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The Witcher 3 Devs Discuss The Hardest Quests to Program And Write

This article is over 8 years old and may contain outdated information
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It should come as no surprise to Witcher fans that the “Bloody Barron” quest-line was the most difficult one to write.

In a special Q and A with quest designers Pawel Sasko and Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, CD Projekt Red talked a bit about the most difficult quests to design in The Witcher 3 – both from a technical standpoint and a writing standpoint. It should come as no real surprise to fans that “The Battle of Kaer Morhen” was easily the most complicated quest, while the “Bloody Barron” quest-line was the most difficult one to write.

“From the early state of paper design we knew that it was going to be a huge and complicated quest–and it turned out to be even worse than we expected,” Sasko said of The Battle of Kaer Morhen. “Players could have between nine and 16 characters supporting them, depending on all other things they did–and those characters could appear in any possible combination, plus some of them had to have additional separate scenes (for instance: the dialog with Roche and Ves confronting Letho). I had to make sure that every player who brought a unique set of characters had a quality experience that would stay with them for a long time.”

The quest became even more complicated when you factor in the fact that each character performs a specific action during the battle – which can change drastically depending on what other characters are present!

“All scenes and gameplay situations were designed to give the player a reward from what they did in all the quests before,” Sasko said. “At the end, I was proud of what we managed to achieve and I’m grateful that I was working on it.”

As for the notorious Bloody Barron, which many fans agree was one of the most enthralling, conflicting, and just well written quest-lines of the game, “The topic we decided to tackle was difficult and ambitious and required special attention. Karolina Stachyra, who did all the writing, spent lots of time with me dealing with nuances,” Sasko said. “Both Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz and Marcin Blacha offered lots of feedback and ideas to improve the writing–we wanted to present [the] mood of Velen through the character of Baron and sketch the similarities between two fathers who lost their daughters (Geralt and Baron).”

The designers also talked about their personal favorite quests (including the infamous “DRM” quest – “The Tower Outta Nowheres”), the design process, and what it’s like to work with the writers. You can check out the full Q and A on the CD Projekt Red forums.

Source: CD Projekt Red via GameSpot

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