- 1 week ago
Zapytaj kogoś o Jaskra, a większość odpowiada przypomnieniem o kolejnej kłopotliwej balladzie albo komediowym wpadaniu w tarapaty. Tymczasem twórcy z Fool's Theory i CD Projekt Red postanowili zabrać nas do krainy Letten – malowniczego, rodzinnego domu słynnego barda, który skrywa znacznie więcej, niż moglibyśmy przypuszczać.
W przeprowadzonym przez nas wywiadzie wywiadzie twórcy - Jakub Rokosz z Fool's Theory i
Despoina Anetaki z CD Projekt Red - opowiadają o tym, dlaczego Geralt postanawia porzucić zasłużoną emeryturę w Toussaint, skąd na horyzoncie wziął się polski Giewont oraz jak przeprojektować mechaniki walki i Gwinta w grze, która ma już 11 lat.
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Realizacja: Przemysław Dygas | Kamera i montaż: Mateusz Popielak
W przeprowadzonym przez nas wywiadzie wywiadzie twórcy - Jakub Rokosz z Fool's Theory i
Despoina Anetaki z CD Projekt Red - opowiadają o tym, dlaczego Geralt postanawia porzucić zasłużoną emeryturę w Toussaint, skąd na horyzoncie wziął się polski Giewont oraz jak przeprojektować mechaniki walki i Gwinta w grze, która ma już 11 lat.
✔ DISCORD: https://discord.com/invite/tvgrypl
✔ TWITCH: https://www.twitch.tv/tvgrypl_
✔ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/tvgrypl
Znajdź nas na:
IG Oskara: https://www.instagram.com/oskar.wadowski/
X Oskara: https://x.com/o_wadowski
Realizacja: Przemysław Dygas | Kamera i montaż: Mateusz Popielak
Category
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GamingTranscript
00:00Tym razem mamy dla was coś nieco innego.
00:02Podczas tegorocznego Gamescomu mieliśmy okazję porozmawiać z twórcami pieśni przeszłości.
00:06Wywiad musieliśmy przeprowadzić po angielsku, więc tak też przedstawimy go tutaj.
00:10Możecie jednak liczyć na polskie napisy.
00:14So I think we should start with Latin.
00:16It's very different area in comparison to VN, Novigrad or Skellige.
00:20What was the idea behind creating it in this kind of way?
00:23When we started working on this expansion,
00:25we asked ourselves what is the area where Dandelion was born
00:31and was growing up and then left and why he never came back, basically.
00:36So we had to uncover all of his past, the fact that he's a Viscount,
00:40disentitled certain things, you know.
00:42Viscounts are usually taking care of a larger part of the area.
00:47We also had in the story of the base game,
00:50there's a war ravaging the continent, right?
00:52But all of that kind of clicked into this picture of us deciding
00:57that Latin needs to be the land of plenty.
01:00A very lush land because this supports the story
01:03that we're going to show in the songs of the past.
01:06This is a very important backdrop
01:07because even though Latin is this land of plenty,
01:11it has this dark mystery lying beneath it like you guys saw in the demo.
01:16You saw the demo, right?
01:16And so that was the backdrop for the story that we want to tell
01:20about Dandelion's homecoming and why he never came back,
01:23his relationship with the family and, you know, all of that.
01:27But yeah.
01:28Yeah. When we were exploring this idea from the very beginning,
01:31we thought it was an opportunity that we didn't want to miss
01:35telling Dandelion's story, getting to expand on who he is,
01:39seeing his family, seeing where he came from, what shaped him.
01:43And yeah, Latin is, I think, a breath of fresh air
01:48because it is a very different place from what we've seen before.
01:52We get to explore the northeast of Redania
01:56and unlock a new area in the map where we haven't been.
02:00And I don't know about others, but when I play video games,
02:03I always get excited about what all the places in the map look like,
02:07what all the new areas look like.
02:08So when I get to unlock a new hub, I always get excited.
02:11Yeah. And you know, it's not like we didn't want to do a region
02:15that feels similar to something else.
