Witcher 3 - Interview @ Game Plane

A site called Game Plane.de has a new inteview with Miles Tost the Level Designer at CD PROJEKT RED to talk about secret characters, challenges and mud wrestling.

This time, your collector’s edition is a really awesome package. How long did it take you to determine the content and who was involved in designing and selecting its contents?

The Witcher 3 Collector's EditionOh, this is a complicated process that takes a really long time. First of all, CD PROJEKT RED always tries to push this aspect of publishing to the limits, I mean, our standard edition contains items that are normally reserved for limited editions of other games, and we’re releasing them for the standard price. The Collector’s Edition content was squeezed in up until the very last moment–we wanted every centimeter of the huge box used, hence the signatures of the entire team printed on the lid. Also, the Geralt Battling a Griffin figure, that took a long time to prepare, and is nicely illustrated by the making of video we released some time ago. It’s a real sculpture, created by real sculptors, and not a 3D printed model from the game. It’s really unique.

What has been your biggest challenge during the development process of The Witcher 3?

It’s really hard to answer that question because every department faces different challenges. In general, I think that maintaining the creative vision behind the game, and keeping everything coherent was a very difficult part. I mean, it’s a HUGE game, and it’s super important to always have a bird’s eye view and constantly check if we haven’t veered off course.

 Talking about locations, which is my area of expertise, I think it was coming up with interesting and fresh places for players to visit, while keeping things believable in good old Witcher fashion. With a world this big it’s easy to fall into patterns that get repetitive real quick. However, thanks to an incredibly talented and creative team, I believe we hit a pretty cool sweet spot, which results in the world holding many surprises for players to find and explore.

How long would it take me in real time to travel through this vast games world? Hours, days or even weeks?

It’s definitely not weeks and days, even MMOs aren’t that big *laughs*. I don’t know to be honest, I haven’t tried that. Covering every inch there is would take you quite a while, especially if you roam the world unprepared. There’s plenty of stuff to keep you busy. We’re 35 times bigger than The Witcher 2, and that was a pretty big game after all. Our goal is for completing the game to take you roughly 100 hours, 50 hours of the main story, and about 50 hours of side-quests. And if that’s not enough – play it again, see what else could’ve happened if just your choices had been different.