The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Interview

Eurogamer took advantage of their own expo to grill The Witcher 2 senior producer Tomasz Gop, level designer Marek Ziemak, and story designer Jan Bartkowicz about a range of topics pertaining to the RPG sequel. I enjoyed this part:

Eurogamer: A lot of RPG games these days deal in choice and consequence. What do you think are the best examples in the genre at the moment and how does The Witcher 2 improve upon what’s come before?

Jan Bartkowicz: I like how BioWare approaches the subject sometimes. I was a fan of Knights of the Old Republic – I loved the way there were just a few choices but they had really big consequences. I think it’s impossible to create a game that has tons of choices and great consequences because at the time you’re basically creating five games at the same time, and there’s no point doing that.

I think we’re not really that much influenced by other games if we’re talking about just telling the story. I think it’s hard to compare The Witcher with specific other games. But I think The Witcher 1 made some really big steps in this department, and there are some games out there right now that are pretty much influenced by The Witcher, so we’re hoping to head down that road further.

Eurogamer: Which games do you think are influenced by The Witcher?

Jan Bartkowicz: Okay, er… [laughs]

Eurogamer: You said it!

Jan Bartkowicz: This is going to be bold, right, but I think Mass Effect was and Dragon Age was for sure, because we made some things that weren’t really that popular in RPGs at the time. For example, erotic themes in RPG games – it’s still really difficult to handle. You see games running into clichéd areas when doing erotic content. It’s hard to do them as a believable thing because the player’s always trying to find the hidden mechanism behind it so it will be easy to show. Mass Effect has its way to do this and I think Dragon Age was bolder than that too. So I think Witcher was an important factor in this department.

Also in the choice-and-consequence department. Dragon Age really was influenced by us and that’s great, because it’s a genre that doesn’t have that many games and it’s not like that serious a competition, because at the end of the day if you’re an RPG player you’re not going to get that many games, so you’re not considering, “Is it going to be Fallout 3 for me or The Witcher?” You’re probably going to play both. It’s not like Bad Company or Modern Warfare where you’re playing through the whole year. That’s why I think our little RPG genre family is more tight, because we’re not looking at each other thinking, “Argh, they’re going to steal our gamers!”

I can see some influence, sure, but I’m not sure there was anything about Mass Effect and Dragon Age that could be considered “erotic”.