The Witcher 3 will have 36 different endings based on the player's choices throughout the game. The developers have worked to eliminate repetitive "fetch quests" and instead focus on narrative-driven quests. They have also filled the large open world with unique monster hunting quests that require tracking and hunting legendary creatures, each with their own story. The developers drew inspiration from Slavic mythology and European history to create a coherent dark fantasy world for the game.

1. The Witcher 3 preview: how to
build an RPG with 36 endings
http://www.gamebasin.com/news/the-witcher-3-preview-how-to-build-an-rpg-
with-36-endings
Four quest designers worked on the original Witcher. Its more refined sequel had six. The
conclusion to the trilogy, which promises 100 hours of content and a 50‐hour story, has more than
doubled that. “We have about 14, I think,” says lead quest designer Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz. Nor
have CD Projekt Red simply padded out The Witcher 3’s Skyrim‐exceeding open world with
unimaginative busywork. They’ve systematically banished fetch quests from the game—or, at least,
as much as a team can when making a high‐fantasy RPG. It’s one of the ways the Polish developers
are refining their identity through the creation of The Witcher 3, where quest and narrative design
is being meticulously worked and reworked right up until release. The philosophy is, if you need to
have a fetch quest, make sure the story does a damn good job of hiding it. “When we do have these
situations, which is rarely, we compensate for it with the narrative,” writer Jakub Szamalek explains.
“It’ll definitely be an interesting story in itself – you’ll be intrigued by the NPC’s motives, and where
this is all leading. Even when you have a simple structure it’s something we’re compensating for in
the story.” The reason for abolishing fetch quests? CD Projekt Red don’t like them much either. “We
are trying very hard to limit such interactions of structures to a minimum because we don’t think
they’re interesting.” Instead, they want to be radical. The studio’s ambition is to further the RPG
on all fronts – from big, sprawling decisions that impact the world to the very basic principle of
handing an item from one NPC to another. It’s a sign that The Witcher 3 could complete the
developers’ ongoing evolution from rough RPG debutantes to best‐in‐class.

2. Mateusz and Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, lead quest designer and game director respectively, list
various types of open‐world game, including GTA‐style sandbox titles, before explaining why
Piranha Bytes’ Gothic series is the most apt comparison. “It’s most similar to our game, I think,”
Mateusz says. “A quite perfect combination of storyline and freedom in the open world. It’s quite
similar, the Gothic series, in terms of quest design and how we organise the story, but our game
has a very, very big landscape and Gothic locations were open world...” “...on a smaller scale,”
Konrad finishes. We’ve written about the size of The Witcher 3’s open world in past issues, but it’s
the detail of that landscape more than the scale that feels unprecedented. Individual blades of
grass swaying in the wind, the animation quality of the creatures that bound at Geralt in battle, the
sparks flying from his hand during a fire spell and the time‐lapse effect of dramatic skies tearing
over the monster‐killer as he meditates. A lesser PC stands no chance here, and it’s not just pretty
effects that make The Witcher’s world so enticing. The way the game’s three regions are shaped
by various portions of European mythology and history promise a coherent but still unusual dark
fantasy world. “We have to plan how to cover this big open world with content, which is not easy,
because as you know there are some problems with that in openworld games,” Mateusz says. “We
want to give worthwhile content to the players in the open world. We have to think about how to
avoid repetitive quests, we have to think about how to fill this huge landscape with quests that you
will notice and take part in, we have to make the main storyline easy to come back to if you delve
into the sidequests, which might be difficult for some players.”

3. Various activities fill the world outside of the main story, including monster‐hunting quests where
Geralt plies his trade. Far from the typical open‐world filler of recycled character models, these
creatures require tracking and hunting down, and each has a backstory. “They involve hunting
legendary creatures,” Mateusz says. “They should be tougher to beat than normal opponents. Each
encounter contains a unique creature and each of those hunts is unique. They’re not repeatable,
in the sense that they each have their own plot. You can expect each settlement will have at least
one of them, if not more.” Such ‘legendary’ creatures can add mythic depth to open‐world games,
like Skyrim’s legendary dragons or Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare’s Bigfoot and
Chupacabra hunts, where finding them is as much a challenge as killing them. In some cases the
idea is to evoke medieval urban legends with the hunts – such tales were the source of several
creature ideas for CD Projekt Red’s artists. “There were hundreds of Slavic monsters invented in
medieval times, and they’re all connected to some weird things that couldn’t be explained,” says
lead character artist Pawel Mielniczuk. He cites the Leshen – the disturbing humanoid tree spirit
shown off at E3 – as an example of this inspiration. “The name was quite unique, and we’re trying
to apply some kind of visual style to how cool the name is. It sounds cool in Polish. I’m not sure if
it sounds cool in English.” Inspiration emerges from other unlikely sources. “I’m not sure I can talk
about different games,” Mielniczuk laughs. “But for me personally I love the monsters in
Castlevania. They were quite unique, and this game was quite inspiring for me, for example,
because these weren’t the sort of monsters you’d find in Western games. We’re trying to avoid
zombies and generic alien things.” When the team needs a specific creature for a quest, the artists
work with the quest designers to figure that out. “If the creature has its own unique quest, we
need to talk to the people on the quest team.”
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