The ending of CD Projekt Red’s original 2007 The Witcher RPG ends with a lavish CGI cutscene, but that cutscene was never supposed to exist, reveals lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec.
In the final episode of the developer’s 18-part playthrough of the original Witcher title, Ganszyniec explains that the RPG was supposed to finish with the open-ended animatic that plays just before the game’s true ending.
While the animatic shows protagonist Geralt of Rivia leaving for pastures new with a folk-like narration, the CG cutscene immediately sets up the events of The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings, an inclusion that was done at the behest of “The Board”, as Ganszyniec puts it.
“That’s where we wanted the game to end with an question and open future,” Ganszyniec says. “But, while we were finishing the game, someone decided, The Board decided or Michał Kiciński decided that we needed an animated otutro of the game.”
Ganszyniec reveals that this decision was made “not really involving the story team”, and was quickly slapped onto the ending of the game to tee up a sequel. “That was a mistake, I think,” the lead story designer says.
“Let’s hope that the remake will be a really good game.”
The Witcher story designer
“This animation tells a different story than the outro pictures,” he continues, “because Geralt is still in Vizima and he’s deep into political intrigue because someone is trying to kill Foltest. And that someone, as you will see, is a Witcher. And soon after that it became evident that the next game will have to follow up on this and tell a story about Witchers who are killing kings for some reason.”
Ganszyniec, who left CDPR after pre-production on The Witcher 2, explained that this choice at the end of the first game forced the second game to become “very political” and didn’t leave space to “explore who Geralt is, his family, his history and stuff like this”, adding “the team only get the chance to revisit that in The Witcher 3.”
The Witcher designer added that they hope that CD Projekt Red’s upcoming Unreal Engine 5 remake of The Witcher, which currently does not have a release date, “will be a really good game”, although it will probably have to keep the “mistake” ending to continue tying into the story of Assassin of Kings.
The Witcher Remake is currently in development at The Thaumaturge studio Fool’s Theory with supervision from CD Projekt Red. While the game still has no release date, it has been in development since October 2022, starting development around the same time as the aforementioned RPG.
The Thaumaturge was released back in early 2024 which gives us hope that The Witcher Remake will be released within the next couple of years. Alongside this game, CD Projekt Red is also working on its long-awaited The Witcher 4 alongside Cyberpunk 2.
