Arcania - Interview @ XboxMessiah

[DArtagnan]

Actually, The Witcher was originally intended to be non-linear, but it changed during the development.

Well well

 

[Ausir]

From a 2004 RPG Codex interview:

The Witcher tells the story of a man who, trying to discover his own identity and to rescue the heritage of his brotherhood, becomes involved in events of global scale. The game’s world is alive – the kings start new wars, the spies plan new coup d'états, and most of these events cannot be influenced by the hero at all. Of course, some decisions of the player will have consequences in the longer run, but they will mostly involve only Geralt himself – he can return to places he already visited whenever he wants, choose sides in conflicts and decide on his own future.

 

[JDR13]

The Witcher *is* non-linear, and the statement you highlighted is entirely true in the context of the chapters, which I'm pretty sure is what it's referring to.

 

[Maylander]

You make it sound as if the various chapters are huge, with loads of places to exlore and go back/forth between. I hardly think they're referring to "return to places he already visited whenever he wants" as in "the place where the hero was five minutes ago".

The game pushes you ever forward, and the fact that you have a few zones to explore in every chapter does not change that at all.

Edit: If I recall correctly, each chapter has 1-3 zones to explore.

 

[JDR13]

You make it sound as if the various chapters are huge, with loads of places to exlore and go back/forth between. I hardly think they're referring to "return to places he already visited whenever he wants" as in "the place where the hero was five minutes ago".

Then what are they referring to?

Please...enlighten us.

 

[Prime Junta]

I don't think the linearity of The Witcher has necessarily much to do with the engine. It would simply be fiendishly complicated to get that intricate and branching a storyline to work in an open-world environment. There's a reason quests in open-world games tend to be relatively short and linear affairs. You'd really need a whole new way of managing quest complexity than is available in current game engines. Such a system would be a pretty interesting design challenge, actually...

 

[Maylander]

Then what are they referring to?

Please…enlighten us.

I think it's rather simple: This is a five year old statement. Hardly every statement by every developer is accurate, certainly not if it's several years before release. My guess is, they were over ambitious at the time (what project is not?), and then realized it would be far too complex, so they reduced the scope and made it more realistic.

If they had continued down the extremely complex path, I hardly think it would be as polished as it is. It would probably end up as the Troika games (Arcanum is a good example of a game that's incredibly complex, but also incredibly buggy).

 

[JDR13]

I think it's rather simple: This is a five year old statement. Hardly every statement by every developer is accurate, certainly not if it's several years before release. My guess is, they were over ambitious at the time (what project is not?), and then realized it would be far too complex, so they reduced the scope and made it more realistic.

Well you're wrong, and that ambiguous statement is being taken entirely out of context by some people here. The Witcher was never being designed as a sandbox style game world.

From June 3rd 2004, 6 months earlier than the previous interview.

Jonric: How is the game structured? Is it divided into chapters or missions? And how linear or open-ended will it be?


Michal Kicinski: The game is divided into five chapters. In each one, the player will have many different quests to complete. We try to keep the structure of the game as open as possible, meaning that most of the tasks can be accomplished in many different ways. You'll be also able to attack and kill practically all the characters you meet, even your friends - if you are skillful enough. Depending on the player's decisions, there are also three different endings. Which one occurs is affected by the players' actions throughout the whole adventure.

 

[Maylander]

It doesn't have to be an open world or a sandbox game to have most areas available through most of the game. Planescape: Torment is hardly open or a sandbox, but you can return to the place you started pretty much whenever you want (with a few exceptions).

There is nothing in that quote that says previous areas won't be available. So what if it's divided in chapters? That means nothing. Many games have chapters you progress through, but still all areas once you unlock them (Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, for example).

In fact, it would make perfect sense to be able to go back in TW, so you could finish up quests and so on. For example, if you forget something, or find a particular fight too hard, you can come back later to do it. That's probably the reason why the quest log is not cleared between chapters - they had originally designed the game around being able to do just that.

 

[Myrthos]

That might be so, but in Arcania you can't. A new chapter opens up a new region and the regions in previous chapters can not be visited anymore.

 

[JDR13]

It doesn't have to be an open world or a sandbox game to have most areas available through most of the game. Planescape: Torment is hardly open or a sandbox, but you can return to the place you started pretty much whenever you want (with a few exceptions).

There is nothing in that quote that says previous areas won't be available. So what if it's divided in chapters? That means nothing. Many games have chapters you progress through, but still all areas once you unlock them (Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, for example).

