14 DAY TRIAL // The Witcher 3 is the crowning achievement of developer CD Projekt Red, which believes that it finally encompasses everything that's great about role-playing game, from a mature story with lots of consequences, to an open world.
The Witcher saga has delivered some great entries so far, starting off with The Witcher 1 in 2007, and continuing with The Witcher 2 in 2011, and it is currently getting ready for the third installment, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which will debut later this year.
While talking about its previous and upcoming games with AusGamers, CD Projekt Red's Michal Platkow-Gilewski mentioned just how the game and the strategy of the studio has progressed since the very first game.
According to him, when The Witcher 1 was being made, the studio just wanted to create a mature role-playing game with a believable story, and the end result was pretty satisfying. Even so, with The Witcher 2, the studio set higher goals, including the one that required more consequences for player choices.
"In The Witcher 2, we wanted to go a step further: we wanted to have more consequences of your actions in the game, and we wanted to excel in the storytelling, because we think this is what’s important for us and where we are quite good," he said.
"That was The Witcher 2, where choosing different factions [means] you can affect how the world and the gameplay could be exposed with different gameplay even, because big parts were unique and dependent on your choices."
With the next game, the studio wants to take things even further and, besides a mature story and plenty of consequences, it will also bring forth an open world experience that can really work thanks to the power of the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
"In The Witcher 3, we came to a moment where we were experienced enough, we had our own technology which was good enough, we are in the moments when the next-gen(s) and quite powerful PC systems are on the market, and at that moment we feel that we can use the last missing part to tell the immersive stories, and this part is the open-world," he added.
"Because only in an open-world we can truly enjoy the story which we are shaping. So you can go back and check what consequences your actions brought on the world, or you can just go wherever you want, and behave like a real character."
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is expect to debut for PC, PS4, and Xbox One later in the year but, so far, CD Projekt Red hasn't offered a concrete release date.