The Witcher Interview - News and Siteseeing

It's been two years since Poland based developer CDProjekt first announced The Witcher, an epic fantasy action-RPG that would use a highly modified version of the Aurora Engine that BioWare created for Neverwinter Nights. Now it looks like the development team is getting closer to the release of the game and FiringSquad decided to check in with the developer on its progress. We got some answers from Gary Keith, the director of global marketing fo CDProjekt.

FiringSquad: First, The Witcher was first announced a couple of years ago. What has caused the game to take longer to develop than first announced?
Gary Keith: We announced the product at the early stages of the development process. Since we licensed the BioWare Aurora engine, we’ve done a number of modifications to it, including an entirely new graphics engine, a new real-time combat engine and a new toolset for building the game. With the technological aspect all sorted, we’ve now gone into full production with a full team of 44. Since it’s our first game we also want to ensure we deliver a high-quality polished game, so we are taking our time to fine-tune it.
FiringSquad: Single player RPGs have been few and far between lately but there seems to be a resugance in this field with Neverwinter Nights 2, Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion and Gothic 3 all due out this year. Why do you think that single player oriented RPGs have come back into favor?
Gary Keith: As we knew going into The Witcher, there is a very large audience of fans who enjoy the genre. Although the MMO market is the hot topic right now, people still enjoy a solid story-based experience and rich worlds. We ended up going down the single-player route after we broke down the RPG experience we wanted to provide. We wanted to provide a rich and deep story in a non-linear structure. Then we chose to focus on one character as we felt it was the best way to deliver this story-based experience. Finally, our goal is to set a benchmark in PC RPG combat with interesting tactical options and hundreds of animations to bring the real-time combat to life. All those factors led us back to a single-player experience. Oblivion’s recent success shows the strength of the single-player-oriented RPG genre and verifies for us even further that we are headed in the right direction. We think there will always be a small group of developers that will dedicate themselves to this genre in one way or another, and our goal is to be one of them.
FiringSquad: For people who are not familar with the game, what can you tell us about the fictional backstory for The Witcher?
Gary Keith: The Witcher is based on the fantasy literature of Andrzej Sapkowski. We developed the story of our game based on his series of books by first focusing on the main character of his novels, Geralt of Rivia. Without giving away too much of the backstory I can say that the game world contains all the elements of a typical fantasy universe, but in our world there is no clear distinction of good vs. evil. Essentially The Witcher has two main plots, global and personal, which interact during the game and end finally as one epic tale. As Geralt — a renowned slayer of monsters — tries to regain his lost memory and pursue a group of assassins who raided the witchers’ stronghold, he finds himself trapped in a struggle between powerful political powers. The background includes an ancient prophecy, racial tensions, a mysterious Order, a horrible pestilence and an invasion of monsters. Geralt will become involved in many types of relationships including friendly, treacherous, passionate, rivalrous and hateful. The story will end in one of three ways depending on the player’s behavior and choices throughout the game.
FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the main goals the development team has had throughout the making of the game?
Gary Keith: The main objective we have as a first-time developer is to create a game with an emotional benefit to the consumer. So story and character were essential and our beautiful game world and combat are icing on the cake. CD Projekt got its start in the business over 10 years ago and enjoyed great success with localizing and publishing RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Diablo. We really enjoyed the traditional-style RPGs and knew when our time came we would focus on really trying to move this subset of the RPG genre forward.
FiringSquad: What do you think separates The Witcher from other fantasy RPGs out on the market or coming soon?
Gary Keith: First off, we think there are some amazing RPGs hitting the market now, all with their own unique points of differentiation. In some aspects we are similar to other products, but in others completely different. There isn’t one main aspect, but rather our focused combination. We consider our game a modern version of a classic story-based RPG with tactically deep real-time combat. Our game is focused on the story of one character who has a past. There are not a lot of games going down the route of providing this type of set-up from the beginning, but we felt it was important to help deliver a very rich story. Geralt is a monster-killer-for-hire and trained in combat, but in no way does that hinder the character development throughout the game. The player will decide how to develop the special abilities, resulting in one’s own unique version of the character. Our combat is also quite unique, as it is as stunning as you might see in some console action RPGs, but yet still tactical in nature, as in the classic turn-based systems. This combination of highly fluid real-time movement and the tactical choices is an aspect we think players will enjoy.
FiringSquad: What were some of the challenges involved in adapting BioWare's Aurora graphics engine to work on The Witcher?
Gary Keith: The biggest challenge in the process of adapting Aurora to work with The Witcher was making it use all the features of modern graphics hardware that have emerged since Neverwinter Nights was released. When we licensed the engine it was already about two years old. We needed to make it meet the expectations (very high expectations) of what will be standard by the time we release. First we had to port it to DirectX 9, and then implement all the features we wanted to see in the game: support for sophisticated shaders, changing daytime, dynamic weather, etc. We also improved shadows, foliage rendering and the animation system. The graphics engine has been almost completely rewritten.
FiringSquad: Are there any plans for a demo of the game to be released?
Gary Keith: Yes, we do plan to release a demo, but the date is still under consideration.
FiringSquad: What is the current status of the game's progress and when will it be released?
Gary Keith: We are currently in our Alpha phase where the entire game is laid out with some placeholder assets. We plan to hit Beta by Fall and bug-fix and polish for a Spring 2007 release.
FiringSquad: Are there any plans for additional content to be released for The Witcher like BioWare has done for Neverwinter Nights?
Gary Keith: We have some announcements in the works about how future content for The Witcher brand will be released.
FiringSquad: Finally is there anything else you wish to say about The Witcher?
Gary Keith: We are quite excited about the progress we’ve made recently and we know the fans will appreciate the time we are taking to make sure we provide a great experience. We are hosting on our site what we call The Witcher Week from April 19-25th. Updated screens, videos and art are some of the new assets going up on www.thewitcher.com throughout the week.