After years of development, CD Projekt Red finally released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It's now the most critically acclaimed game in the series, so hats off to the studio for putting out its best effort yet.
And that effort was massive, by the way. To no one's surprise, developing the critically-acclaimed The Witcher 3 was a huge undertaking, making CD Projekt Red's accomplishments even more impressive. According to Side (a voice work company that also worked on Alien: Isolation and Dragon Age: Inquisition), the script for The Witcher 3 was 450,000 words long, making it roughly the size of four average novels.
Side helped bring this gargantuan script to life, casting over 950 speaking roles (including Charles Dance as Emhyr var Emreis) for the game's main storyline alone. Overall, the voice acting took nearly three years to complete; Side began the process in late 2012, and didn't finish until a few months before the game's launch this May
However, Side's work paid off, as The Witcher 3 is garnering tons of praise for its story, its characters, and its voice acting. One of the developers that helped write the script, senior writer Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, expressed his gratitude for Side's work, referring to the company's engineers as, "masters of the human psyche and heart with a keen ear for language in its many regional and social variations."
Considering the Witcher 3's massive scope, it's no surprise that CD Projekt Red doesn't even want to talk about their next project, Cyberpunk 2077, until 2017. It's likely that Cyberpunk 2077 will be just as big - if not bigger - than The Witcher 3, and Side should probably set another few years aside to help to bring CD Projekt Red's vision to life.
A game this large does come with some drawbacks, unfortunately. Mainly, The Witcher 3 has been plagued with some glitches and technical difficulties, including a glitch that causes players to stop earning XP, a small text problem, and numerous frame rate issues. This is not uncommon for a game of its size, and while The Witcher 3's technical problems are very apparent, that hasn't stopped gamers everywhere from greatly enjoying the experience.
In the meantime, there is even more Witcher 3 content on the way, which will make the already big game that much bigger. Currently, the studio is pumping out free DLC for the game, and there are also two paid expansions on the way as well. These expansions should add a considerable amount of time to the Witcher 3 experience. The first expansion, Hearts of Stone, is expected to add an additional 10 hours of content, whereas the second expansion, Blood and Wine, is aiming for about 20 or so additional hours.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is currently available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: IGN