The Witcher III developers explain why their open world works so well

Just a couple of days ago, it was the fifth anniversary since The Witcher 3 hit the stores, and the guys at CD Projekt RED have been busy for a week celebrating it and sharing new details about the development of their most acclaimed game. Among other things, the Polish team has explained the decision of break with the first two installments to bet on an open world and the challenge of making it work.

“Our mission manager, Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, said that the primary goal of The Witcher 3 was to combine the design philosophy of previous The Witcher games, to create a complex and mature story that had options and consequences, with an open world” . Pgilipp Weber, senior mission designer, says in an interview with Polygon. “There used to be this preconceived notion that you heard a lot that open-world games can’t tell deep or interesting stories. So that was something we took as a challenge. “

The team’s challenge was to build a quest system to suit the player’s decision-making power in an open world. “At first, changing our design to suit an open world seemed difficult, but in the end it greatly improved the missions,” Weber said. “With the world open, our quest structure also became much more open, and we could give players ** much more opportunities to experience our stories the way they want **. If I can solve different parts of a mission out of order, which maybe I will, they have different consequences later. Since we were always big fans of the choice and the non-linear consequences, this was a huge advantage. ”

But the thing does not stop there, since the open world of The Witcher has many functions beyond its mission system that guarantee the perception that it is a living world that projects a realistic feeling of immersion, such as the fact that the Wolves smell the blood of the nearby dead and become a new threat. “One of the things that people mention a lot when it comes to The Witcher 3 is how long they played and enjoyed it, which at first was very surprising and fun for us, because during development we always thought it would be too short and tried to add more content to the gameWeber said. “So seeing that kind of feedback was a real relief, even better knowing that people still play today.”

The Witcher went on sale on May 19, 2015 for Xbox One, PS4 and PC, is now also available on Nintendo Switch. It is the epic closure of the Geralt of Rivia trilogy, but the Polish team does not rule out creating The Witcher 4 focused on the story of Ciri. In any case, CD Projekt RED is currently fully focused on the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, which will hit stores on September 17 for Xbox One, PC and PS4, and later for the new generation of consoles.