CD Projekt says it overhauled Witcher 3 gameplay because it was ‘obviously’ the weakest part
CD Projekt Red’s Paweł Sasko explains how the team decided what to update
A senior designer behind The Witcher 3: Remastered says the studio considered gameplay as the game’s weakest aspect when deciding what to revamp in the new version.
CD Projekt Red designer Paweł Sasko, who consulted on The Witcher 3‘s remaster and is associate director on the upcoming Cyberpunk sequel, told VGC in a new interview how CD Projekt Red revisited feedback from players and journalists when deciding what needed to change.
“We looked into how The Witcher 3 plays out, the common complaints from our players, and which areas hadn’t aged that well,” Sasko said. “The story is still relevant, you can play it, and it’s beautiful, and the characters are fun, but when you look at the gameplay side, it was obvious that this was almost the weakest side.”
Sasko said the consensus among players and critics was clear: “When you look at the opinions of the journalists and the players, everyone’s kind of saying the same thing, which is that gameplay is the weakest part of The Witcher 3.”
Rather than limiting The Witcher 3’s remaster to visual improvements, CD Projekt Red has made a series of changes intended to modernize the game, including revamped combat gameplay and skill tree, new animations and finishers, improvements to exploration movement, and more.
According to Sasko, the team drew heavily on its experience redesigning Cyberpunk 2077 for its 2.0 update, though he’s not sure if The Witcher 3’s remaster will be quite as impactful in terms of changing the overall game experience.
The Witcher 3’s remaster was inspired by Cyberpunk 2.0 experience
“I would say [The Witcher 3] is quite fundamentally different. Now, is the comparison to Cyberpunk 2.0 justified? I think it is justified. But is it that impactful? That’s a little harder for me to judge,” he said.
“That being said, there is an important point regarding the skill tree specifically and how it was revamped. Compared to Cyberpunk, there was already a structure in the game set. Cyberpunk was designed to have a variety of play styles from the beginning. So the foundation was different than in The Witcher.”
He continued: “In The Witcher, you’re playing as Geralt, who’s a fixed character who has a style of fighting, so the revamp of the skill tree is still within the boundaries of this. So, I would say the comparison is justified, but I don’t think it’s as impactful, and this actually comes from the design of the fundamentals.
“In Cyberpunk 2.0, you have play styles, varied builds, and varied characters, but Geralt’s always Geralt. Now you can make a really different Geralt, and that was the same thought process: how we can build with more active abilities than passive abilities. That was the issue with the previous system.”
Sasko said the remaster can be traced back to work carried out during the 2022 next-generation update, when developers discussed which areas of the game had become “rusty”.
The discussions also led to The Witcher 3’s new expansion, Songs of the Past, which is being developed by Fool’s Theory and is scheduled for release next year.
