Witcher 3 - Interview @ GameReactor

GameReactor posted a new article style interview with story writer Jakub Szamalek  about story, surprising the player, and saying goodbye to Geralt.

We caught up with Witcher 3: Wild Hunt writer Jakub Szamalek between the team's Gamescom presentation of the title, to discuss with him the challenges of adapting the franchise's rich story as the series shifts from a linear progression into an open world structure.

"We spend a lot of time in pre-production period figuring out how to approach it. In Witcher 2, the story had a linear structure - a lot of branching - but it was linear in the end. We'd move the player from location to location when they completed the main quests.

"Whereas in Witcher 3, they will have complete freedom over where they go and when they do it. So we have less control over what the player does and have to take into account many more options. So the problem of pacing is much more difficult here; we really don't know what the player will do. But we've figured out a few ways to cope with that, the main one being that the story in Witcher 3 isn't linear at all; it's a collection of elements, that you have to find and collect them piece together to get a full picture."

And while this is the last chapter in Geralt's story, CD Projekt may not be done with the world just yet.

"This is the last instalment of Geralt of Rivia. That's not to say we don't want to make any more games in the Witcher universe, because it's such a great world, so many interesting NPCs and great places we haven't shown yet. We do hope we'll have the opportunity of maybe revisiting it at some point in the future.

"But we had to say our goodbyes to Geralt. It was a pleasure and honour to do stories for him, bur each character reaches a point were you should leave them alone, close the door and say that's it."