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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is almost 10 years old, but there is still plenty to uncover, especially from its early development. Thankfully, fans are persistent and managed to datamine so much information that it takes 585 pages to uncover in the first volume only.
Modders Moonknight, Ferroxius, Crygreg, and Glassfish achieved a truly fantastic feat by collecting everything they learned and showing what could have been to anyone willing to read. The main story of the 2012 prototype alone was 150 hours long – it's about 3 times longer than what we got in the end.
That version was subtitled A Time of Sword and Axe, not Wild Hunt, and had significant differences compared to the final version. For example, it didn't have Gwent (which is just criminal) and featured a bunch of mini-games instead.
"Alongside ones featured in The Witcher 2 (Dice and arm wrestling), two new minigames were introduced. The first was an axe throwing minigame similar to Knife Throwing in The Witcher 2. The second was a “Drinking Minigame”, in this game players would have to “outdrink” their opponent by playing cards that corresponded with how much Geralt or the opponent must drink."
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As PC Gamer noted, this version had a VATS-like system letting you target opponents' weak points, the return of Iorveth, lots of traveling between Velen, Skellige, and Novigrad, a harder choice between Yennefer or Triss as it would remove the rejected woman from the final third of the game, and, curiously, a crossover with Cyberpunk 2077.
Geralt and Avallac'h enter a portal and find themselves in Night City.
"The following dialogue plays after arriving:
Geralt: What... What is this place? Is this the afterlife?
Avallac'h: No. Just another of the realities the Spiral leads through... Technologically advanced, but broken. Dying.
Geralt: Disgusting. This stench, noise... How can you live here?!
Avallac'h: You should know better. This world is inhabited by humans, not elves."
This treasure trove was created thanks to CD PROJEKT's REDkit modding tools, as the volume's creators mention in the "book."
"The big breakthrough occurred in 2024 when CD Projekt RED released RedKit for The Witcher 3. Included with this development kit was a string database, containing almost every single line of text that was written between the earliest and latest point in Witcher 3's development. From this database, we collectively worked to translate the data into a tangible synopsis that makes up the bulk of these documents."
CD PROJEKT RED
CD PROJEKT RED
If you love The Witcher 3, this is a must-read. It has the quests' details, their endings, concept art, and so much more, and this is just the beginning, there are at least 3 volumes planned. From what I've seen, the ending of the game was darker than what we have now.
No spoilers, so check out the file here and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
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