So, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt senior art producer Michał Krzemiński has come up on gaming magazine GamesTM to talk all things Witcher 3. Along the way, he makes a comparison you may or may not agree with.
So, here’s a question for you: what do Geralt, Batman, and Lara Croft all have in common? Aside from being the playable protagonists / main characters in their respective games?
KrzemiÅ„ski argues that it’s that they are all strong and well-defined characters. Geralt in particular is cool because of his role as a witcher. In this capacity, he is a second to none as a problem solver and is the best at hunting the biggest monsters.
This came up in the discussion about choice in Witcher 3. While CDProjekt Red has made choice a key mechanic in the franchise, Geralt, the playable character, himself is set in stone. CDProjekt Red seems to have emphasized how great a character Geralt is for them to not want to replace him, and have subsequently built the entire game’s open ended narrative around him. As a result, the game will have 36 endings, 12 world states and 3 (playable) epilogues.
He also discusses another comparison, this one commonly made by fans, between the Witcher and Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series. In KrzemiÅ„ski’s mind, Skyrim is an open sandbox game, and Witcher is a story driven experience, which also happens to be in an open world.
As for the persistent question regarding ‘next-gen’, CDProjekt Red plays it smart and does not go into graphics, or at least not just graphics. They claim that PS4 and Xbox One have allowed them to improve the Witcher in many different ways, including seamless gameplay, with a lack of loading screens, new visual effects, etc.
Witcher 3 still has a few months to go before you can decide if that Geralt thing is true, but that release date is creeping faster than you notice. The game will be releasing Windows, Xbox One, and Playstation 4, this February 2015.
