Witcher 2 dev: RPGs not in competition

By Tom Bramwell Published 3 October, 2010

Says BioWare was influenced by Witcher.

CD Projekt scriptwriter Jan Bartkowicz reckons that role-playing games like Dragon Age and The Witcher 2 don't compete with each other, because fans of the genre are more likely to buy everything they can get their hands on than fans of action or sports games would be.

"Dragon Age really was influenced by us and that's great," Bartkowicz told Eurogamer in an interview to coincide with the developer's Eurogamer Expo session today.

"It's a genre that doesn't have that many games and it's not like that serious a competition, because at the end of the day if you're an RPG player you're not going to get that many games, so you're not considering, 'Is it going to be Fallout 3 for me or The Witcher?' You're probably going to play both.

"It's not like Bad Company or Modern Warfare where you're playing through the whole year. That's why I think our little RPG genre family is more tight, because we're not looking at each other thinking, 'Argh, they're going to steal our gamers!'"

Bartkowicz also said he felt BioWare titles Mass Effect and Dragon Age were influenced by The Witcher in several departments.

"This is going to be bold, right, but I think Mass Effect was and Dragon Age was for sure, because we made some things that weren't really that popular in RPGs at the time," he told us.

"For example, erotic themes in RPG games - it's still really difficult to handle. You see games running into clichéd areas when doing erotic content. It's hard to do them as a believable thing because the player's always trying to find the hidden mechanism behind it so it will be easy to show.

"Mass Effect has its way to do this and I think Dragon Age was bolder than that too. So I think Witcher was an important factor in this department."

The Witcher 2 is due out next year on PC. Check out the full CD Projekt interview for more on what to expect and what was shown at the Eurogamer Expo today.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • epiazk #1 2 years ago

    I miss black isle.

  • darkmorgado #2 2 years ago

    I agree with him to be honest. I think not seeing the consequences of your actions until much later on was definitely an influence on Bioware. I think Bioware (and Alpha Protocol) also tried to mimic the Witcher's tactic of not signposting good and evil as well, though they didn't succeed quite as well as CD Projekt.

  • jamesworkshop #3 2 years ago

    So CD Projekt

    Are bringing Sexy back

  • TheBard #4 2 years ago

    "The Witcher 2 is due out next year on PC."

    Wait. What? I was under the impression that Witcher 2 was to be released simultaneously on PC and consoles. The console variant of the the first Witcher has been dead in the water for quite some time now, so I guessed they put the effort into adapting the second game. Guessed wrong ...

    Meh. I don't have a gaming PC.

  • misinformed #5 2 years ago

    Not really a huge fan of linear RPG's. Kotor had some room to breath, dragon age was a bit better but Fallout 3 is still my favourite open ended rpg.

    Theyre right ill buy as many open ended ones as i can get my hands on, but not linear ones, not the next Witcher game.
    Edited by misinformed at 03/10/10 @ 15:40

  • Demiath #6 2 years ago

    Well, it's all fine to be "bold" and make unverifiable claims about what other developers may or may not have been influenced by, but it's not so cool to brag about something The Witcher handled particularly poorly, namely those cringe-worthy "erotic" scenes. In general, the writing and implementation which accompanied them meant that they did nothing at all except noticeably diminish the female characters, who threw themselves at Geralt as soon as he as much as contemplated saying something stereotypically masculine and silly. Still boasting about this several years after the fact is quite sad, really...

  • immateriaux #7 2 years ago

    misinformed by name, misinformed by nature then - the next Witcher aint linear.

  • immateriaux #8 2 years ago

    Putting sex into the game was a brave move at the time, and must have helped Dragon Age/Mass Effect likewise follow. Even if it was just a playing cards thing in the most, it was worth doing. Reading some of the prissy comments on forums afterwards was just priceless too.

    Just wish Dragon Age had been far more influenced by the Witcher, the linearity, superficial story and general hand-holding was a massive disappointment in DA - Witcher may not have had the same level of polish but it was a far more interesting game overall.

