A hard road to success
the saga of The Witcher goes back to the year 1986, when Andrzej Sapkowski published in a Polish magazine what will be known as The Wizard, Geralt of Rivia’s first foray into a novel, practically 20 years before a video game studio, also from Poland, saw it feasible to bring the adventures of that character to computers. We are talking about CD Projekt RED and it will not be until 2007 that they will make their idea a reality to transform this little story of witchcraft and swords into a world icon. Overall, it is not that the rights cost them too much since for just $9,500 they were able to get hold of the story to start working.
The success of the franchise has been progressive since that first title, although the real thing!boom! occurred with the arrival of The Witcher III Wild Hunt: it is, without a doubt, the title with which CD Projekt RED achieves its maturity, leaving behind the concept and execution failures of the previous ones (especially the first one), which does not reach the levels reached by the third of the saga. Even so, we cannot ignore The Witcher 2 Assassins Of Kings, since it will mean a huge leap in quality in the future of a character who is now practically recognized throughout the planet.
The games in the series
These are all the games that currently make up the Witcher saga.
The Witchers (2007)
Released exclusively for PC, The Witcher It is a game that went practically unnoticed by most players, especially if we take into account that in those years PS3 and Xbox 360 were already at odds stealing all the prominence they could from computers. This game, seen over the years, looks worse graphically (although the Enhanced Edition of 2008 improved things somewhat) than was perceived then and its strong point was not so much in the technical aspect as in the conceptual and the story and above all its portentous RPG component (alchemy, a marvel). The books provided a great background for our adventures but where he stood out the most was in Geralt’s control: The Witcher It was one of the first games to force us to measure each blow with the sword to make it at the right time or, otherwise, the enemy would reach us. That simple detail marked many gamers who quickly elevated it to their particular top of the best games of that year. Although it was not a resounding success, it did not prevent the second part of it from coming.
The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings (2011)
Without a doubt, it is the second installment of The Witcher the one that already marks the good way of the series. We are not facing a sandbox still but many mechanics are outlined that we will see later. Even so, what leaves this marvel marked is its enormous graphic leap in just four years. The story takes on more weight, the cinematographic sequences are extraordinary, with a lot of narrative power, and the game mechanics are complicated. CD Projekt RED draws the attention of the industry with this title and quickly Microsoft wants its Xbox 360 to have a version, which it will achieve in 2012. PS3, however, will be left with the desire since the project to launch a port for the Sony machine will never materialize.
as we say, The Witcher 2 It represents the qualitative leap that the franchise needed to become one of the most important in the sector, although there is an event that greatly helps its popularization a few years later: the announcement of The Witcher III as cross-platform title for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. That will trigger the hype and turn CD Projekt RED into the company it is today (despite its blunders with Cyberpunk 2077), even revaluing all his previous work.
The Witcher III Wild Hunt (2015)
And here we come to the real must have of the franchise created 30 years ago by Andrzej Sapkowski, with a Geralt of Rivia accessing an incredible universe sandbox where a good part of the original stories intersect. Heroes, villains, mythologies, settings that will be familiar and the underpinning of those characters that we all instantly recognize: Ciri, Yennefer, Vilgefortz or Triss. Despite the delays, The Witcher III Wild Hunt It is one of the most resounding successes of recent years, which has seen countless versions arrive, including an extraordinary one for Nintendo Switch. As if that were not enough and in addition to the expansions heart of stone and blood and winewill have a technical update to take advantage of the potential of PS5 and Xbox Series X | S completely free for those who have the game for the last generation and, as if that were not enough, new DLC based on the Netflix series.
At the moment no new forays into the franchise have been announced with a hypothetical The Witcher IV, that we have no doubt will come, but the problems of CD Projekt RED trying to fix the mess of Cyberpunk 2077 Surely they have delayed all the dates. Be that as it may, the success of the Netflix series predicts that we will have video games for a while and that Geralt of Rivia will continue with us for a few more decades.
Geralt and his passion for cards and mobiles
The latest releases related to The Witcher They are not in the form of a third-person RPG, but more of a card game: Gwent The Witcher Card Game in 2016 and Thronebreaker The Witcher Tales in 2018 they carried the formula Heartstone from Blizzard to the wizard universe with the intention of reaching similar heights of success. Even so, These are two very interesting developments that we can download for free in digital format and, later, improve our decks with an envelope purchase system. In these decks all the characters, enemies, powers and objects of the saga are concentrated to replicate the combats in a fun coming and going of animations taken from the original games. In both cases you have versions available on both PC and PS4 and Xbox One.
Finally, CD Projekt RED wanted to try their luck with mobiles and last year, in 2021, launched The Witcher Monster Slayer for iOS and Android. A development adapted to the vertical format of the screen of our smartphone that simply allows us to fight against monsters that we must kill with swords at the right time (touching the screen). Despite its simplicity, it’s a lot of fun, especially for quick games when we’re on the bus or walking down the street (watching where we’re going, of course). It’s free and it’s sure to help you stay connected to the franchise while the Poles at CD Projekt RED decide to develop a new The Witcher.
The next The Witcher 4
The Polish studio has announced that development has begun on the next installment in the saga, confirming that they will use the engine Unreal Engine 5 to give life to this new saga that will bring the new adventures of Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels. Unfortunately this is just the first stone in a majestic project that absolutely nothing is known about yet, so don’t expect to know a release date right away.
With an image and a link to the official website, the company has announced the good news through social networks, indicating that they will leave the REDengine engine (which currently gives life to Cyberpunk 207 and its expansion) to make way for the amazing Unreal Engine. 5. We’ll see how it all looks, but we imagine that we will have a generation gap important.
