The Witcher 3 developer explains how the game’s greatest sin came about
The Witcher 3 maps are littered with small side quests.
A modern classic, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is considered one of the best video games of the last generation of consoles. But even such a popular and successful title is not without its flaws. Probably the biggest criticism of The Witcher 3 is the structure of side quests. As Geralt, we do not find treasures and other places of interest organically in the open worlds, but are marked by question marks on the map. A design decision that the development team has since regretted.
CD Projekt Red’s findings bode well for The Witcher 4
in one streaming On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the franchise, Philipp Weber, the main person responsible for the campaign of The Witcher 4, commented on the “?” littered maps of The Witcher 3 (via IGN). Weber, who was still a junior quest designer at the time, freely admits that putting a marker on the map for every reward, no matter how small, such as the underwater treasure chests, was a huge mistake.
According to Weber, the question marks were only put on the maps shortly before the end of development:
It was already late 2014, not long before release, when we were just sharing the world [den Markierungen] have filled. We didn’t have a lot of time, so we said, ‘okay, we just have to do it, and we can’t do it perfectly’.
Does The Witcher 4 go a different way? Weber himself says that under his leadership such a design will not be repeated. So the next part will probably be based on games like Elden Ring, which leave it up to us to discover the secrets of the game world instead of plastering the map with markers.
Weber even gives a concrete example. The smugglers’ hideouts, which abound on the Skellige map in particular, were originally not supposed to be on the map. Instead, some seagulls should circle over the treasure chests and draw attention to them, just like we know from Zelda: The Wind Waker.
In the video you will learn everything about the announcement of the next Witcher adventure:
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When is the next gen version coming? The upcoming version of The Witcher 3 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S will probably not change the map markers either. New content beckons though, as there will be some fresh quests inspired by the Netflix series. The Witcher 3 Next-Gen is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2022 (October 1 – December 31).
Did the many question marks in The Witcher 3 also bother you?
Reference-www.gamepro.de