The Witcher Interview

IGN has published a lengthy two-page interview with CD Projekt’s Michal Madej about the team’s much anticipated RPG, The Witcher.

Q: What about the degree of hand-holding? With Gothic there was zero hand-holding for progressing through. There was a story, but [the game] barely told you where to go at all, it was just sort of like all right, find out where it is, and then you eventually stumble upon it and discover more structure as you go. In Oblivion, it was very much go here, here it is on your map, you can quick travel there and it was very, like, it held your hand in terms of getting places whereas Gothic was just very open.

A: We are trying to give as many hints as possible, still on the other hand we like the way you explore the world in Gothic. If you can teleport everywhere, I believe it destroys the immersion of the game. Normally in life you have to go somewhere you see the beautiful environment, you get involved in what’s happening, so that’s why we add lots of elements to help the player to navigate in the game, to find quests. You will see we have a very complex and detailed journal with all the information, you can track quests on the map and so on and so on. But we didn’t want it to actually spoil the game by making it too easy to travel, to jump from one place to another.

It’s weird how IGN makes it sound like the whole “hand holding” thing has a negative impact on a game when they praised it in their Oblivion review:

Whenever you accept a task to perform or are assigned a duty, an entry is made in your journal. By clicking on the quest you can see a brief description and set it to “active.” Any active quest in your log is highlighted on your map screen with an arrow. Red arrows mean you need to pass through a door, green ones mean you’re in the right place, and the arrow also pops up on the compass at the bottom of your screen for extra convenience. Unless you’re a total masochist, it’s a much welcome improvement, making quest objectives and locations much easier to find.

On top of that, you’re given the ability to fast travel around Cyrodiil. Every location in the game pops up as an icon on your map. To be eligible for fast traveling, you need to first visit the location on foot, although the major cities are accessible right from the start. After a location has been made fast travel accessible, you can pop open your map, select it, and arrive there instantaneously. Though time still passes when you travel, you don’t have to actually spend it hoofing the journey out. If you’d rather walk, that option is always available, but fast traveling effectively eliminates the tedium of fetch quests so prevalent in the RPG genre.

So… which is it?