The Witcher Week, Day Two

CD Projekt continues their “Witcher Week” feature, this time providing us with new concept art, a gameplay movie from E3, and the first portion of an in-house Q&A with chief designer Michal Madej. From the interview:

Q: What are your inspirations when taking into consideration the visuals of the world?

A: When it comes to graphics we’re aiming at two major things realism of the world and it being visually attractive. Take the cities for example we want them to be most accurate copies of the actual turn of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The game, however, imposes a certain regime we must respect. Width of the streets is fixed, so that the characters might move freely along them. While creating buildings we have based on authentic, historic sketches and designs as well as the then paintings. On the other hand, these are naturally not visualizations or realization of actually existent cities, streets or market places. During the last E3 we met some developers from Switzerland who were literarily charmed by The Witcher. They agreed that our cities looked identically to the Medieval Swiss towns. They were taken aback by the fact that someone could so meticulously recreate the atmosphere of those days. We felt really appreciated to have been able to create atmosphere that would make those interested in architecture look for references to real-life places in our work.