UPDATE 8th December 2018: Following the publication of this article, Sean Halliday was revealed to have ties to a website called Exclusively Games, owned by someone with links to GamerGate. Halliday told Eurogamer he had been offered a job by Exclusively Games and had been flagged as a moderator while considering the position. But, he told Eurogamer today, he has since declined the offer of a job.
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, which we've reviewed and Recommended, hasn't sold as strongly as CD Projekt Red hoped.
Digital retailer GOG, which lives under the CD Projekt roof, has found itself in more Twitter hot water after insensitively appropriating the political hashtag #WontBeErased.
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, the Gwent-related story spin-off, comes out tomorrow on PC, and it's excellent - I reviewed Thronebreaker and hope my enthusiasm for it comes across.
I had concerns about Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales. What worried me most was the story. It's the most important thing; the premise the game is sold on, and a chance to return to the world of The Witcher. How could Thronebreaker possibly follow on from the outstanding The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt? When I first played, I wasn't sure it could. The queen whose royal sabatons I was filling left me cold. I couldn't relate to her stuffy world of advisors and generals, and I didn't like them. Her mission to reclaim gold stolen by bandits? Hardly mutant monster-hunter Geralt pursuing the near-mythical Wild Hunt, is it? But Thronebreaker gets better. It gets so much better.
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales
Developer: CD Projekt Red
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CD Projekt Red has released a new 37-minute video, with commentary, showcasing a whole heap of gameplay elements from its upcoming Gwent-based Witcher RPG, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales.
UPDATE 15TH NOVEMBER: There was a minor update to this story during a call discussing CD Projekt's Q3 2018 earnings. Joint-CEO Adam Kiciński referred to the issue as "an open one", intimating no decision either way had been made.
Card games haven't done story on this level before. With Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, we're not talking about a bolted-on campaign, we're talking about a whole separate game - a 30-dollar, 30-hour Witcher story with more lines of dialogue than The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt expansion Hearts of Stone. Thronebreaker has 77 side quests, 20 possible end-states and is directed by Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, lead quest designer on Witcher 3 (and also brother of Witcher 3 game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz).
Almost 10 years ago to the day, CD Projekt launched the online digital game store Good Old Games. The operation and scope was small - a handful of people salvaging iconic old PC games for modern operating systems - but the prices, customer service and DRM-free message were right, and slowly the service grew. And grew, and grew. And today things are different.
Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, and related-but-standalone single-player Gwent adventure Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, will be released 23rd October on PC, and then on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One 4th December.
