On May 19, 2015, Polish developer CD Projekt Red released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the last entry to the trilogy based on the saga written by Andrzej Sapkowski.
The game is set in a vast open-world and is immense progress from past games. The risks taken by CD Projekt Red paid off almost instantly, and the game still feels fresh after five years.
It has been labeled as one of the best role-playing games of all time, mainly because of its fantastic story and vast world.
The developers have spoken about the success of the game in an interview with Polygon, and it was pleasant to listen to what they had to say about the game’s success.
Words From The Developer
Philipp Weber, a senior quest designer, said: “Our quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, said that the main goal [of The Witcher 3] was to combine the design philosophy of previous Witcher games, which was to create a complex and mature story that has choices and consequences, with an open world,” setting the first direction the game was built to follow.
He added that there used to be a “preconceived notion you would hear” that open-world games like The Witcher aren’t capable of telling ample stories.
CD Projekt Red took that as a challenge, and the result speaks for itself.
The developers also revealed how one of their main goals was to make the story flexible and give gamers a sense of responsibility since many of their choices can have a dramatic impact on the ending of the story.
Weber mentioned how the team implemented some algorithms to make the world feel more immersive, such as a feature where wolves can smell newly killed animals or monsters and be attracted to that specific area.