I cried when Vesemir passed away in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt from 2015. Even though I knew very little about the games or the books prior to playing the third installment of this legendary RPG trilogy, the moment my little band of misfit heroes lost a crucial member of their new family was too much to contain it all. It turns out that CD Projekt Red struggled with whether to murder this guy or not. The quest’s director, Pawe Sasko, recently discussed how Vesemir’s death was both heartbreaking and essential for the narrative’s weight and urgency.
The Witcher video games march to the beat of their own narrative drum and are based on a series of novels by author Andrzej Sapkowsi. While the games are set after the books’ conclusion, the decisions CD Projekt Red made for these characters were entirely driven by their own creative instincts. After the second act of the game, a siege on the Kaer Mohren witcher training grounds results in the terrible death of Geralt’s mentor. It’s an impactful moment because it reminds the remaining characters of their mortality, which makes them more vulnerable. That was a difficult decision, but CD Projekt Red claims that it was necessary to give Ciri, Geralt’s ward and essentially adopted daughter, the drive to confront the game’s enemies.
Quest director Pawe Sasko went into detail on the studio’s challenging choice to take off Vesemir, a character crucial to the games and literature that served as inspiration, during a talk at this year’s Game Development Conference in San Francisco. That all has to do with inspiring Ciri to engage in the Wild Hunt, and it serves as the ideal illustration of how masterfully The Witcher games tackle the themes of Sapkowski’s world. When Sasko killed Vesemir, he said:
Ciri needed to decide for herself that she would no longer be hunted. She intends to become a hunter. She intends to pursue the Wild Hunt. But in order to accomplish that, I needed a real incident to shake her to the core. At that point, I suggested that our writing team murder Vesemir.
Given the setting of The Witcher, take into account the language used here. The story frequently considers what it means to be a hunter in a grim fantasy setting. A major conflict in many of the quests and the main story concerns who pursues what and why—and who the real monsters of this world are. Ciri’s designation as a “witcher” also differs from that of Geralt and other witchers in that it is indirect. Hence, it is simply lyrical to create a scene in which Ciri feels the want to “hunt,” but not because the world requires it of her, but rather because she has a strong desire to retaliate against the real monsters of the world.
It’s difficult to dispute how significant of a turning point that character death is, and it serves as a reminder—game creators, take note—of how the death of a character may open up compelling narrative possibilities. On April 14, individuals with passes should be able to watch the video of this GDC session titled “10 Important Quest Design Lessons From The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077” in the GDC Vault.