02:17Like we wanted to do something way different.
02:19So when we started working on it, we asked ourselves like,
02:23OK, so what do they produce in the valley?
02:25What do they grow?
02:26How does Dandelion's family earn the money to run all of this operation?
02:31So we decided to go with the inspiration of Polish and English countryside.
02:36You obviously get a very lush vegetation.
02:40You know, the foliage is very dense over there.
02:43So you have also sheep pastures as a contrapose to the very dense forests.
02:48So there's a lot of sheep running around.
02:51And then we have the hop fields that they grow to make the beer.
02:57It's called bragot.
02:58One of the ingredients of the bragot beer is honey.
03:02So we had to have a lot of apiaries around.
03:04You know, so there are like these little elements that really,
03:09the reason for them to be there is to answer the question,
03:12how this community operates and how they earn their money.
03:15But it also supports the story of the Dandelion's family and how they came to be.
03:23So you see how Dandelion is the Viscount of like this really beautiful picturesque place.
03:29And then you start wondering and your mind starts spinning.
03:32And you think, okay, why did he leave that place?
03:35It's so beautiful, right?
03:36And then the why is what you will find out when you play the expansion
03:42and you get to learn more about him.
03:44Exactly. And why he's putting himself in danger with Geralt all the time in the adventures
03:49rather than just sitting at home.
03:51Yes. And that was a very compelling question.
03:53And when we have such ideas, we always want to explore them.
03:58And that's why we handed it over to False Theory,
04:02who are full of Witcher 3 veterans and more than capable of delivering.
04:06So I suppose we will be able to see a more serious side of Dandelion.
04:10Well, yeah, you know, there's this misconception about Dandelion
04:15that he's just the comedic relief in The Witcher plethora of characters,
04:20which is just not true.
04:22Dandelion is this middleman in how Geralt copes with, you know, emotions
04:29and world and empathy and stuff like that.
04:31And when you play the game and read the books, you find that yes,
04:35Dandelion have those comedic relief moments,
04:38but he's also a very deeply philosophical character.
04:41He was a professor at the universe in Oxford.
04:44He's very smart.
04:45And that persona that you see is just a face that he shows to the world, right?
04:51And what we wanted to do with this expansion is to show all his other faces
04:56that you never had a chance to actually see.
04:59And, you know, a single quest or two quests wouldn't be enough to show the deepness of his character.
05:05Yeah, which shows from all the ballads that he writes because, you know,
05:10a dumb like comic relief kind of character would not be able to write such poetry.
05:15Exactly.
05:16So you get to see, you know, exactly how he was able to do this,
05:21that the other facets of his personality.
05:24And we think that that is very intriguing and that is worth making a new expansion for,
05:29because we don't just want to make an expansion for the sake of making one,
05:32but we want to make it only if we have a really good story to tell
05:36that our players are going to enjoy for years to come.
05:39Yeah, and a really good reason for Geralt to go out of the retirement, you know,
05:43like Dandelion is one of the reasons when he wouldn't hesitate and he would go out.
05:48During the presentation, I've seen that the whole area is surrounded by a great mountain range.
05:54But what is Gevon doing there?
05:57That's a little Easter egg that our team put in there.
06:00And when I first noticed it was, is that the Gevon?
06:03I was like, yes, you noticed.
06:04I was like, yeah, yeah.
06:05It's amazing.
06:06We always, look, when we always, when we do levels and content into the games,
06:11we always like to lean on the real things, right?
06:16To make it more grounded.
06:18And, you know, Gevon is just a beautiful mountain range.
06:21So we thought like, hey, why this needs to be a generic mountain?
06:23Maybe let's put something that's deeply polished, you know, in ours.
06:27Maybe we could find an Eternal Fire Shrine on top then.
06:31That's a good idea. I'm going to pass it to the team.
06:33I know that this expansion is taking place after Blood and Wine, but can you tell us how many years
06:40after?
06:40We're not getting into specifics of the timeline, because there are reasons why we don't want to do this.
