Witcher 3 - Interview @ PressA2Join

Eye spotted this interview at PressA2Join, where The Witcher 3 writer Karolina Stachyra and Lead Quest Designer Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, talk about being gamers, the dislike of DRM, the Blood and Wine DLC, believable characters and Gwent.

PA2J: The Witcher series, even from its inception, was a controversial one due to its adult content. Most notably, it tackles sex, racism and prejudice in a very forthright manner. This has drawn both praise and criticism from journalists and the public. If one looks at the series' progression, one can see that these themes are presented in an increasingly tasteful and mature way, with the sex being evolved from collectible cards to a narrative device that lets us know more about the character relationships and the prejudice being depicted increasingly as a complex social issue rather than a simple good vs evil matter.

Many writers struggle to properly depict mature content in a way that doesn't patronize the audience. Was it an effort for the team to get these issues right? Were there any fears that you'd alienate part of your audience?

KS: When we approached creating characters in Wild Hunt, be it male or female, our first and, by far, most important guideline was to make them believable. A believable character has to be multilayered - they need to have their own emotions, motivations and character. And, I think, this is why Wild Hunt fared so well in terms of player reception to the aspects of the game some might consider video game taboo. And I'm not only talking about how this process resonated with sexual content in the game, but also how we approached other mature themes, like alcoholism. Take the Bloody Baron. At first, when you meet him, he seems like a pretty archetypical bad guy, but once you get to know him, see how he connected with Ciri and get to know his story, you start seeing how multi-dimensional he is. We consider this sort of writing something that elevates the genre a bit and paves way for even more difficult mature themes to appear in video games.