The Witcher 3: “We Are Aiming for CG-Quality In-Game Graphics”

It’s only been a little more than a month since CD Projekt RED revealed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, releasing in 2014 for PC, PS4 and the soon-to-be revealed next Xbox but it already enamoured us with it’s amazing visuals and epic scale. The really scary thing? The screenshots captured from an older build of the engine. So the final game looks even better.

We spoke only Quest Designer Paweł Sasko about how much better they look, especially in relation to the current crop of next-gen titles. He stated that, “It all comes down to the fact that CD Projekt RED loves challenges. With tunnel-like, linear levels created by a talented team, it’s relatively easy to deliver eye-candy graphics, because it’s always clear where player is looking.

“But when the game has the size of The Witcher 3 it becomes an incomparably bigger challenge and this is what makes our artists totally excited. Screenshots that we’ve shown are from an old build of the engine that ran using a dated renderer. Much of it is already rewritten and judging from the effects, we are aiming for CG quality of in-game graphics.”

“But this is not only an achievement of our programmers,” he says. “Our art team is one of the best staffed departments in the company, mostly because the guys and gals have been with CD Projekt RED since the beginning of The Witcher 1. We also know that in many cases with canny art direction it’s possible to do more than using monstrous textures and having them loaded and displayed flawlessly. We are aiming for the title of prettiest RPG of all time.”

So while The Witcher 3 will bring forth tesselation, improved multi-threaded and all the whiz-bang features of DirectX 11, CD Projekt RED wants it to stand out as an artistic achievement as well.