GameCentral speaks to the director of The Witcher 3 about his new game The Blood Of Dawnwalker and how it feels to be so close to launch after years of development.
If there’s one thing that’s never changed about the games industry it’s publishers’ reticent about creating new IP. It’s even harder nowadays, when video games cost so much to make, but even decades ago a sequel or licensed game was always viewed as a much safer bet. This autumn has additional dangers, for anyone brave enough to release something that isn’t a sequel or licensed game, with a stacked release schedule caused by every other game running in fear from GTA 6’s release date in November.
Nevertheless, The Blood Of Dawnwalker is out this week and it’s not only a brand new IP but it’s the first game by new Polish developer Rebel Wolves, which was founded by a number of ex-CD Projekt Red developers, including The Witcher 3 co-director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. We spoke to Tomaszkiewicz back in July, when we previewed the game, but last week we were given the unusual opportunity to speak to him again, just days before the game was due to launch.
Given how much he has riding on the game’s success we almost felt guilty about intruding on his time, but he seemed fairly settled, in part because the previews had been positive. Although we spoke to him before the review embargo, so he didn’t know that the game has also reviewed well. It’ll be a while till we hear anything definitive about sales but given the risks that have been taken to make something new and interesting, it’s impossible not to root for him and the rest of the Rebel Wolves team.
GC: I can only imagine how stressed you must be at the moment; can you put into words how you’re feeling?
KT: [laughs] There is a lot of opposite feelings because, on the one hand, I’m really excited, because we will show to the world our first game and our creation which is quite unique and quite… different than the games out there, with a lot of cool but also risky ideas. We built this studio and the whole game in quite short time and this adventure has been exciting.
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And on the other hand I’m really stressed, at how people will react and how they like what we’re doing. Because this is like you show your baby to the world for the first time and you are really curious what will be the reaction. It’s an amazing feeling, but there’s constant stress until we will know how people like it.
GC: I guess probably you’re working on patches at the moment, so while the game is technically finished the work isn’t. Do you have a holiday planned in the next couple of weeks?
KT: You know, it’s funny because this is the first release I feel this way, that it’s really calm. I mean, we have the database in which we have the stuff we want to fix – the bugs we want to fix or bugs which are already fixed – and a lot of people are on their holidays right now. I’m not, but I’m hoping that after the release of the game I will go for a longer holiday, because I need it for sure. But the team are on their holidays right now and this feeling of peace and calm in the studio worries me because, from my past, when I remember these times, it was always quite intense. Because we worried about what we need to fix still and here it’s like, it’s done and you just need to wait.
And if I have time where I know that I cannot do anything more right now, it feels really weird. Like, you’re waiting for what will explode tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. But hopefully everything will be great. We showed the console footage last week and today we updated it for 60fps performance and people like it. And right now we’re waiting for the reaction, for the game itself.
GC: I saw the press release for the 60fps mode today, but I’d already seen fans asking about it a few days ago. So was the annoucement today a reaction to that?
KT: Yes and no, because the truth is that we have this rule, that if we release some materials to the fans we only confirm the stuff we are sure about, right? And recording this kind of material and putting it together takes some time. When we were at the point when we recorded it, we weren’t sure if we will be able to release a 60fps mode on release.
And we prepared the material, we dropped it on Friday and we checked today with the testers and the programmers, and it seems that we are in the good place and it worked. That’s why we confirmed it and we will have it for the launch. And also today, people will receive the updated video on which we’re showing how performance mode on the consoles looks.
GC: If I was a fan I think I’d feel pretty good about you reacting so quickly like that. Obviously, you were working on it anyway, but I imagine you want to engender as much good will as possible at the moment.
