2017-08-28

Gwent: Thronebreaker is a new single player game, based on the Gwent card-game, taking place in the Witcher universe during the second Nilfgaardian invasion in 1267. In light of this Nilfgaardian threat, several rulers came together and formed alliances. One of them being Meve, the queen of the twin realms Lyria and Rivia. In her absence her son William ruled these twin realms, but not that very well as the threat from bandits has become much bigger in her absence and she just learned that a load of gold has been stolen from her tax collectors. Meve decides to personally look into the matter.

The story is said to be dark. There are evil things going on and you will learn about them through the conversations you are having. Thronebreaker offers an interactive dialog system for this, where you get to choose how you want to approach certain situations and how you want to react during conversations. All characters that are involved will remember your choices and this will impact the relation you have with them, which might lead to big or smaller consequences in the future. All dialogues are fully voiced and will be localized in the same 10 languages as Gwent is available in.

Thronebreaker will offer five different maps to explore and it was mentioned that these are quite different from each other from an environmental perspective. On these maps you will find resources like gold or even a new Gwent card that you can use in combat. Next to that you will trigger side quests that you can take up. When you travel on the map only the queen is shown, but she does banter with the other members of her party while running around.

The graphics of the game are cartoonish and the queen looks to be the size of a building. But having the proportional sizes in order is not what the game is aiming for as also the chests are rather big. During your explorations, events are triggered that lead to a conversation, where you get to decide what steps to take next.

In order to rest you have to set up camp. Here you can also access your inventory. The camp has a command center where you can build your deck of cards. At the workshop you build siege weapons and at the training grounds you recruit infantry units. All of these are needed in battle. There is also a tent where everybody who is traveling with you can be found and you can talk to them to learn more about them and their opinions. Depending on your choices in the game some of the characters might not agree with you and at a certain point might even leave you. Some others might join you however based on your choices.

All the buildings (or actually tents) are upgradeable and during the cause of the game you get to choose what upgrades you want to have. This all will have an impact on what your card deck will look like when you get into a fight. Better buildings will produce better cards that can be used in fights.

You are bound to get into a fight at some point in time and obviously fights are based on the Gwent card game. In case you don't know what Gwent is then here is a short description of the game.

Gwent is a game that could be played in The Witcher 3 and has been turned into a stand-alone card game by request of many players. Gwent has changed quite a bit from how it was implemented in The Witcher, but the basic elements remained for the large parts. Gwent is in public beta since May of this year and is available on PC, Xbox One and PS4 (no mobile release planned). A team of over 50 artists have been working on the game to improve the artworks to try and make every card visually stunning. Each card also will have its own animation and spoken voices at the end of the beta. Gwent is intended to be played online against other players, but in Thronebreaker you play against the AI. There are even Gwent tournaments to participate in, which ultimate can lead to the Gwent World Masters tournament, which has a $250.000 prize pool and crowns the Gwent World Champion.

In Gwent you always get a unique leader card belonging to your deck, which has special abilities and in Thronebreaker you will get Meve, who is rather powerful and unlike other leader cards who can only be played once a game, Meve can be played more often. The card has a counter and once the counter reaches zero, the card comes back to your hand and can be played again. When you play the Meve card, a bonus is granted to the cards on the board, based on her being a respected leader.

Gwent: Thronemaker is made in Unity. It has a dedicated team working on it. The story and quest designers come from The Witcher 3. The team is working on more expansions for Gwent at the moment next to this single player campaign. Apparently CD Project Red has quite a number of things they would like to do, but they want to base future expansion, or even more single player campaigns like Thronebreaker, dependent on the feedback they receive.

Gwent: Thronemaker certainly doesn't look to be a complicated game, but it is an opportunity for CD Project Red to tell more stories taking place in The Witcher universe. That said, I do get the impression that it is also an opportunity for CD Project Red to get more people hooked on Gwent as at the end of the day, Gwent is supposed to pay the bills.

Still, if you liked Gwent in The Witcher 3 or even played the public beta of Gwent and enjoyed yourself, Thronemaker might just be something for you and If you really didn't like Gwent, I think you better skip this one. For those who never played any Gwent, it is still in public beta and free to try, so I'd suggest to play that first if you think Thronebreaker might be interesting enough for you.

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