06:50It vastly depends on in which order you play a game, you know, if you decide quests after Blood and
06:56Wine.
06:57There would be some, because our games are non-linear, there's just so many things that the players can do.
07:03So the only thing that we do say at this moment is that basically it's Geralt coming out of their
07:10retirement.
07:10So it's after Blood and Wine.
07:12You don't have to play the expansions though, you don't have to finish them to start Songs of the Past.
07:16We highly encourage you to do so, because, you know, your choices will be acknowledged in Songs of the Past,
07:22but yeah.
07:22Many people ask, is there a chance of meeting some old friends in this new expansion?
07:27Maybe from books, maybe from the other games?
07:30There are many Yorvet fans which want him back.
07:33You can meet Roach.
07:35Okay.
07:36As you've seen.
07:36No, listen, we don't want to spoil too much about the story and any possible characters that would appear.
07:44Because if we spoil it now, then there will be no surprises later on and, you know, we don't want
07:50to get into that.
07:50I know that the chain is probably the main new thing you showed in the fighting section, but is there
07:57other new stuff like fighting styles or new skills?
08:00New skill tree, right?
08:02I mean, the rework of the skill tree, I would say.
08:06This cleans up the combat, makes it easier to navigate through the upgrades that you have.
08:15Yes.
08:16We also have the new mutant gems for Geralt that, you know, complement his adventure on the expansion.
08:24Yes.
08:24And we also have all the updates brought on with the remastered.
08:27So we have new animations and finishers and new visual improvements.
08:32So ray tracing, cuff tracing on PC.
08:36So it all looks like a modern game.
08:39Yeah.
08:39But combat wise, there are just so many little tweaks that we did that basically makes the combat more reactive,
08:50more fluent, more...
08:52You have more control over what happens to Geralt on the battlefield.
08:57And it's just more responsive.
08:59I really like it.
09:00Yeah.
09:00And you can already see it on the demo, some of those changes, you know, with the camera.
09:06Yeah, exactly.
09:06New cameras as well.
09:07The camera shows a little bit more.
09:09It's more modern.
09:10It's behaving a little bit better.
09:12So like little things that, you know, comprise the whole picture, which is way better.
09:18You also mentioned that our decisions from previous expansions and the main game can interact with this new DLC.
09:25Can people use their old saves from before the remaster?
09:28So basically what happens is that to play Songs of the Past, you have to have the remaster upgrade, right?
09:34That you will get for free.
09:35And then basically if you load your old save, it will automatically allow you to continue the game.
09:40So the only requirement to start Songs of the Past for the players is to finish the main game.
09:46Or if like you lost your saves, you can still start it from the main menu like all the other
09:51expansions.
09:52And it will simply simulate the build that you want to have, give you items and you know...
09:59Yeah, but when it comes to our design philosophy, both at CD Projekt Red and Fools Theory, we want to
10:04take players' choices into account.
10:07This is a cornerstone into how we do quest design.
10:10So when we offer non-linearity, we also consider people's choices, how to accommodate that.
10:16Yeah, so it's really important to us.
10:19So can we also expect that there will be multiple endings of the expansion?
10:24You know, I don't want to get too much into the story, but if you look historically on how CD
10:29Projekt does games
10:31and how we do RPG games in Fools Theory, I think you will get your answer.
10:36So on to the most important part of this expansion.
10:40What about Gwent?
10:41Can we expect some new tournament?
10:43Maybe a new deck?
10:44Yes.
10:45So there's 20 new cards.
10:47There's 20 new cards.
10:48We showed four of them yesterday on stream.
10:51We also teased the Goose card, which is aka Danger Chicken in our company called...
10:59It's a very fun card.
11:00It changes a lot.
11:02There will be no new decks.
11:05Those 20 cards are an addition to already pre-existing decks.
11:09But they are fun to play.
11:11They change a lot.
11:12And also a very important thing introduced with the remaster, modding tools for Gwent.
11:17So you can make your own cards now.
