7 de março de 2013

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: As escolhas narrativas e o futuro dos RPG

Segunda parte da entrevista de Nathan Grayson do Rock, Paper, Shotgun a Jakub Rokosz e Michal Platkow-Gilewski, da CD Projekt Red, sobre The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Desta vez, falou-se da evolução dos sistemas de combate, das escolhas narrativas e do seu funcionamento em open world, dos relacionamentos do protagonista com outras personagens e do futuro do formato - numa altura em que a produtora está envolvida em dois projectos de grandes dimensões (o segundo é Cyberpunk 2077). Dois destaques: 


RPS: In The Witcher 2, the ramifications of choices were often really, groundbreakingly huge. But what about in Witcher 3? How big will the changes be, based on your choices? I mean, I doubt you can pull anything like Witcher 2′s mid-game twist for obvious reasons.

Michał Platkow-Gilewski: Okay, first of all, it’s impossible to incorporate something like what we did in The Witcher 2. We were really happy about that experiment, but in the open-world environment, we can’t hide a huge part of the world just because you made a different choice at a given moment in time. Something like creating two totally separate second acts would be impossible here. So we had to change our approach. But we wanted to keep serious consequences for significant choices.

Jakub Rokosz: It’s pretty much like that. You have important choices, and a lot of people are counting on you to make the right one, but you never know which choice is the right one.

Michał Platkow-Gilewski: If you make a wrong one, maybe a lot of people will die somewhere.

(...)

RPS: RPGs are moving in a lot of different directions, I think. One of them is obviously bigger open worlds and things like that. But where do you want to see RPGs end up? For you, what is the definition of an RPG? Are you afraid that, especially with the genre being sort of absorbed into other genres, that could go away?

Jakub Rokosz: For me, I’m a quest designer, so I’m a bit twisted to that side. But the most important thing in role-playing games is story and narrative. It always resembles, for me, the game master’s role in computer RPGs. The narrative works in the same way that a game master would work in a pen-and-paper RPG. It sets the mood, it tells you the story, it creates the mood around you, it lays out all that stuff. For me, personally, it’s all about the story. I would like to be involved in that way – making more awesome, non-linear, strongly narrative-based games.

Michał Platkow-Gilewski: From my perspective, I’m an avid pen-and-paper player, and I’ve had the great chance to play with an absolutely wonderful game master for 20 years now. For me, the definition of an RPG, a computer RPG, is similar to a pen-and-paper RPG. What it means to me is that you can do whatever you want, and the world adapts to your choices. I can go left, I can go right, and there will be adventure waiting for me on either side of the world. I can play a role in this world. I can influence it somehow. I’m not led to go a little bit left and do this or that. I’m free to play my role. I would love to play games like that. I think it’s close to what we’re doing right now. You’re playing the role of Geralt of Rivia. We give you the tools to play the role of the Witcher.

Esta entrevista pode ser lida na íntegra aqui e aqui.

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