. But there’s no artificial gating; you can hop on a horse and ride from the huge city of Novigrad to the Slavic No-Man’s Land. In the island archipelago of Skellige, you can swim or take a boat between the islands
The Witcher 2 saw the desultory anti-hero Geralt caught up in a regicide and drawn into a grand political drama. As a character, Geralt has always been uninterested in politics – he’s only ever formed alliances because he’s had to – but as a player, this rich and complex tale of betrayals, age-old vendettas and family honour was one of the most interesting aspects of the game for me. In The Witcher 3, it’s the story of Geralt himself that will propel the game onwards.
“Geralt has changed his priorities,” says Mateusz. “He has regained his memory, so he remembers that he had a family once, he wants to find his long lost love – Yennefer, the sorceress. He doesn’t care about politics any more – even less than in previous games. There will be moments where Geralt will get involved in [political] things, but this time we have divided the plotlines of The Witcher 3 into a few categories. The first category is the basic main storyline of the character, of Geralt – looking for his Yennefer, amongst much else. This is the plot that is very personal to Geralt, and this is the main driving force for the entire game.
-IGN
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