While he’s now synonymous with the franchise – brought even further into mainstream consciousness through Henry Cavill’s portrayal in the Netflix series – protagonist Geralt proved to be one of the most complicated inclusions early on (and was almost left out completely). “At that time, the source of financing for the game was the publishing part of CD Projekt, so we, working in the development arm, felt like a small experimental group implementing a crazy plan, for which stable and sensible people were earning money.” On the other hand, we felt pressure because we wanted our game to be liked by players as much as we liked Sapkowski's books. “On the one hand, it gave us an advantage because we felt at ease creating a game with well-known characters in a well-known world. “The team that made up the first Witcher game consisted of fans of Sapkowski's stories and novels,” says Blacha. Tolkien in Poland, perhaps more so, and the books’ wandering, monster-killing protagonist was the perfect centrepiece for a video game. The Witcher and its author Andrzej Sapkowski were just as beloved as J.R.R. The idea was to bring in an established setting as something to lean on for the novice team. Though the project was cancelled within a couple of months due to financial issues on Interplay’s side, CD Projekt had received the push it needed to consider pursuing game development.Ī dedicated studio was founded – CD Projekt Red – and it began looking for an IP that it could turn into a video game. The company asked Interplay to consider a PC version, and it did, telling CD Projekt to make it itself.

Console gaming wasn’t popular at the time in Poland but Interplay wasn’t making a PC version, meaning the latest version of CD Projekt’s biggest hit was suddenly off limits.

When Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance came around – a new entry only on consoles – the CD Projekt team was concerned. Within a few years it struck up a deal with Bioware and Interplay Entertainment to localise Baldur’s Gate, and it was this relationship that eventually led to the creation of The Witcher. Though a love for video games was always at its heart, CD Projekt began as a distribution company that translated English games into Polish.

Since we all liked RPGs very much, we wanted to be appreciated primarily by fans of this genre.” “Of course, we hoped it would appeal to players, but 15 years ago we all had much less experience than we do now, and we found it harder to judge what was right and what was not. “We didn't know if the game would be a success or not,” Marcin Blacha, story director at CD Projekt Red, tells IGN. It's not that the CD Projekt Red group knew The Witcher would be successful, of course, as several members of its original team hadn’t created a game before, and none of them had created a game of this size. The Witcher was originally released in 2007.

The witcher 1 game size