The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a massive game, filled with various types of quests. Of those quests, not a lot of them feel forced, and most offer up insight into Witcher Geralt and the world around him.

Still, CD Projekt Red’s Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, Principal Narrative Designer, thinks the developer could have done better.

“In the main game, there were a few quests – even though we had a rule against it – that felt padded; like fetch quests,” he admitted. “I think [those fetch quests] were there because we stuck with ideas we shouldn’t have [from previous games in the Witcher franchise].”

With lessons learned, Tomaszkiewicz and his colleagues approached The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt‘s first expansion, “Hearts of Stone” in a different way.

“In ‘Hearts of Stone’, we came up with the right ideas right from the start. We spent more time coming up with ideas from scratch; with ideas that felt right and natural. Nothing was added simply to make something else [like another quest] make sense.”

Tomaszkiewicz also offered up another flaw with The Wild Hunt corrected for “Hearts of Stone”.

“The antagonist – well, there’s no true antagonist in ‘Hearts of Stone’, but the character most like an antagonist – got a lot more screen time than the antagonist of The Witcher 3,” he said.

“We were aware at a late stage that we didn’t do it properly; that the main game’s antagonist needed more of that screen time. Sadly, it was too late into development to really fix that.”

CD Projekt Red has one more chance after “Hearts of Stone” to refine The Witcher 3 :Wild Hunt even more; a second expansion is due next year.

Image: GameJunkieNZ