Player choice has always been a key component to the Witcher series, and CD Projekt Red hopes to continue this tradition. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt aims to track choices players make through the course of the game, which will all come to a head during one of three distinct epilogues.
Each are said to be so different, that new playthroughs are necessary if players wish to see all three. Fans of the series know full well that major conflicts are usually quite stark, with two drastically different sides vying for Geralt’s aid. This design philosophy naturally leads to end game worlds of varying types.
Managing director Adam Badowski told Polygon that this wasn’t even the initial goal, but a side-effect of this type of storytelling. Badowski explained,
We didn’t mean to develop something special for the endings, it’s a natural consequence of the story line. The story has hundreds of different branches and sub plots. We have to just sum all of those elements up in the epilogues. Some of those elements are taken from the very beginning and some from other moments of the storyline. All of them will connect in the epilogue.
Badowski also hinted at the idea of choices from The Witcher 2 carrying over into the third title. This will be easy enough for PC players with their old save data sitting around, but the series is new to Sony hardware. The solution to this is the invention of a new “way to define your old actions and decisions.”
We don’t know exactly how CD Projekt Red plans to do this, but it has been done before in games like the Mass Effect series with varying levels of success. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is currently scheduled to hit the PC and PS4 sometime in 2014.
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