The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Interview

Edge Magazine managed to corner CD Projekt RED’s Tomasz Gop for a brief Q&A about the success they’ve enjoyed with The Witcher, their canceled Rise of the White Wolf console port, and, of course, The Witcher 2. Unfortunately, he doesn’t answer any questions about THE BARD: Saviors of Queens:

The Witcher had a broad pan-European appeal where was it most popular?

I think we sold most copies in Russia, from what I know. Germany and Poland were similar. Bur obviously Poland and Russia had an advantage everyone loves Sapkowski. They know the writer that wrote the books we based the game on. It was easy for us there. Actually, selling the game in Germany, France, the US as well it did around 150,000 in the US was harder because we actually had to make a cool game to sell it out there, people didn’t care about Sapkowski. Germany and Poland were easy as well because it’s a PC market, and if it’s a good PC game, you’re going to be OK.

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If The Witcher’s script was a strength, what were its weaknesses?

Many features of The Witcher had a reasonably high accessibility threshold. Combat is one of the examples. Not everybody feels comfortable with playing games that do not always tell you what to do. But on the other hand, we always tell people that this is an adult game, it’s a mature game. The story can be difficult for instance, when you help somebody, players who are too young might not see the consequences of doing that, what might happen a few hours ahead in the game. For some people that might be a shortcoming, but for an adult audience, we actually think that’s a good thing.

So I could say that young people won’t be that keen on The Witcher 2 but then, on the other hand, that’s not such a bad thing. We probably are one of the few developers that do not give up too much in terms of accessibility. In that respect I think we maybe are a bit like From Software. That would be a good comparison.