The Witcher - Will it Become a Major Franchise? @ RPGVault

Jonric at RPGVault has posted a short piece that covers no new bases, but looks at the game's development and speculates about the future intentions of CDProjektRed for their crpg, The Witcher:

Last month, the company revealed that sales had surpassed 600,000 copies in three months, definitely a solid number, especially considering the release date was in October, during the most competitive quarter of the year. A few days later, it announced The Witcher Enhanced Edition…

Naturally, I was already anticipating a sequel. The team is known to be working on an unannounced project, and what else would it be? But given all this plus CD Projekt Red's even more recent addition of a PR and marketing person for North America and the UK, there's ample reason to guess the studio has its sights set high. The most obvious guess would be growing The Witcher into a significant RPG and game franchise. Assuming this is so, I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing what's coming - and anticipating we'll see a lot more far sooner than another four years.

More information.

A major franchise? Like Final Fantasy major? God I hope not.

I think they could do 1 sequel and have a chance of it being as good as the first one though. Maybe 2…but the 2nd one is kinda pushing into the realm of suck.

Then again, they may be good enough that they could pull some kind of Richard Garriot nonsense and make each game get progressively better until the 9th one (and it wasn't even as bad as people made it out to be). Highly unlikely though.

I'd rather they put there genius behind something completely new.

I won't be surprised if a MMORPG is coming. Phil Harrison just joined Infogrames, Atari, publisher of the Witcher. Its new CEO David Gardner, who spoke of "the vision Phil and I have been sharing and really enjoy, the idea of the future of a network-centric gaming world". It is loose link, but that's where the money is, just hope they still have time to do some story-oriented single person RPG.

Given how awesome The Witcher is, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt …

The Witcher 2 would coming out on major consoles…

From what they have said if they come out with a second game it will be better since they just put this out as something they wanted to do and didn't expect it to sell so well. Atari has no influence over what they are making since in Europe they self publish and if Atari tried something they would just get a different publisher for the rest of the world.

The Atari bit is correct but I'm not so sure about the "didn't expect it to sell so well". They've clearly stated their goal is 1M copies and it was hugely expensive for a Polish first-time development - I doubt they set out to lose their money.

One of these days I'll pick Witcher back up and get past . Apparently I gimped my guy and/or I suck to the point that I can't get past him. Incredibly frustrating, more so because I actually like the game otherwise. Will start over some day but it's too soon and I'm too bitter.

We have a long thread about that in the Witcher forum - you really should be able to solve this with some of the advice there.

I don't know if maybe what they said wasn't true but I am just stating what they said in an interview.

PS. That was a really hard fight and it took me awhile to beat it after dieing several times.

I hope that it won't be an MMO game :-( I seem to be part of the minority that enjoy a well storied immersive single-player experience… I really enjoyed the Witcher but a World of Witcher would kill it for me. Surely the single-player game was successful enough for them to retain hat format?

They have serious delusions of grandeur if they think that they can make an MMO out of this property at this stage.

Originally Posted by doctor_kaz
They have serious delusions of grandeur if they think that they can make an MMO out of this property at this stage.

We haven't made any mention of anything related to any MMO.

And yeah, our goal has always been to make The Witcher an international success -- why would you set out to make a game that only a few people play?

Thanks, Tom. I look forward very much to whatever comes next in the world of the Witcher and as I recall, the only thing I remember hearing was that there was no intent to do any multi-player with Geralt, let alone a MMO Witcher. Though I can see that some time in the future an MMO of some sort might crop up.

I know the devs have commented on how they want to consolidate and build on the single-player game at this point, so its good to hear that's indeed where things are headed. Again, at least for now..

btw the Enhanced Edition is a very positive sign to me of their commitment to the game and the fans and I may have to buy it just for all the goodies…Is it going to be available uncensored as well this time?

Originally Posted by magerette
btw the Enhanced Edition is a very positive sign to me of their commitment to the game and the fans and I may have to buy it just for all the goodies…Is it going to be available uncensored as well this time?

Eh, I'd love to be able to bring an uncut version of the game to North America… but I just don't know if it'll be possible.

Originally Posted by Tom Ohle
Eh, I'd love to be able to bring an uncut version of the game to North America… but I just don't know if it'll be possible.

Understand--you have to do what's best for the game.

As long as I can import one without too much extra expense I'll be happy.