Ahead of The Witcher 1 remake, OG RPG story lead reveals that ending cutscene was created not "really involving the story team," which was "a mistake"

The whole reason The Witcher 2 goes off in a decidedly more political direction is because someone high up at developer CD Projekt Red wanted the first Witcher to have one more final ending cutscene and chose to have one made without much involvement from the studio's narrative team, according to original lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec.

Ganszyniec recently wrapped up his first playthrough of the original Witcher in about 20 years on YouTube, a 26-video series that yielded all sorts of interesting development insights, and the latest video sheds new light on how the game's final cutscene came to be.

"That's where we wanted the game to end, like with an open question and open future. But while we were finishing the game, someone decided, like the board decided or [Michał Kiciński, CD Projekt Red co-founder], that we needed an animated outro of the game," said Ganszyniec.

Based on the fantasy novel series of the same name by Andrzej Sapkowsk, The Witcher series has always had political intrigue bubbling beneath the surface from the first game, but it wasn't a driving force for the plot until the second game, when Geralt is framed for regicide. Apparently, the final scene of The Witcher 1 where Geralt fights off Foltest's would-be assassin wasn't the intended original ending, and set the story off on a completely different course that's much less intimate than the first game.