Sapkowski Wrote a Sarcastic Letter to The Witcher Devs; They Put It in the Game
Andrzej Sapkowski had a bigger part in the development of the first The Witcher than you think and... than he thinks. He wrote a „sarcastic letter” to the developers at CD Projekt Red, which then made its way into the game.
The first Witcher is currently a bit underrated and unnecessarily overlooked by gamers. On the one hand, this can be understood - Assassins of Kings and Wild Hunt were created in such a way that knowledge of the mechanically completely different first game is not necessary. On the other hand, however, the game debut of Geralt of Rivia offers an excellent storyline that is worth knowing.
Artur Ganszyniec (born 1977) - has been working in the game industry since 2006 as a designer, screenwriter and writer. For many years he has been associated with the Technical University of Lodz, where he is a lecturer. For The Witcher 1 he served as the main story designer. He was also principal designer on The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. His most recent works are Wanderlust Travel Stories and Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest. In addition to video games, he also wrote the tabletop RPG Wolsung. He is active in the development community - he created a support group for industry employees; he also lobbies for salary transparency in gamedev.
The development process of The Witcher was equally interesting. You could read about more or less known curiosities many times on our website However, there are still some that the average gamer has no idea about. Some of this info was revealed by Artur Ganszyniec (see box below) in a recent interview.
"A sarcastic letter" by Andrzej Sapkowski.
One of the interesting facts we learned from the discussion is that excerpts from Andrzej Sapkowski's sarcastic letter sent to the developers were included in the first game from CD Projekt Red. Ganszyniec described the genesis of its creation as follows.
"AG: Andrzej Sapkowski came at the end of work, looked [at the game - ed. note] and said it looked nice. He wasn't more involved in the creative process, because he wasn't interested in it either. He had a pretty sensible approach to things - he knew he could write books, but he doesn't do movies or games, so why would he advise us.
We consulted him about things like the map and the character naming scheme. We sent him a list of such names and received a rather blunt reply, from which it was clear that he didn't like the names. Sapkowski being himself, the language was full of complicated words, sharp, sarcastic. We, of course, swallowed this pill, changed the names of many characters, we "de-slavicized" a lot of them, because originally there were some Jankos, Wojkos, etc.,. Well, Sapkowski wrote "no way".
However, the letter itself was distinctive enough that we put it in the game. There is an item in the game that can be found in act three, where the main bad guy giving s**t to his subordinates - it contains a couple of quotes from Sapkowski's letter. That's how we let off some steam, and the letter was immortalized. But that was the only influence of Andrzej Sapkowski in the development.
GP: Was it criticism for the sake of it or did Sapkowski guide you in some direction?
AG: No, no - he told us what we needed to do, that came in handy, but we got served in the process and we had to "digest it".
The directions were so specific that we easily found the letter in question. It turned out to be the "Professor's Report" - a document that we find on the corpse of the kikimora queen after... just kidding, no spoilers here. The contents of the report read as follows:
"...Regrettably I must question the benefits of our alliance with Princess Adda. That slut is extraordinarily spoiled and very difficult to persuade. She proved incapable of introducing an effective state of emergency and her ham-fisted forgeries set the witcher on her trail. We will stay true to our word and encourage Adda's delusions for the time being. However, with Foltest returning shortly, we should proceed with the second part of our plan. I presume I will myself resolve the problem with Geralt of Rivia - quickly and in a radical fashion. However, I must insist you cease referring to him as a "son-of-a-bitch" - appellations of that nature are entirely inaccurate, inappropriate and painfully primitive.
As expected, the substances which were delivered allow us to control the kikimores and their mother. At least the laboratory is working properly, making valuable use of the secrets of Kaer Morhen.
Professor"
It must be admitted that in places this letter does indeed sound as if it came from the pen of "AS". Admittedly, one might think that the devs simply tried to copy the author's style - perhaps following the model of the professor's lines from Time of Contempt, on which the game's Professor was clearly modeled - but it turns out that there is something more behind this particular document.
