The Witcher 3 is one of the best fantasy games to come out in the last decade, and as that decade draws to a close, nothing is really coming out to top it. The game is incredibly deep and immersive in a way that not many other games can manage to top.
Each quest the player engages in feels deep and important in its own way, and there’s a reason for that. The developers at CD Projekt Red know how to make a game, and it truly shows in The Witcher 3. Not only that but with hopes so high for Cyberpunk 2077, it seems like hopefully, CD Projekt Red is going to continue their streak of making absolutely impeccable genre games.
10 The NPC Programming Is Immaculately Complex
The Animation in The Witcher 3 is beautiful, but that isn’t the only reason the NPCs in the game stand out as realistic and believable characters with lives of their own. The programming put into the routines of the NPCs in the game is truly a labor of love, otherwise, we wouldn’t be faced with such an immersive game world.
The NPCs hiccup, beggars discuss begging strategies with each other, and sailors all have unique tattoos that tell the player exactly which territory they’re from.
9 Over 1,500 People Worked On The Game
The Polish game studio CD Projekt Red has an incredible amount of resources devoted to making sure that each and every game they put out is of the utmost quality. After facing cancellations on previous games, they picked up the rights to a series of Polish books with a title that translated to “The Witcher”. Even though they’d had their trouble in the past, they were sure to do what they could to tell this story.
As such, after the success of the first Witcher game and especially The Witcher 2, they made sure to throw everything they could at the creation of the third. This resulted in over 1,500 people working to make sure The Witcher 3 was everything it could possibly be.
8 The Game’s Incredible Amount Of Content Is Partially Due To Tons Of Pushbacks
As with any responsible developer, CD Projekt Red knows when they need to put more work into their games. Because of this savvy mentality, when the game ran into 5,000 bugs after the initial playthrough before it’s December 15th release date, the team decided to postpone the release.
The camera system was also improved, and they said that they based a lot of the combat system on Fromsoftware’s Dark Souls, which definitely shows if you’ve played around for a while with both franchises.
7 The Game Includes Tons Of References To Other Media
The Witcher 3 knows that it’s situated among other giants in the world of media and art, and takes pains to make references to other media that its creators and fans are sure to be aware of.
There are paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci on some of the walls, a drunk man is shown exclaiming “Wa waa wee waa” like Borat at one point, there’s an achievement for winning horse races called “Fast And Furious”, and a master blacksmith you can complete a questline for is named Hattori, a reference to the person who makes blades for The Bride in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
6 It’s Not The Last Of The Series
Luckily for fans of the series (pretty much everyone who’s played it) The Witcher 3 won’t be the last of the series. This is kind of odd since the main character Geralt of Rivia is nearly 100 years old, but that being said… If you got a specific one of the endings, you realize that there’s someone kind of new that the series could be centered around as a main character.
CD Projekt Red has said that they’re moving towards a dual-development model, meaning they’ll most likely be working on sequels to both The Witcher 3 and the very much anticipated Cyberpunk 2077.
5 It’s Got One Of The Biggest Maps In Fantasy Gaming
It’s difficult to think that CD Projekt Red could manage to make an open world so large without making it feel sparse and empty, but they definitely managed to make every nook and cranny explorable and teeming with life.
Apparently if one were to ride their horse across the game’s entire world, it would take about 40 minutes of real-time. The game’s map is about 20% bigger than the map in Bethesda’s current fantasy heavy-hitter The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as well, which must have been extremely difficult for the developers to pull off.
4 The Author Filed A Royalties Dispute
The author of the books the Witcher series is based on, Andrzej Sapkowski, signed an agreement when CD Projekt Red acquired the rights to his novel. In this agreement, he opted for a one-time payment rather than recurring royalty payments under the assumption that the games wouldn’t be very popular.
He seems to have made a miscalculation when making this deal. The games have been wonderfully successful, and while he did make this agreement, he also got involved directly with Netflix, meaning he should have some decent money coming his way in the near future.
3 A Ghost Ship Emerges Near Skellige
There’s a chain of islands up north from the mainland in The Witcher 3. If the mainland is England, then this area is a mix of pretty implicitly Scotland, and also some of the northern Scandinavian countries that border the UK.
Up in these frozen wastes, it’s very easy to get lost at sea without using the mini-map. Since it’s so spooky up there, it’s only fitting that once a day and once a night, you can see a ghost ship sailing around for a short period of time if you know when to look.
2 Phillipa Eilhart Had Jewels For Eyes
King Radovid, who has a hatred for most sorceries, famously ordered that high-ranking sorceress Phillipa Eilhart have her eyes gouged out in The Witcher 2: Assassination Of Kings. She escaped any further punishment and when we see her again in The Witcher 3, she has a scarf wrapped around her eyes to hide where the eyes used to be.
Some concept art released by CD Projekt Red shows us that they originally had a more grotesque solution to her plight, instead, filling up her empty eye-sockets with gemstones.
1 An Entire Game Mechanic Was Scrapped
Originally there was to be a focus mode that Geralt could use to dispatch his many different in-game enemies. He was going to be able to see inside the creatures he was fighting when he wanted to, and attack specific bones, organs, and tendons in his opponent’s bodies for a quick kill.
Unfortunately, this mechanic was scrapped, but it wouldn’t be incorrect to assume that this could show up in later Witcher installments.
NEXT: The Witcher 3: 10 Best Mods That Make The Game Even Better
