The Witcher Was Originally Envisaged as a Diablo Clone, Watch Footage Here
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Tuesday, May 26, 2015
CD Projekt RED’s first The Witcher game was prototyped as a top-down, Diablo-esque, point and click action game inspired by Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, a former project lead from the studio has revealed.
Created in the same engine used for WWII shooter Mortyr, the game was not going to feature Geralt as the playable character, instead focusing on a fully customisable character. Geralt was planned to turn up as an NPC. The only spell created for the demo was Igni.
After a year of work the idea was abandoned and CD Projekt RED began working on The Witcher that eventually came to market on PC in 2007. You can see footage of the cancelled demo below, with commentary by former lead, Ryszard Chojnowski.
"There was no communication between the story writers and the team, and everyone had their own vision of the game," says Chojnowski. "The programmer wanted it to be a short and simple action title, whereas me and the art team and the writers, yearned for a fully fledged RPG to give justice to the novels we all loved."
"Even though the art team was extremely talented, we realised that the engine shortcomings and the lack of direction and supervision was really holding the project back. So in May 2003 the board of directors made the decision to abandon the project."
Interesting stuff, right? Without the decision to cancel it’s unlikely that CD Projekt would have ended up where they are now, with a strong contender for Game of the Year sat at the top of the UK charts. You can read (and watch) our review of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt through this link.