Part II

Could you uncover a secret a bit and tell us anything about any ‘exotic’ locations in The Witcher? The world of The Witcher is a fantasy realm after all...

Certainly, such places will appear in the game. Though, we would not want to create anything beyond what Andrzej Sapkowski did, nor anything that would not fit the nature of the world. You won’t find any sky-scraping towers surrounded with lakes of molten lava in our game. I believe we have managed to achieve what we wanted. Even if we aimed at showing weirdness of some place, it was not through any unnatural deviations from the nature of the world depicted in the novel. Take for example Kaer Morhen. It is an old keep hidden in the almost unreachable mountains. It is both a crucial and most amazing location and we would gladly show its uniqueness. It was achieved by means of interweaving elements of old and sturdy castle with the untamed beauty of surrounding mountain range and wild nature. Such means seem much more interesting.

Do you concentrate more on realism… accurate depiction of reality?

Yes. Allow me a little digression here: as a designer I believe that imagination should not try to beat reality, when it happens the created world becomes blurry and unbelievable. It’s not a problem to create an unusually beautiful building. But isn’t it more of a challenge to show something beautiful and at the same time believable? To show an almost-real world with a touch of tempting uniqueness to it.

Some of the buildings in the game haven’t got their real-life counterparts. What inspired you when creating… say Elven ruins?

First and foremost we’ve followed descriptions from the novel. They are detailed enough. It wouldn’t make much sense to create Elven ruins similar in look to Greek ones, they would look ridiculous. They are our creation, an element of our world – one we can create from scratch.

What about Elves then, there’s no doubt they’ve become an icon of fantasy realms…

Indeed, they have become a kind of an archetype. There won’t be any plump Elves with beards in our game… They have a certain number of distinctive features differentiating them from humans: they’re more mysterious, alienated, full of dignity and have typical features of appearance: slender bodies, pointy ears, triangular faces. The principle itself, however, allows us to present our own vision within its boundaries. Take clothes for example. It is not clearly stated it should be similar to the canon produced by Celtic myths and legends. Thus, we have consequently tried to enhance the canons with a touch of originality.

Since we’ve already mentioned ‘exotic places’ – will Geralt visit any lands beyond the reach of Northern Kingdoms?

Hmm… To answer this particular question well… Realm created by Andrzej Sapkowski is simply huge. Any attempt of presenting it in a truthful and believable way is already a great challenge. When for example, Sapkowski writes: ‘The Witcher visited Kovir’ he describes the place in a few short sentences, concentrating rather on the plot than the place itself. For game developers presenting such place requires an unbelievably larger amount of work, we have to present the place’s specifics, appearance of buildings, streets, markets and people. That is why we decided to show only a fragment of the world, but at the same time do it in a most believable, consistent and engaging way. We have a piece of Temeria with its capital and several other locations including the above-mentioned Kaer Morhen. If we tried to disperse he locations more, we’d have to devote a lot of time to polishing each and every one of them – adding a certain number of locations, characters and so forth. The players wouldn’t even have enough time to visit all those new places. Thus, we decided to concentrate on several fragments of the world and I believe our decision was right. One way or another, there will be a lot to see…

Having seen the screenshots one might think you have been strongly inspired by the Slavic culture…

Indeed so, it has inspired us greatly. Our culture is so unique and interesting, it would be a shame not to use such an opportunity… especially that it has actually never been presented before. We’re not afraid to do that, quite blatant I would even say. Mind you: in most of the fantasy realms, hence in majority of fantasy games, we have alphabet based on Nordic runes. Not many know, however, that in the Eastern Europe long before the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced (used today in Russia and Balkans) people had used the Glagolitic alphabet. We decided to use it instead of runes, since we believe it is far more attractive. And there are many more such ‘flavors’ we can present to the Western World. The Scottish managed to make their kilts famous, even if they look a bit curious. Nobody laughs at a man wearing a skirt and carrying a sword, people consider him cool. We also have many things like that, and I am not talking about Poland only. I mean the entire area of Slavic culture. Why be afraid of showing these to the world? They’re really worth recognizing.

Exactly. Several days ago you presented The Witcher at E3 in the USA. It the title already recognizable?

Our marketing campaign has lasted over three years now. We have won several prestigious prizes (e.g. the IGN-based one) for the best RPG game. Fans of the genre know us but too well. A British publishing house – Orion Publishing Group have been preparing the translation of a set of Sapkowski’s short stories collected in a tome entitled ‘The Las Wish’. We believe it will be released to a mutual advantage – the players will take interest in the book, and the readers in the game. We’re strongly counting on success, especially that The Witcher is something unusual in the Polish market. It is the first product ever to hit the international market and become a well-recognized and acknowledged franchise – something like a pop-music icon. We’re trying to promote Geralt in the way Sam Fisher or MGS’s Snake were. We want him to become a heavyweight. Not one Polish hero was ever introduced to the world to such extent. And we take pride in The Witcher being…

But you’ve already had games created for international market – ‘Chrome’ and ‘Painkiller’.

It is true, but then again... does anyone really identify Chrome with a certain character, or our country for that matter? Neither of these games in fact achieved such and effect. We’re aiming at creating a franchise – an icon.