CD PROJEKT RED is the darling of the gaming industry. The Polish studio which had humble beginnings as a distributor for games in Poland before it diversified into developing of games has released a couple of videos celebrating the 10th of its acclaimed Witcher franchise. In recent days, the studio has decided to showcase the amazing journey from the original game to its grand finale and to celebrate with the gamers who have shared in this unique and unforgettable journey.
The original Witcher was released in 2007, ran on Bioware’s by then quite antiquated Aurora Engine but introduced a new aesthetic and flavour to the classical Western fantasy RPG by smashing it with Andrzej Sapkowski’s Eastern European pagan folklore inspired works. The game took a lot of the traditional RPG tropes and inverted them on their head. This was especially true with regards to morality and narrative found in the grimy world of The Witcher.
This was followed up by The Witcher 2, released in 2011, it saw the studio continuing down its path but with a more competent in-house RED Engine in place of the ancient Aurora used in the previous title. Witcher 2 brought Geralt’s story to a more personal level, piling on the intrigue with politics, xenophobia, trust and companionship all jammed together to create a slightly tighter if not shorter experience. The second title also brought much needed polish to the combat system but made a couple missteps with regards to the quality of life features. The Witcher 2 was the first game to debut on the console with the reworked Enhanced Edition getting re-released on the Xbox 360 and Windows PC platform.
Finally in 2015 came The Witcher 3. The grand finale to Geralt’s journey, built with RED Engine 3 the game went open-world and there was no looking back. The title has become the gold standard for Role-playing games going forwards with curated mechanics from past games brought together, a vast world dense with stories and rich in lore. The game did more right than wrong. It was also the first time CD PROJEKT brought paid expansion content to the franchise and managed to hit it out of the park with an amazing level of passion and effort channelled into these as well. The Witcher 3 was the first game to come to Sony’s PlayStation platform with the game coming to PlayStation 4 on launch.
