While developer Fool’s Theory has confirmed that its upcoming remake of CD Projekt’s 2007 RPG The Witcher will feature an open world, the original lead story designer, Artur Ganszyniec, believes that this might introduce a unique challenge for the studio. Apart from the work that typically goes into creating open-world games, in an interview with Polish publication Chip, Ganszyniec said that the change in structure means that the game’s narrative pace will also have to be adjusted.
This largely comes down to the fact that the large explorable spaces offered by open-world RPGs tend to necessitate the addition of more content. While there could be new side-stories and other activities to make the world feel denser, Ganszyniec noted that the project’s pace and scale would change. The first entry in the series, not being open-world, allowed the development team to design the game around the player’s exact position.
“If we opened up the locations, there would be more space, and if there’s more space, there needs to be more content. The pace and scale of the entire project would immediately change,” Ganszyniec explained (via machine translation). “In The Witcher 1, many things worked because we knew exactly where the player would be at any given moment. We could trigger a trigger, launch a scene, or insert Alvin between the fields and the village. In an open world, this would have to be handled completely differently.”
Going on to provide a concrete example, Ganszyniec discussed the fifth act of the game, which revolves around Lake Vizima. Since an open-world title would likely include a boat that would allow players to navigate the lake, the story designer brought up the fact that such an inclusion would cut through quite a few of the story beats that lead up to the player reaching the old manor.
“When everything falls into place on the map around Lake Vizima in the fifth act, one might ask a simple question: if this were an open world, would I have a boat? What’s stopping me from getting on a boat on the outskirts of Vizima and sailing straight to the old manor? As a player, I might be happy about that, but as a designer, I’m starting to get gray,” he said.
“At some point, a pragmatic question must be asked: when does this multiplication of paths cease to be profitable? You can invest an infinite amount of time and budget, but will it generate an infinite number of new players?”
The Witcher Remake was announced in 2022 and is developed on Unreal Engine 5. While details about the remake have been sparse, Fool’s Theory CEO Jakub Rokosz said that the team will remove parts of the original game that would be considered bad, outdated, or “unnecessarily convoluted” by modern standards.
While the remake doesn’t yet have a solid release date, CD Projekt Red said through an earnings call that it would launch after The Witcher 4.
