The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been showered with praise since its release but it was subject to delay not too long ago for various reasons. The main reason was polish and game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz went into more detail about the same when speaking to Gamerant.
“For us the most important thing was to tell our story. everything begins with story. Geralt – our main protagonist – defined a lot of aspects of the game, because he is unchangeable, he’s defined. We’re happy, because it’s the same way that Batman is defined; you can expect how he would behave in most situations. So we started with that, and then we knew we had to tell a very cool story…but the open world was a missing element
“It’s not like open world is another ‘genre’ of the game. We just want to deliver a great immersive story, and we were missing the open world. Now we have technology, we have knowledge, we have experience, and I think we can make it in the way that we had dreamed.”
Of course, it’s not just about creating a world and populating it with characters. It’s about having it all fit in within The Witcher’s context and story. “It needs to be natural. For me, the definition of a role-playing game is freedom; freedom and immersion, and they’re strongly connected. We want you to feel – as The Witcher, the ultimate monster-slayer – involved in a story, that you have a goal. And we wanted players to feel the urge to finish it, to follow the main story arc.
“I don’t like to call it ‘main quests,’ or ‘story quests,’ I’m using the term ‘main story arc.’ You can go different places, you can do different things, and you will advance this plot forward. Then you may be involved in something which may seem at the beginning to be a different story, but at certain points you will figure out that it may be connected. And you’ll realize that you’re actually pushing the story forward as well; sometimes, even by not doing something.”
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be out in February 2015 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.