11:19That's exciting.
11:20Yeah, I love it.
11:21Till now, there was no Witcher 3 expansion without romances.
11:25So can we expect some more romance in the songs of the past?
11:29We don't want to spoil things, so we'll keep it, you know, for the players to discover.
11:36Like you need to discover it yourselves.
11:38I mean, we cannot confirm Northern Eye, you know.
11:41We know that in Witcher 4, City is involved with new Witcher school.
11:45Can we maybe expect some new equipment from Link's school in this DLC?
11:50I mean, we won't be talking about Witcher 4 today.
11:53I don't want to get into specifics, but you can expect new armor sets in Witcher 3, songs of the
12:00past, new swords as well.
12:04Like, you know, the full treatment that you had in the previous two expansions.
12:08You can expect similar things to happen in songs of the past.
12:12Like we're trying to build something that is on par with something that the players are used to in previous
12:19expansions.
12:19Yeah, but songs of the past is a chapter of Witcher 3, so it's part of Geralt's adventure.
12:23It's part of Wild Hunt, so that's important to remember.
12:26Can you tell us about challenges related to making completely new DLC to a game that is 11 years old?
12:33The challenges were that with songs of the past, we had a very big ambition in how to realize Latin.
12:42Because like from technological standpoint, we knew that we want to do something that will challenge the engine.
12:50And the guys from EXOFT that are handling the remaster with us.
12:54You know, in our cooperation, it's like a three-way cooperation that we're handling most of the songs of the
13:00past.
13:01They're handling most of the remaster and CD Projekt is handling their creative oversight.
13:05So all of us, when we started cooperating in this three-way cooperation,
13:11started talking on how to best realize the potential of Latin and what to do with the engine.
13:16So, you know, one of the things were obvious things like the spin already mentioned, you know,
13:21upgrading the visuals like ray tracing, path tracing, yes.
13:25But also the simple fact that Latin is such a densely populated with foliage area,
13:34riding a horse through it, like through those dense forests became a challenge.
13:38So, you know, we had to upgrade the horse riding and path handling.
13:44The other things was that when we were doing the expansion,
13:47we knew that we will need to add new Gwent cards because the players will be otherwise disappointed.
13:53So when we started digging into it, we realized that that was impossible in the engine
13:58because so many things have been hardcoded.
14:00So EXOFT was working with us on delivering the modding tools, you know,
14:07and when they delivered the modding tools for us to be able to implement new cards for Gwent,
14:12then they are now releasing the modding tools as well with the remaster.
14:17So there are little quality of life fixes that has been implemented into the engine
14:22to allow us to deliver, you know, Latin in its fullest beauty.
14:27Yeah, exactly.
14:29And there's also one big challenge that I could not talk about because I would spoil the story,
14:33but after release we can talk about it.
14:36I also noticed during the presentation that the whole game's style seemed focused
14:40around something like floral horror.
14:43There are so many flowers, trees and all that.
14:46Is that something that whole game is centered around?
14:48I wouldn't say that the whole game is centered around the flower theme,
14:54but that flower that you saw in the arena, there's a very important reason why it's there,
15:00why he gives Lila the flower at the beginning of the combat.
15:05It's a very deeply running story arc in the expansion.
15:10Yeah.
15:10So that is part of our process when we design quests to take everything into account.
15:15So the music, the environment, the art, the, you know, everything, the assets all have to tell a story
15:23and tell the story that not only the quest is telling,
15:26but that the whole expansion and the whole game is telling.
15:30Yeah.
15:30So everything needs to be cohesive and everything needs to work together rather than in a vacuum.
15:35So the quest designer who is the owner of the vision of that particular quest oversees everything that goes into
15:45that quest.
15:46And then the game director obviously makes sure that everything aligns together.
15:50So yeah.
15:52The reason why you see also so much flowers in the whole demo is, you know,
15:56because Geralt wakes up straight after Belletane.
16:00Belletane is a celebration of life and nature.
