The Witcher - was almost a Diablo clone

Hexprone

Hexprone

Thou hast lost an eighth!
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No, the gif below is not another Wild Hunt graphics downgrade, it's a prototype version of the original Witcher from 2002. Former project lead Ryszard Chojnowski has taken to YouTube about his time with the franchise in its early days.

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The demo was a point-and-click action game directly inspired by Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance,which itself was a riff on Diablo. CD Projekt RED was shopping this around to publishers, and hastily built their prototype using the engine for Mortyr, a World War II shooter from 1999.

The original plan was to have players create their own characters, rather than play as Geralt. Instead, Geralt would show up as an NPC for players to talk to and interact with.
Click to expand...

More information.
 
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Honestly, the one thing which kept me from being very interested in the franchise is the QTE combat with the timing for attacks, which I never liked. I think I would have been far more involved with simple hack and slash combat.
 
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Guys, let me know if having a gif on the front page is an eyesore. The article doesn't have any still images of the prototype game, and the preview frame for the video doesn't show gameplay, but I can switch it out if you prefer.
 
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Hexprone said:
Guys, let me know if having a gif on the front page is an eyesore. The article doesn't have any still images of the prototype game, and the preview frame for the video doesn't show gameplay, but I can switch it out if you prefer.
Click to expand...

I thought it was cool it showed an animated gif of the gameplay. It got me immediately interested and fascinated about this, since I never knew that it used to be planned as a top-down action RPG. :)
 
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Didn't know that as well. Good that in the end it end up being what it is today ! I'm not a particular fan of Diablo style games.
 
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With the released version they were original but not very "easy to play", problem with cloning Diablo is that it's very hard to get it right and if it had failed we wouldn't be theorising about Witcher 3 graphics downgrades :)
 
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I'm very sure it would have been a very average, forgettable game if they released it like that. After all, it would have had to compete with I don't know how many other very well made Diablo clones and who knew about the witcher outside of Poland in those days, huh?
 
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Thank god this clone never happened. If it did, TW3 in today's forum would have never existed.

However, now it's finally clear why Tomasz Gop left CDpr to make a grinder I can't remember the name of, only that it had Denuvo DRM bundled. And I say good riddance.
 
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Glad, and I like The Witcher games as they are today.
However, what I am hoping for is a party based top-down Witcher game, or at least from that universe. Even does not have to be turn based.
 
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Diablo III was almost a diablo clone
 
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