Looking for proof of cut Novigrad attack

[minicrom]

Hello everyone.

I am currently doing a research which involves The Witcher serie. To support one of my ideas I would like to know if it exists a way to confirm that it was really planed at some point to make the Wild Hunt attacks Novigrad and that a damaged version of the city was worked on. I found a 2015 post on reddit with pictures of the main quest back then but I have no way to be sure of their authenticity. Would there be a way? I also heard of comments from CDPR found in the game files and among them some are mentionning Novigrad attack. That would be a better source. Anyone can help me with this? Of course if someone at CDPR would agree to speak with me about how they manage to make those kind of decisions in a huge game developpement I would be even happier. Never hurt to ask.

I must add that my research does not intend to make a judgment about thoses cuts. It's only intended to get a better understanding of how the decision making is done in a situation where games developpers have to go back on something they wanted to originally do.

In any case, thank you for taking the time to read my request.

Post automatically merged: Aug 24, 2018

Nevermind. I found that mister Michal Platkow-Gilewski confirmed they were authentic. I am still very interested into the reason of those changes. So if someone at CDPR has the liberty to discuss it I would be really greatfull.

 

[Mat.R]

Was the attack on Novigrad cut during design or development? If development there must be some unused assets in the code. I think I can guess the last chapter was moved to the middle of nowhere to spare them from messing with the city too much. Clearly they liked the idea though, and used it in Blood and Wine.

 

[minicrom]

I'd like to know that indeed. To which point they changed the idea. It would be so interesting. I am sure it would tell a lot about game developpement and make a fantastic info.

 

[sv3672]

It would probably be best to ask @Shavod, who is likely the most familiar with this kind of topic, or search for the infamous documents yourself (I can confirm they are still around, but will not link to them).

 

[Shavod]

Nevermind. I found that mister Michal Platkow-Gilewski confirmed they were authentic. I am still very interested into the reason of those changes. So if someone at CDPR has the liberty to discuss it I would be really greatfull.

I met the developers and Konrad Tomaszkiewicz said, regarding the originally planned version of the final battle in Novigrad, it all ultimately came down to technical difficulties. They were just unable to optimize this whole sequence properly due to stuff like all the fire in the city and crowds of NPC's running in fear, resulting in crazy framerate drops, making this part unplayable. So in the end they replaced it with the final battle at Skellige (scenes with Caranthir, with the exception of location and removal of Ciri ice skating through that fight, remained pretty much unchanged). By the time Blood and Wine came out, they already improved their development tools and got better in utilizing them, which allowed them to make something similar in form of vampire attack in Beauclair, which gives a pretty good idea of what they were going for originally.

 

[minicrom]

Thank you very much for this answer !