The One Mistake The Witcher Team Never Wants To Make Again
"The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" released in 2015 to rave reviews and the delight of players. The conclusion to Geralt of Rivia's story was a massive hit and is still counted as one of the best video games of all time. Fans continue to return to the entry after all these years and are even finding new Easter eggs. Still, no title is perfect and even the developers admit they didn't get everything right.
Speaking on a livestream to celebrate CD Projekt Red's 20th anniversary, Philipp Weber, campaign director for an upcoming "Witcher" project and junior quest designer on "Witcher 3," admitted what he considered a big misstep in the design of the beloved installment. Showing a great deal of humility and taking personal responsibility for the mistake, Weber acknowledged that there were just too many points of interest in the game.
"The Witcher 3" is an incredibly dense game. It features a massive world full of interesting characters and countless quests, both major and minor, to experience. Fans will also remember a map littered with tiny question marks, indicating small treasures and secrets to find. For completionists, locating every chest, monster nest, and encounter was a daunting and time consuming task. Weber asserted that the team went a bit too far with these little extras.
Map markers were a last minute addition
Weber explained that these hidden secrets were originally intended to be unmarked additions that players would stumble across while playing "Wild Hunt." Many were supposed to be signaled to the player by having birds flying above and nothing more.
Very late in the development process, the team decided to quickly add markers and make them official mini-quests, as the world was so big it needed more pursuits to fill in space on the map. While he admitted that having so many icons all over the map was "terrible," Weber offered the defense that it was a last minute change necessitated by the sheer size of the setting and implemented without time to polish the idea.
"Witcher" fans recently got the best news: confirmation that a new entry is in the works. It's an encouraging sign that its campaign director is a veteran of the last installment and is committed to improving the series and correcting past mistakes. "It was a learning experience for us," Weber said. Players will have to wait and see how the team applies these lessons when the next "Witcher" game eventually launches.