‘That was a mistake, I think’: The Witcher 1’s lead writer says the story team didn’t know about its twist ending
Artur Ganszyniec says the first game was supposed to have a more open-ended conclusion
The lead story designer on the original Witcher game says the story team had nothing to do with its twist ending.
The first game ends with a CG cutscene in which protagonist Geralt defends King Foltest from an assassin. After the assassin is killed, it’s revealed that they’re a witcher.
The twist then leads onto the second game, hence its full title The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, but lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec says this wasn’t supposed to be the ending.
Ganszyniec has just finished playing through the entirety of the game in a 26-part video series on YouTube (as spotted by PC Gamer), providing his commentary on the entire game from the perspective of its lead writer.
As the final cutscene rolls at the end of the final part, Ganszyniec reveals that the game’s story team knew nothing about it.
The previous cutscene, which consists of still artwork with a voiceover, has Geralt leaving Vizima and ends with the narrated line: “What then happened to the Witcher? That is a different tale entirely.” According to Ganszyniec, that was supposed to be where the credits rolled, but the extra CG cutscene was then added without their knowledge.
“That’s where we wanted the game to end, with an open question and open future,” he explained. “But while we were finishing the game, someone decided – the board decided or Michał Kiciński decided – that we needed an animated outro for the game.
“And the script for what we’re seeing now, this animation, was created not really involving the story team. It was sort of… we weren’t really paying attention.”
Ganszyniec says he thinks the decision to end with this cliffhanger was the wrong one, because it forced the second game down a path the story team wasn’t planning on going down.
“That was a mistake, I think, because this animation tells a different story than the outro pictures,” he explained, “because Geralt is still in Vizima, and he’s deep into political intrigue, because someone is trying to kill Foltest, and there’s someone [who], as you will see, is a Witcher.
“And soon after that it became evident that the next game will have to follow up on this, and tell a story about Witchers who are killing kings for some reason. And that’s why the second Witcher is very political and there’s not really room for exploring who Geralt is, his family, his history and stuff like this.”
Despite the game not ending as his team had originally planned, Ganszyniec ends his 26-part video series by saying: “Let’s hope that the remake will be a really good game.”
CD Projekt announced back in 2022 a “full-fledged remake” of The Witcher had entered production, and would be an open-world game “rebuilt from the group up” in Unreal Engine 5.
