GameInformer has posted a new video interview with CDPR, in which Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, Game Director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, Lead Quest Designer of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, talk about the company’s upcoming Witcher game, Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas.
According to the video interview, CDPR will include horses in this third part of the Witcher series as this is something that fans have been asking for a long time. In addition, the company wants to reward players for exploring the world and admitted that vistas are important as they are meant to deliver the feeling that you can explore things in the distance.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is planned for a 2014 release on high-end consoles and PC!
Those interested can view the video interview here. NeoGAF’s member ‘EatChildren’ has managed to write down the key features of this interview and you can find them below.
– After making RED Engine they knew it was possible to re-write the code for streaming an open world game.
– Were happy with The Witcher 2, but missed the sense of freedom, size of locations, and the fresh breath of being able to run away from the story and take on other tasks.
– During production of The Witcher 2 they tossed around the idea of implementing a horse, as they felt they could do it, but the level sizes would not accommodate the mechanisms of riding a horse very well. Fans had been asking for a horse as Geralt rides a horse in the books, so they wanted to put it in the third game.
– “Everyone in this studio plays Skyrim” – team is a fan of open world games.
– Lessons learned from Skyrim: you need to care about immersion in the game.
– “Skyrim was generic”. Disliked the way Skyrim handled quests, where NPCs would never really acknowledge what you accomplished or did. You’d have a generic set of quests and that’s it. The team feels that quests should be unique and NPCs should acknowledge the things you’ve done for them.
– Felt this is where The Witcher 2 succeeded: choice and consequence. You got to see how your quest choices impacted the lives of NPCs, and you can speak to them about it, whether they’re angry or happy.
– “(Skyrim) didn’t have very good characters”. Tried to remember and name five different characters from the game and couldn’t.
– Thought exploring in Skyrim was great, but the story and characters were generic. So they want to learn from Skyrim how to best make an “open world”. Make sure they have huge vistas, but plenty of adventures and stuff to do.
– Feel if they combine this with their knowledge of RPGs, they can make the “perfect RPG”.
– Vistas are important. Notes the sensation of leaving the first dungeon in Skyrim and seeing the mountains and towns in the distance, delivering a feeling of a huge world to explore. Vistas need to deliver the feeling that you can explore things in the distance.
– Acknowledges the challenge of blending a cinematic experience and cutscenes with freedom of adventuring, not making boundaries. Always an issue with story driven games.
– Notes Fallout: New Vegas: thought it had a really good story and open world without too many cutscenes, but felt something was missing. Thought it might be caused by the tools, or something else, but whatever it was it shows that it’s a big challenge to blend the two.
– Happy with the pacing of The Witcher 2, and want to combine that with an open world.
– Want to change the way you approach questing in The Witcher 3. In The Witcher 2 you’re given a marking on your map, and you go there. In The Witcher 3 they want to lure the player with “interest points”, where there’s always something interesting.
– Want to reward players for exploring the world.
– Notes Assassin’s Creed III: felt there was always something to do in the main quest, but trying to hunt down side quests always lead to generic stuff, and that hurt the immersion of the world.
– Making Cyberpunk as well as this open world game: not a coincidence.
– Hoping this will give them experience with open world games they can build on for future titles.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email