Witcher 3 - Interview @ RPS

RPS interviewed CD Projekt senior quest designer Jakub Rokosz and Michał Platkow-Gilewski on The Witcher 3.

RPS: I’d like to start with the most important question. Why does Geralt have a beard now?

Michał Platkow-Gilewski: [laughs] That’s a tough question. When it came to redesigning the character, we made a survey of the company. We asked all the girls here, what’s the sexiest thing about the guys in the office? They all said the beards are the sexiest. So we came up with this breakthrough design change and added the beard. No, just joking. A few months have passed. Geralt is on the road, you could say?

Jakub Rokosz: Right now he’s pretty much a man left on his own, after what happened in Witcher 2. He basically wanted to get a little alone time. I think the beard signifies that, that he spent some time in the wild. He didn’t really have to worry about looking good for the ladies out there.

 

RPS: That’s interesting. I think a lot of games just treat quests as a checklist of things to do, and if you don’t do them, well, you just didn’t do them. It sounds like you’re focusing on having ramifications for inaction or indecision.

Michał Platkow-Gilewski: Yes. I don’t believe in a structure like A-B-C-D-E-F-G, you’re finished. The main storyline needs to be connected with everything that’s going on in the world, to a bigger and smaller extent. Of course, you just go out to somewhere in the woods, in the wilderness, and you can focus on monster-hunting. Maybe you as a gamer just love to hunt monsters, like the Witchers are supposed to do. You can focus on the undead if you want. So you can do whatever you want. For me, this is the definition of an RPG. Do whatever you want.