16:04So all those, you know, flower garlands that you can see,
16:07this is, this is the decorations that the whole valley is preparing in order to celebrate that.
16:13And also when we were discussing on how to best realize the potential of showing you that Latin is a
16:20land of plenty,
16:21you know, we wanted this to, to make you feel like walking through the Polish countryside in June,
16:28basically where everything blooms.
16:30You can see that poppy fields, you know, the hop fields over there.
16:33And it's, it's just, but this, all of those things are there to support the main overarching story, basically.
16:42Essentially environmental storytelling.
16:43Exactly. Show, not tell. Yeah.
16:45And beside the main story during exploration, can we expect some new kind of activities or places to find?
16:51New kind of places.
16:53I mean, the whole area of Latin is designed in a way that they, it should pick your interest in,
17:00in, in ways that,
17:01Oh, I haven't seen that yet.
17:03You know, so we were trying to deliver something fresh.
17:07As for activities that you're going to have, we're always trying to out, out to do ourselves.
17:13In this regard, we're trying to out the CD project.
17:17So, you know, what we're trying to deliver is that we know that the expectations of the players are really
17:22high
17:23because the base game was, you know, a staple market in, in gaming history.
17:27And both expansions that follow were really well received and they have amazing reviews.
17:33So we know that what we will deliver needs to hook the players so much that they want to look
17:39after, under every rock.
17:41And, you know, after in the corner.
17:42I mean, exploration is really important to how we design.
17:45This is why, you know, we have people who work on quests, people who work on the open world, right?
17:52And they, they dedicate themselves to that, to populate it and make sure that it's full of things to find.
17:57But yeah, as, as Kuba said, like outdoing ourselves is part of our design philosophy.
18:02And it's important to us to not rest on our laurels, but to actually try and push the craft of
18:10design with each game that we make.
18:12In case of outdoing yourself, I noticed that many scenes we've seen were slightly more cinematic in comparison to previous
18:19expansions and base game.
18:21Can we expect that there are many more of these kind of scenes like in Dandelion's family's residence?
18:27Yeah, well, you know, when we're doing an expansion 11 years after, after the release of the original game, it
18:35stands to reason that we want to deliver something that feels current, right?
18:39Like video games made significant progress on how they implemented and what you can expect from them.
18:47So when we started working on songs of the past, we knew that we want to, you know, build on
18:52the experience that both we at Fools Theory for our previous games gained and what CD Projekt also learned from,
19:00you know, doing the expansions, doing cyberpunk, etc.
19:04So it wouldn't be reasonable to dump it down basically.
19:10So it looks a little bit like retro, like an 11 year old game.
19:15So long story short, yes. And thank you for noticing.
19:19Yeah.
19:19You saw in the demo scenes are an integral part of telling the story because there were so many things
19:26that you saw that were just expressions, animations that were not dialogue.
19:30So a lot of things can be told through cinematic design and our cinematic designers are artists, a lot of
19:36them work in movies.
19:38So they have that kind of experience and they bring it along in games to make sure that our scenes
19:42look really nice and they can tell the story that we're trying to tell in the best way possible.
19:48Yep.
19:48During the presentation, we've also seen some new monsters.
19:52We know that monsters from previous games and previous expansions were heavily inspired by some mythology.
19:58What was the inspiration this time?
20:00The Thornbloom inspiration came from the story of the Garden of Thorns itself, but I don't want to get into
20:07that because that's for the players to discover.
20:10The Swarmions is that we knew that we wanted to have a new cannon fodder monster, so to say, right?
20:20And then like, but Swarmions that you saw in the demo are not the only representative of this type of
20:27monsters.
20:28We also teased the Swarm Mother yesterday on stream.
20:32So go and check that out.
20:33She's really cool.
20:35So, but coming back to your question is that we knew that we wanted to have a new cannon fodder
20:39monster and we started talking on, okay, so what kind of monster can be attracted to this area?
20:45What kind of monster lives in this part of Eredenia, right?
20:48And then we started talking about, okay, so what do they produce there?
20:51They have like sheep, the hop fields, right?
