14 DAY TRIAL // The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the upcoming role-playing game from CD Projekt Red, has a variety of legendary monsters that are inspired by the creatures found in medieval folk tales in the Slavic portions of Europe.
The Witcher 3 once again focuses on franchise protagonist Geralt of Rivia, who will conclude his adventures in the game's rich open world by embarking on a new epic quest.
Besides the main story, however, Geralt can explore the various settlements found in the environment and, according to CD Projekt Red's Lead Quest Designer Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, most of them will have different legendary creatures lurking about, which can be hunted by players depending on their preferences for various rewards.
"They involve hunting legendary creatures," he told PC Gamer about the secondary quests. "They should be tougher to beat than normal opponents. Each encounter contains a unique creature and each of those hunts is unique. They’re not repeatable, in the sense that they each have their own plot. You can expect each settlement will have at least one of them, if not more."
According to the developer, the Polish team drew inspiration from the many monsters found in medieval folk tales from the Slavic region of Europe, like the Leshen, which was presented back at E3 2013.
"There were hundreds of Slavic monsters invented in medieval times, and they’re all connected to some weird things that couldn’t be explained. The name was quite unique, and we’re trying to apply some kind of visual style to how cool the name is. It sounds cool in Polish. I’m not sure if it sounds cool in English."
What's more, the studio also emphasized that the monsters and quests aren't created independently from one another, as members of those internals teams get together and share ideas in order to make sure that the encounter with that monster feels right.
CD Projekt Red's Lead Character Artist Pawel Mielniczuk also mentioned that the studio wants to avoid using traditional monsters seen in Western games and entertainment.
"For me personally I love the monsters in Castlevania. They were quite unique, and this game was quite inspiring for me, for example, because these weren’t the sort of monsters you’d find in Western games. We’re trying to avoid zombies and generic alien things.”
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is set to debut in February of 2015 and you can bet that the studio will share more details about the new title in the following months.