Close call: The first Witcher game almost didn’t star Geralt

The Witcher as we know it might not exist today if not for a decision made a few years into the development of the original game. During a developer presentation at WitcherCon, CD Projekt Red quest designers Phillipp Weber and Błażej Augustynek revealed that Geralt wasn’t intended to be the star of the series at the start. 

Early on in The Witcher’s development, CD Projekt Red was designing the game around player-created characters, hewing closer to the norm for RPGs at the time. Although Geralt is the central figure in the book series the game is based on, there are plenty of far flung lands and a complex history to pull from, so it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to present a game from a new perspective.