Good things come to those who wait, a trite saying goes, and my, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt certainly does look good. Which is why the open-world fantasy RPG is being delayed from its planned 2014 launch, until February 2015. Still, at least we can be fairly confident that at least one Witcher game will launch all shiny and lovely, rather than relying on post-release polish.
“A project this vast and complex would inevitably require special care in its final stages, manual fine-tuning of many details, thorough testing time and again,” CD Projekt said in an open letter released today.
“We recently reexamined what we had achieved thus far, and faced a choice about the game’s final release date. The decision we made was difficult, thoroughly considered, and ultimately clear and obvious. We could have released the game towards the end of this year as we had initially planned. Yet we concluded that a few additional months will let us achieve the quality that will satisfy us, the quality gamers expect from us.”
As keen as I am to play it, I’ll happily wait. CD Projekt RED’s first Witcher game only really became the celebrated game it is now after a hefty patch, and the sequel was patched a fair bit to make up for shortcomings too. If The Witcher 3 is to cap off this grand story, and more ambitiously than ever, it’d be nice to have it right on the first go.
CD Projekt also directed a little towards its shareholders, saying “We firmly believe that quality–more than any other factor–determines a game’s success, and that the decision we have made is thus equally valid in business terms.” Oh, CD Projekt is so dreamy!
