Secrets of The Witcher 3. Modders revealed many details about unknown version of bestselling RPG
Thanks to the modding tools for The Witcher 3, fans were able to discover what the developers' plans were in 2012. The several-hundred-page document charts a vision of a game that was vastly different from what eventually hit the market.
In May of this year, the REDKit modding tools were released for The Witcher 3. The result of this was not just a flood of new mods. Fans also used tools to dig into the game files, and thanks to this, they discovered a lot of interesting information. One of the groups prepared a project What Lies Unseen, which analyzes early versions of the game.
The first volume of the project, titled A Time of Sword and Axe, has just been published; it's devoted to the vision of The Witcher 3 that existed at CD Projekt RED studio in 2012. This is a huge document, consisting of 585 pages. If you prefer video format, the YouTuber xLetalis has prepared, together with these moderators, almost a three-hour video material dedicated to this topic. You can watch it below.
It's impossible to describe all the changes, but we can attempt to list a few of the most important ones.
- First of all, the game was supposed to be much longer – it would take 150 hours to complete the main storyline.
- During the campaign, we would spend more time traveling between the main locations, and the stories of many independent characters would span many acts of history.
- The subtitle of the game was then A Time of Sword and Axe instead of The Wild Hunt.
- Choosing between Yennifer and Triss would mean that the rejected sorceress wouldn't appear in the last 1/3 of the game.
- In Novigrad we would take part in a heist divided into many stages. Securing assistance from allies would be necessary for its successful completion, just as was the case during the siege of Kaer Morhen in The Wild Hunt.
- Iorveth would appear in the story campaign and play a big role in the plot.
- The story of the Bloody Baron was quite different and only ended in the late stages of the story.
- The endings were supposed to be more melancholic and ambiguous, leaving a wide field for interpretation by the players.
- In one of the quests, Geralt and Avallac'h would teleport to the Cyberpunk 2077 universe.
- The game didn't have Gwent yet. Instead, the mini-games from The Witcher 2 were supposed to return, poker dice and arm wrestling.
Where did these discoveries come from and what's next?
You may be wondering how the modders discovered all of this. Within the modding tools, they found a database containing almost every line of text that was written from the earliest to the last stages of The Witcher 3's development. Based on this, they were able to recreate the original plans of the devs.
There are still three parts of the What Lies Unseen series planned:
- Volume 2 - The Beginning (2013 version of the story)
- Volume 3 - Directors Cut (2014)
- Volume 4 - Expansion Packs (a document dedicated to abandoned plans related to expansions)
For now, only Volume 1 is available and a short preview of Volume 3.
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