
What if Vizima opened up into one huge world space, with buildings that reflect Temeria's culture and history? It seemed like the obvious ‘good’ choice. I personally found the decision to side with Abigail far too easy because the stakes hadn’t been raised high enough – or even made fully clear, for that matter. A major questline culminates in the choice to either side with a persecuted witch called Abigail, or let a mob of angry townsfolk she’s potentially wronged lynch her. Depending on how much CDPR would be prepared to change, a remake could even raise some quests from mediocre to classic.įor example, there’s room for a real flashpoint in The Witcher’s first chapter. None of it is on par with The Witcher 3, but the foundations are solid for a remake. While at a glance it’s a standard story about chasing bad guys across the world, it’s peppered with political intrigue, there are plenty of beasties to learn about (and then kill), and no shortage of the moral quagmires for which the series has become known. We encounter characters that have since become firm favourites, like Dandelion, Zoltan, Triss, and Vesemir (though no Yennefer, sob).

This quest takes Geralt across the Northern Realms, from Kaer Morhen to Vizima, and eventually to the distant village of Murky Waters.

Long story short, Kaer Morhen is pillaged by a group called the Salamandra, who steal its witcher-making secrets, so Geralt – who's suffering from amnesia – and his pals split up to track them down. When everything else threatened to bog the game down, the narrative and worldbuilding powered me through to the end credits. This got me thinking – what if CD Projekt Red did exactly that? How would a Witcher 1 remake look in 2021?

With a generous dose of TLC to bring it up to the standards of a modern game, it would make for a great adventure, especially for the 50 million-odd Witcher fans who haven't had a major new game to play in this influential series since 2016. While the combat is jarring, there's plenty of promise in its story. I played The Witcher for the first time last year (thank you, pandemic backlog).

It's clunky even by 2007 standards, with strange, point-and-click combat, shallow characters and dialogue, and very little shared DNA with its more successful sequels.
