“Yeah, he was a funny guy to work with, Peter. He was quite interesting. I used to like the days where he'd actually take us out for lunch and then start drinking and go, ‘I can't be bothered to go back to work today.’ So he'd just put his card behind the bar and everyone would stay at the pub for a little bit. This is why we had quite a lot of delays on those games. A very different experience.”

“ He took me out drinking and we started out with these vodka and milk shots, and I think we got back to the hotel at like five in the morning. I was a mess and I had a mock-up shoot at like, 7am.

see deal The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine - Xbox One $19.99 on Gamestop

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“ It's double the size, so around 20 hours, but it would... I'm pretty sure it's going to take people longer than 20 hours to get through this.

Peter Molyneux gets better every time I hear about him, and CD Projekt RED senior animator, Jamie Bury, has a few things to say. He’s been animating video games with seniority for some 15, 16 years now. Prior to landing in Poland with The Witcher crew, he “worked on things like Black & White, and Fable. Crysis. These kind of things.”“Peter’s funny,” Jamie says. “He was nice, I remember he came to my leaving drinks. He even said, ‘Oh I'm really sorry you're going. I can’t really stay ‘cos I've got this other stuff. I've put my credit card behind the bar, so you guys have a fun night.’”A running theme. Today’s wine accounted for, I wonder if CD Projekt’s working culture involves more figurative blood than actual cabernet. Jamie cracks a smile that has no chance of containing the anecdote rattling the cage of his teeth.“When we were working on Witcher 3, we had to do the motion capture for exploration, so like climbing up cliffs, things like this. We had to go to Krakow to some big mock-up studio and I remember this big, muscly, stuntman guy. Maciej Kwiatkowski. He's the guy who does all the sword-fighting for Geralt. He's awesome. We used him for... he basically is Geralt. When Geralt walks, when Geralt does sword-fighting, this is all Maciej for that stuff. He's like this swordmaster guy, and he actually got into being a stuntman because of The Witcher books.”Unusual.“He read the books and he said the books described the fighting style with a sword, but you can't get a full idea of what it was, and so he started training himself to try and do this pirouette sword style. He's crazy talented at that stuff. He took me out drinking and we started out with these vodka and milk shots, and I think we got back to the hotel at like five in the morning.” Jamie hides his face behind his hand. “I was a mess and I had a mock-up shoot at like, 7am. He went to this mock-up shoot and he was totally fine and I was having to be like, ‘Okay guys, we just need to take a break for a minute,’ and go in the bathroom.”In terms of size at least, there’s bang for whatever bucks this thing ends up costing.“It's tough when you actually have to come up with the estimations for this. For the previous expansion, Hearts of Stone, the estimate was ten hours,” Jamie says. “I played a lot more than ten hours getting through it. For this we kind of say it's double the size, so around 20 hours, but it would... I'm pretty sure it's going to take people longer than 20 hours to get through this. It just depends whether people are doing all the side quests, whether they're rushing through things, whether they're exploring. It is just a very big expansion, the whole land mass. It's one of the criticisms we had with Hearts of Stone. It was this new expansion, but it was still taking place in the old landscape.”Said land mass being a strikingly different land mass to the land mass seen previously: Blood and Wine takes place in the chivalrous en Français verdancy of Toussaint. All of a sudden it’s open meadows and gilded plate-mail and moustaches. Think Orlais with less masks, more monsters, and a queen that aggressively borrows the horses of her peasantry so she might better kick ass. There’s a lot of that to do and even a vineyard hub to call home and pimp out. Earlier Fabian had quipped that Blood and Wine “was never supposed to be this big.”Which is both kind of upsetting and oddly kind of satisfying when you realise how much of Blood and Wine you likely won’t experience simply because of how you like to roll. During my playthrough, I’d spent roughly the same amount of time with Geralt as the guy next to me, who ended up in a completely different place doing completely different things.