The Witcher Interview 2

One of my main reasons for attending Gen Con in Indianapolis last week was a chance to take a look at The Witcher , an upcoming RPG from CDProjekt. The game, which uses a heavily modified version of the BioWare's Aurora engine, will hit shelves in late October. Last year we posted an interview with Michal Madej, a chief designer of the game, and, since we knew that he was going to be at the show, I was determined to talk to him in between playing sessions.

It was difficult to focus on anything but the game, and I could be seen loitering by The Witcher booth for the entire duration of the show. At one point, I did remember that I had a duty to our readers, and grabbed Michal, asking him to answer a few questions for me. We ended up talking for a considerable chunk of time, and I learned a lot of good stuff that I can't wait to share with you.

A lot has happened since the last time Michal spoke with us. For example, CDProjekt had found a publisher (Atari), announced a release date, and even had their own delay, which no good game should go without. For my first question I asked about how the development team feels now that the game is so close to completion.

Michal told me that they feel “great relief” because during the development cycle there were many things that they were really afraid of. One such fear was localization and translation into many different languages. Another, and probably the biggest, was the fear of being unable to make a game that will remain interesting for its entire duration of 60+ hours. Fortunately these are no longer a concern: the translation to English, according to Michal, is excellent. When The Witcher was shown in Britain , everyone appeared to be greatly impressed with the language of the game. Same goes for gameplay. Those who played it from start to finish had generally used words such as “captivating” to describe it. At this point the team is exhausted, and there is much work yet to be done, but they are no longer afraid.

After hearing about the difficulty of translation, I wanted to know how much of the original was actually retained. Languages that belong to different groups are harder to translate to and from each other. Since English is a Germanic language, while Polish is a Slavonic one, I was sure that the humor and finer points would be lost, so I asked Michal about that.

What I learned was that swearing, not humor, was the biggest challenge. Polish has a rich palette of various curses. Apparently one can even invent words on the fly and they would be immediately recognizable to the audience. English is lacking in that sense, because we only have six or ten expletives. One of the problems the team had to face was the conversion of Sapkowski's rich and very politically-incorrect language into something that would retain the meaning without being vulgar. Michal told me that a lot of wordplay is based on strong language without it being too harsh, and the CDProjekt's translator and the one who was working on the novels both agreed that the swearing was the most difficult part.

Of course, being a fan of the original novels, I had to inquire what the author, Andrzej Sapkowski, thinks about the game.

It turns out that when the development of the game had just started, Sapkowski was really skeptical. Maybe that is because the movie based on the books was really bad. At this point, however, he is truly enthusiastic, according to Michal. He regularly helps the team and has even contributed a lot to the translation effort. In addition to reviewing the glossary for the game, Sapkowski is drawing up a map of the Witcher world, something that he has never done before.

At this point I wanted to learn more about the game, so I brought up the quest where Geralt has to guard a shipment of weapons from the guerilla Elves and Dwarves. This example has been talked about by everyone who looked at the game, and the important point is that whatever course of action Geralt takes, siding with either humans or the non-humans, an important quest-giving NPC on the opposite side will die. I asked if there is a way to save both of them.

The answer I received was that there is no such way. The world of The Witcher is a dark one and the choices are not between good and evil most of the time, but between evil and a lesser evil. Every choice the player makes as Geralt will be ridden with suffering and sacrifice. There will be no such thing as a “golden solution.”

It wasn't clear if this meant there would be completely different quests depending on the choices made, so Michal explained that although many of the quests would take place in the same locations and involve the same NPCs or monsters, the reasons for the quests would be completely different depending on prior choices and the storyline that those choices led to.

Some of our readers were worried that due to the October release, which falls right in between the late August release of Bioshock and a November release of Crysis , The Witcher may not get the attention it deserves. I asked what the team's thoughts were on this issue.

It was good to hear that the team is very confident and is not afraid of those big games. They are not even afraid of other RPGs, because the good sales for another RPG would mean that there is a market for those, and CDProjekt feels that their game is more than good enough to win over that market.

The next question we approached was the sensitive issue of censorship. As it stands right now, the versions of the game aimed at the US and German markets are censored. The German version has most of the violence removed, while the US will lack nudity. I asked Michal for his personal thoughts on the problem.

As I expected he was not a fan of censorship. Although he somewhat understands that Germany tries to limit access to violence due to what he described as the “national trauma” of the World War II, he felt that there were a number of “rules that are really stupid,” such as the ones that do not allow swastikas to be used in WWII games. Because of these laws The Witcher is going to ship without blood or finishing moves, which is a big loss for the game. This is especially sad because the developers believe that no violence was implemented just for the sake of violence. All fighting is explained and justified, not to mention extremely cool-looking. As someone who has seen (and performed) some of those finishing moves, I can attest to the fact that they are realistic, well choreographed, and even artistic to a degree. They are not brutal, though, so losing them is a shame.

While Michal said that he could understand the issue with violence in Germany as well as the concern that kids may hurt each other by trying to imitate Geralt, he is completely shocked by the US censorship of nudity and sex. CDProjekt had to remove all the naked Elves and Dryads from the US version of the game because of the highly repressive laws. Yet, at the same time the moment he arrived in Los Angeles , he saw a strip club on every corner, naked girls in windows, peep shows, and so forth. He describes this as very illogical, because if a country has strict laws against nudity, such as some of the Muslim states, then the laws apply equally to games as well as to other aspects of life. In America we seem to have some serious double standards.

I asked Michal if there are any plans to release a patch later on that will put all the censored content back into the game. His response was that there are no such plans. The reason for that is because someone has done that before, and they were forced to recall all the unsold games from the stores and re-label the boxes.

Towards the end of our conversation, I asked Michal if one of the 3 endings in the game is considered a canonical one. He said yes, since in the original novels, Geralt always tried to remain neutral to the best of his ability. As long as the players do not take sides and finish the game in as neutral of a way as possible, the ending they will see will be the “true” one. Additionally I learned that all the endings will have a powerful plot twist that will suddenly piece together the whole game in a way that is reminiscent of movies like The Sixth Sense. Michal said that very few games have really good endings, and that he is confident that The Witcher will be worth finishing. Is that really so? We as gamers can only hope!

At this point I had to let Michal go because some people didn't seem to realize that I was the only one there worthy of his time. Our little chat was very informative nonetheless, and if you'd like to learn more about The Witcher you can visit the official web site at www.thewitcher.com.

Nothing fails like a prayer does.