CD Projekt RED has been lauded time and time again for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, especially for its focus on story-telling and characterization. Speaking to Culture.pl, story director Marcin Blacha shard his thoughts on story-crafting at both CDPR and in Poland.
Blacha noted that there were some elements of story-telling that seemed to be common among Polish developers. “All the famous Polish games, such as This War of Mine, combine professional production with great imagination. It’s not easy to come up with an idea for a game about civilians during a war, and that it’ll simulate character behaviors.
“It seems that Poles excel in imaginative attitudes like this towards game design. Our productions have soul. And this very soul – something that cannot be studied or analyzed properly – is noticed and appreciated by gamers. The same applies to RPGs.”
He also noted how the team behind the first Witcher were into pen and paper RPGs that focused more on story-telling and character psychology, which ultimately helped shape their narrative vision.
“For us, it was very important to make a credible world, where characters feature psychological depth, and their dialogues are multi-dimensional. A story, a plot, has always been more important than a fight with monsters. The Witcher 3 seems to be a culmination of this way of thinking.”
We’ll see if this same thinking pervades Cyberpunk 2077, which won’t be out for a while yet. What are your thoughts on CD Projet RED’s story-telling? Let us know below.