20:54They have a lot of honey and that got us thinking like, okay, honey.
20:57And then we have bees.
21:00So the Swarmions are the monsters that are attracted to the honey.
21:05If you dig really, really deeply, Swarmions are from the family of monsters that were actually introduced in other CD
21:16project products.
21:17So they have been already out there.
21:20We just took them and applied this one branch of monsters to live in this area.
21:28So they are unique to The Witcher 3 and they have their own attacks.
21:31They have the rigging, you know, this is a full blown built from ground up monster.
21:37But we selected him because he just made sense in terms of the region and how the community looks over
21:44there.
21:44And to further show how everything is connected, the Swarmions were great with the chain.
21:49So you can use it to do crowd control and, you know, easily get rid of them when they're trying
21:55to overwhelm you as a player.
21:57Yeah, because that was the other angle, exactly.
21:59We consider everything.
22:01So we consider the background of the monster, but then we think, how can we use this with the weapons
22:06that we have, right?
22:07So it all complements each other in that way.
22:09Yeah, exactly.
22:10So, you know, Swarmions, they swarm you.
22:13There's a lot of them.
22:14And when we started talking like, okay, what kind of tools of crowd control you have?
22:18And then the chain became an obvious answer that, you know, you can just swing around and make a little
22:24bit of a space or drag somebody to you to single him out of the group.
22:29And switching from monsters to the family of Dandelion.
22:32We meet his cousin, we meet this grandma, who is the head of the whole family.
22:37Will we meet also other relatives of Dandelion?
22:40Yes.
22:41There's also Gustav.
22:41You don't see him in the demo.
22:43We talked about him on the stream last night as well a little bit.
22:47Gustav is Dandelion's brother.
22:48He's the down-to-earth brother.
22:52He was groomed to be the heir of Lettenhofer since childhood.
22:56He runs the estate and knows everything about the estate.
23:00You know, about the horse breeding, about the hop fields, about the Barragaard production.
23:04He's a very serious and focused person.
23:07He loves his brother deeply, but, you know, because of all the responsibilities that he has been trained since his
23:14childhood, he just doesn't have time for Dandelion's shenanigans, you know, to take part in them.
23:19So, yeah, you will meet him.
23:22And I can't wait for the players to do that.
23:25Yeah, it's very important to us to tie in the topic of family, which goes as far back as to
23:33Witcher 3, where, you know, you have Geralt and his family with Ciri, with Yennefer.
23:39So, in this expansion, you get to see another side of family and this time Dandelion's family, his relationships with
23:47his loved ones, how they interact with each other, how that shaped who Dandelion is.
23:51Can you tell us how long Songs of the Past will be? Is it similar to other Witcher 3 expansions?
23:57Taking gameplay hours is tricky in an open world game, because it depends vastly on what kind of player you
24:04are, you know.
24:05If you're doing, like, main story, side stories, if you reload to see the branches, because we love non-linear
24:10quests.
24:12We'd rather say that in terms of size, it's on par, right, with, like, Hearts of Dawn and Blood and
24:18War.
24:18I mean, so, players can expect a similar experience to our other expansions.
24:24Blood and Wine was this great closure for Geralt, and this expansion is taking him out of retirement.
24:29Will this be some kind of a new beginning for him?
24:32Oh, that was part of the story too much, I cannot say about it.
24:35What we can say is that we, it was a question that we considered very early on what it would
24:41take to take Geralt out of retirement, and we didn't want that to be any kind of frivolous reason.
24:47It had to be something important, and it had to be a story that we had to tell, right?
24:52And Dandelion's story was one of those.
24:54We wanted him to have his story expanded.
24:58We wanted to be able to, for players to be able to explore his character, because he was so important
25:03to Geralt in the books, and we wanted to honor that.
25:05To be honest.
25:06To be honest you well came from time since the soil Gillinas has been built within the authors.
25:06We wanted to talk to him with a celebrity Dandelion's story, and we wanted to try harder for him to
25:06do.
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