Video games, especially role-playing games, often have massive worlds featuring hundreds of hours of content for players to explore and iconic locations that stick in a player's memory long after a game is finished. From fans lovingly crafting tributes to maps of fantasy worlds to making game-inspired maps of real-world locations, video game worlds often inspire a fanbase's most creative members to share stunning odes to their favorite franchises. Recently, a group of Polish students revealed their own interpretation of The Witcher's unnamed continent.
The continent that plays host to CD Projekt Red's hugely popular series of RPGs is massive, spanning over thousands of kilometers for players to explore and live out the adventures of the iconic Geralt of Rivia. The Witcher's home continent features a wide variety of environments, ranging from the bustling cities of Lyria and Vizima to the expansive Blue Mountains to the east. Now, a group of university students from Poland's Warsaw University recently unveiled a painstakingly crafted map of The Witcher's huge world.
The official Twitter account for The Witcher shared the detailed depiction of the game's world on Thursday, showing off the to-scale recreation of the continent. The creation looks every part like a real map, with a legend containing different symbols for cities of various sizes and a full hypsometric color scale for the elevation of the world of The Witcher. The map even comes with a distance scale for both miles and kilometers, allowing interested fans to quickly discern the distance between the island archipelago of Skellige to the Hengfors League in the north and more.
The Witcher's world has often been praised for its expansiveness and the depth of the lore surrounding its inhabitants and history. The Witcher 3 is often referred to as a landmark title for open-world games and is often considered among the greatest games in its genre. The popularity of the franchise that originated from a series of Polish novels has seen multiple adaptations over the years, including an animated film and a live-action series created by Netflix.
While the critical acclaim behind past titles and the popularity of the Netflix adaptations have helped to maintain The Witcher's widespread appeal, the main series has sustained itself off the success of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in recent years. The Witcher 3 is set to receive a next-gen version on PS5 and Xbox Series X in Q2 of 2022, and it saw a port to Switch in October 2019, four years after its initial release. While The Witcher 3 may have ended the story of Geralt of Rivia, CD Projekt Red surely has plenty in store for its flagship franchise's future.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is available now for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. A PS5/Xbox Series X/S version is currently in development.