Witcher 3 - Interview/Preview @ RedBull

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RedBull has posted a new Interview/Preview article with Level Designer Miles Tost to talk about The Witcher 3 and compare the game to Skyrim once again.

"We knew we had a really good RPG on our hands and a really dedicated fanbase to support that, but we still wanted more. That's where the open world element kicked in - we always wanted to make a truly open world RPG but, for various reasons, we couldn't fully accomplish that goal until now," Tost says.

"We want to combine the strong pull of closed-world RPGs story-wise, with a world where you can go anywhere and do anything you want. It makes the whole experience more lifelike. Geralt's a witcher, a travelling monster hunter for hire - there's nothing more exciting that letting him loose in an open world and giving him a meaningful and captivating story to be part of."

How big are we talking? Try 35 times bigger than the world of The Witcher 2. That's what all those hundreds of developers and creatives are needed for: this isn't so much a canvas they're painting this time around, but a mural - the size of an aircraft hangar. And they're not taking any shortcuts doing it either.

"The team are actually making everything by hand. Yes, we do use middleware to help us with certain aspects of the game, but quests, for example, are always done by hand - special cells within the studio create them, test them and see how fun they are. There's no random generated Fedexing in the game, everything is as meaningful as it can."

That's also likely part of the reason for the game's delay. After targeting a 2014 release, CD Projekt Red pushed the game back to February 2015, but Tost says it had to be done to clear the high bar the studio has set for itself. "Quality is something that we put a lot of focus on. Releasing a game that might not represent that quality, just for the sake of releasing it, well, it's not us."​