In fact, it would make perfect sense to be able to go back in TW, so you could finish up quests and so on. For example, if you forget something, or find a particular fight too hard, you can come back later to do it. That's probably the reason why the quest log is not cleared between chapters - they had originally designed the game around being able to do just that.

Please…

I'm pretty sure if that was the case then it wouldn't be that hard to find a single interview on the web where the devs mention that.

Why would they clear the quest log of a story driven game??

The Witcher was planned to be the way it was from the beginning, if you can show me otherwise, then I will have no problem admitting I am wrong.

Some of us actually have the ability to do that.

 

[Ausir]

Sure, the main story was always intended to be linear and divided into chapters, but it doesn't mean that they necessarily intended for it to be impossible to return to previously visited locations, since the two aren't mutually exclusive, as demonstrated by e.g. Baldur's Gate. It's very much possible that they made the decision during development because of time/budget constraints.

 

[JDR13]

Possible perhaps, but extremely unlikely. With the number of developer interviews and articles out there, I find it hard to believe that there would be no mention of a design change of that significance. Such a thing would obviously have a considerable impact on the overall structure of the game.

 

[DArtagnan]

It's not about admitting you're wrong - because you ARE wrong. How? In that you don't know.

That's all we're saying - we just don't know what their intentions were and we never will.

You could admit that you don't actually know, but we all realise you're not the sort of person who'd do that JDR

 

[Tragos]

The Witcher was a good game but i finished it in a week and never looked back while i am still playing some of the TES games , i don't understand why they want to hammer the game with area restrictions .

 

[DArtagnan]

The Witcher was a good game but i finished it in a week and never looked back while i am still playing some of the TES games , i don't understand why they want to hammer the game with area restrictions .

Really, I think they had little choice due to the Aurora engine which was (apparently) designed - for one reason or another - for area division.

I could guess, but it would be nothing but a guess.

I think it has to do with how Neverwinter Nights was originally designed to be extremely flexible in terms of user content. Their editor is designed with a certain limit to how big areas can be and they likely had to implement some kind of limit to how big chapters can be - because otherwise there'd be too much data to keep track of. That's why you can't really backtrack in any of the games using that engine, because otherwise they'd have to store every single change you make, be it dropped loot or whatever interactive element (quest status etc.) for all chapters at once. Instead, you divide the games into smaller bits, where it's easier to handle the data load. KotOR had a certain amount of backtracking, if I'm not mistaken, but "chapters" (planets) were fairly small and empty. Also, they had Xbox compatibility in mind with some games, so likely the limit had to be even more restrictive.

If you remember how The Witcher was released, it had HUGE problems with load times because every single area took almost minutes to load - due to how the engine works.

Now, I don't have any idea if they originally wanted a more freeform game - but if so, they'd have to go with another engine, which might not be so easy or cheap as Aurora.

But I don't know the intricacies of their business considerations or design goals. I just acknowledge that we can't know and it's stupid to claim to know - unless there's a black and white statement from the developer that they never even considered freeform structure and the engine was perfect for their needs. THEN, we can be reasonably certain.

 

[Ausir]

Possible perhaps, but extremely unlikely. With the number of developer interviews and articles out there, I find it hard to believe that there would be no mention of a design change of that significance. Such a thing would obviously have a considerable impact on the overall structure of the game.

The interview I quoted mentioned going back to previous areas.

Now, I don't have any idea if they originally wanted a more freeform game - but if so, they'd have to go with another engine, which might not be so easy or cheap as Aurora.

I don't think they wanted to be that freeform, it was still going to have a linear plot. But I am pretty sure that they intended you to be able to go back to previously visited areas, but it got cut because of time/budget/engine constraints and because it didn't have that much influence on the game anyway.

 

[Tragos]

snip

If this is due to engine limitations then nothing more can be said .

I am not the biggest fun of linear games and MQs so after reading all this the product moves near the bottom of my wish list .

 

[DArtagnan]

I don't think they wanted to be that freeform, it was still going to have a linear plot. But I am pretty sure that they intended you to be able to go back to previously visited areas, but it got cut because of time/budget/engine constraints and because it didn't have that much influence on the game anyway.

Certainly it was always going to be story driven and relatively linear - just as it was upon release. That much seems obvious, anyway.

Backtracking is just an aspect of non-linearity that I prefer in my CRPGs, but I have no idea whether they ever had a design with that kind of thing. It doesn't seem clear, really.

 

[JDR13]

You could admit that you don't actually know, but we all realise you're not the sort of person who'd do that JDR .

Now *that* is irony considering the source.

But I think most members here already know that.