The Witcher series will go down as one of the best of the recent decade, boasting two Game of the Year games in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (as well as numerous great DLC). But while Geralt’s tale may have ended, there is still an interesting story to be told regarding the behind-the-scenes of arguably the most important game in the series, Witcher 1.
While the first installment may have had far more issues than the most recent two, it served as the foundation for them, and is the reason they exist. Now, a full-length documentary has been made surrounding the development of the first game, titled The White Wolf.
White Wolf was made by YouTube documentary crew Arhn.EU, Overall, it clocks in at about 2 hours long and is presented entirely in polish, featuring English subtitles. The decision to do the film in polish comes not only from The Witchers novel routes, as it was originally written about Polish folk tales by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, but also as it is the and documentary crews native tongue
The documentary gives not only an in depth look into the trials and tribulations of making a Witcher game, but highlights the difficulties of making a video game back in the early 2000’s, and how it attributed to the criticism The Witcher 1 faces in comparison to the other two. One example comes in the form of how they wrote dialogue for the game.
“We were to write dialogues. As we all know, in a video you can’t just write them down in paper form or even as a word document because in a role playing game or PC RPG the conversations are complex. The lines you see change. The Players get to choose. The conversations are split into a decision tree.”
White Wolf will provide an interesting introspective into anyone who has an interest in both The Witcher series and video game design, despite the language barrier.
If the polish language overlayed with English subtitles is too much to bear, fear not, for NoClip has their own Witcher documentary in the works. Be forewarned though, as while Danny O’Dwyer and companies film will also be about The Witcher franchise, it isn’t likely to provide the same incite, since it spans the entire series, not just The Witcher 1.
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