  • hiddenranbir #9 2 years ago

    I found Witcher's rendition of sex far more truthful and, dare I say it, tasteful over the clunky, awkwardness of DA's. I think trying to -show- animated sexual scenes is silly, cause it makes it look no different from the 3D erotic games Japan has, only tamer. Witcher left it more to the imagination. RPGs need to keep that imagination and now just show everything cause it makes the suspense of disbelief harder, I think.

  • BigJonno #10 2 years ago

    I've said it before and I'll say it again; The Witcher's depiction of sex was perfect for the genre. It was clearly pulpy fantasy stuff and pulp fantasy generally involves the protagonist having lots of casual sex. It's as much a part of the over-the-top wish fulfilment as the chiselled jaw, toned physique and the ability to take on a dozen enemies at once and win without breaking a sweat.

  • White_Waffle #11 2 years ago

    i also thought that the erotic encounters were great because they left a lot for imagination. a nice change since most games today, almost all, try to leave as little as possible to the realm of imagination.
    I think today it's brave to show a feminine side in women, where everyone thinks women ought to behave basically masculine all the time.

  • krisk7 #12 2 years ago

    Looks like The Witcher 2 will improve in every aspect on the TW1. We see history in the making and great times for RPG games.

  • Orange #13 2 years ago

    He is right, RPG fans tend to buy all the good ones in the genre.

  • Apaar #14 2 years ago

    I find that quite silly. Mass Effect even came out around the same time as the Witcher (within a month IIRC), and I'd argue Dragon Age with its 5-6 year development time was pretty much locked down in terms of design, storyline etc, when Witcher was released. So the influences are debatable at best.

  • qoobah #15 2 years ago

    Dragon Age - maybe. But The Witcher was released October '07 and Mass Effect - November '07. Claiming that ME was influenced by the Witcher is quite nonsensical.

    I felt that sex was handled particularly poorly in The Witcher (the sex cards...), I really don't believe it's in the same league as IMO the first tactful handling of a romance scene in a videogame in Mass Effect 1 (too bad that BW didn't follow suit with similar presentation in ME2. Some could say they yielded to the mass media pressure, Fox News blabbering etc...).

    If I had to point to what I felt was indeed inspired by the Witcher it would be the Elves in Dragon Age - underdogs, xenophobes, terrorists etc. (although given the games' 6 year long development schedule that too could be debated...). But anything on Mass Effect - that's just physically impossible given the development schedule.

    EDIT: Bah Apaar beat me to it :(
    Edited by qoobah at 04/10/10 @ 08:52

  • Quint2020 #16 2 years ago

    I think he's spot on to be honest, I buy pretty much every Western RPG that comes out, it's by far my favourite genre and the games are just too few and far between to be too picky; for example there were a lot of things I didn't like about Fallout 3 (constant grey landscapes, quite shallow character progression etc) and yet I'm almost certainly going to be playing Fallout New Vegas as I'm just craving a huge world to explore and RPG stats to tinker with.

  • uzivatel #17 2 years ago

    @qoobah: Well, its not like CD Projekt created the Witcher universe. As far as I know, Sapkowski was not particularly thrilled by the first game.

  • ExplodingClown #18 2 years ago

    Gah, pretty much everything about Dragon Age was painfully adolescent. For a game where you were regularly drenched in bodily fluid, the 'sex' element was about as arousing as rubbiing Barbie and Action Man together, and half as erotic. At least The Witcher's naughty cards pitched some refreshingly grubby filth - the wanton milkmaid pouring cow juice over her boobs, or Abigail the scary-looking witch crouching over skulls of previous conquests - whose tone suited the low fantasy setting and the violence that really felt intimate and physical.
    But then games just don't do sex well fullstop, IMHO. When they try you wind up with those 'Lula' atrocities, ugh.

  • onyx_elite #19 2 years ago

    Yeah that's totally right. I'm an RPG fan so I don't play ANY OTHER GAMES EXCEPT RPGs!!! Also, money is no object so I just piss money on whatever games come out that look vaguely related to my interests. Of course his game is competing, all games compete for attention, shelf-space and people's money.