The Witcher 3 promises '36 world states' in trilogy finale

"There will be 36 different endings," Adam Badowski, managing director of CD Projekt RED, said about the upcoming Witcher 3.

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"There will be 36 different endings," Adam Badowski, managing director of CD Projekt RED, said about the upcoming Witcher 3. But perhaps that wasn't entirely accurate. Michal Platkow-Gileswki clarifies that the number refers to different "world states." The end result is three different playable "epilogues."

With the end of The Witcher trilogy promising to offer resolution for decisions made across all three games, CDPR has quite a lot on their plate, with about 300 "smaller changes" being visible in the finale.

Of course, big numbers may be impressive, but are meaningless if implemented in a forced way. However, CDPR promises that "we didn't spend time on inventing endings." Badowski told Polygon that "we have a lot of things to summarize... it was just the consequence of those choices."

"We didn't mean to develop something special for the endings, it's a natural consequence of the story line. The story has hundreds of different branches and sub plots. We have to just sum all of those elements up in the epilogues."

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    March 26, 2013 10:45 AM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, The Witcher 3 promises '36 world states' in trilogy finale.

    "There will be 36 different endings," Adam Badowski, managing director of CD Projekt RED, said about the upcoming Witcher 3.

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      March 26, 2013 10:46 AM

      A red ending, a blue ending, a green ending, an orange ending, a purple ending.... etc.

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        March 26, 2013 10:49 AM

        ending 24: geralt and siegfried highfive; geralt has contracted swamp ass
        ending 25: geralt and iorveth fistbump then slap asses

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      March 26, 2013 10:54 AM

      I wish game developers would stop saying shit like this. All it ever does is blow up in their faces when they fail to deliver, or deliver less than people imagined when they started hyping things up.

      I guarantee "36 endings" is more like a couple different endings with some varied states that occur based on things you do to create 36 "different" endings when in reality they're just varied bits for a few major plot elements.

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        March 26, 2013 11:43 AM

        You would be mad if you only got six distinct different endings, and the rest were just variations of those?

        I would take that situation, to be honest.

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        March 26, 2013 2:32 PM

        Honestly I know most people will disagree and want something higher fidelity, but I'm fine even with stuff like the original fallout games did; you get a little epilogue about what happened to each area (or character, or relevant detail) and don't need to necessarily stitch them together.

        Of course, this can have kind of funny, clashing results.

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          March 27, 2013 7:03 AM

          Fallout and Fallout 2 had amazing epilogues.

          I'm often amused when developers say their game will have X endings, but they're counting every possible combination of smaller end components as a whole new ending. If you applied the same math to Fallout 2, I believe there are millions of possible endings (someone at NMA did the math years ago, I have never confirmed it).

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      March 26, 2013 10:59 AM

      "12 of those 36 endings will only be available via DLC. And 4 of those 12 will be linked exclusively to the Witcher 3 Season Pass."

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        March 26, 2013 11:28 AM

        EA Presents The Witcher 3

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          March 26, 2013 1:29 PM

          he won't get to any endings. too much TRAFFIC. loloolol

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        March 26, 2013 11:36 AM

        Well all their past DLC was free so who cares?

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          March 26, 2013 1:20 PM

          "Consumers who choose to pre-order from GameStop will receive a code for additional in-store credit toward their next purchase upon reaching the game's climactic finale in lieu of an actual ending."

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        March 26, 2013 1:38 PM

        This isn't EA. Witcher 1 and 2 have absolutely zero paid DLC. If you bought them through GOG.com, they also have no DRM.

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      March 26, 2013 11:02 AM

      I don't know that anyone SHOULD read into what has been said. That would be their problem.
      36 endings, would mean a separate bluray or DVD full of nothing but outcomes. As we all know this is horse-shit.
      Play the game and read what happens at the end. I don't see why this is a big deal, like that whole Mass Effect thing. ZZzz.

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        March 26, 2013 11:22 AM

        I built up a huge ass fleet at the end and when Star Child shows up I wanted to tell it to piss off like Captain Sheridan does in Babylon 5. However that wasn't even an option when I beat the game. I decided to do a 180 and walk away from the choices given to me because it felt obvious the best choice was no choice. As I walked away the game loads leading me to think it was a choice only after it loads it puts me back in front of the choices. Only I didn't realize that there were the two steps to the side so I assumed the choice would be made after I jump in the middle which turned out to be the Green choice which was my last choice of the three presented.

        When the DLC came out I went with my original choice only to see it was like the worst choice and would have been nice if that fleet I built was enough to save the day by the skin of one's teeth.

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          March 26, 2013 1:55 PM

          Your story is remarkably similar to my own.

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        March 26, 2013 5:11 PM

        You won't need a separate blu-ray of storage because they most likely won't be creating long pre-rendered videos with 36 different variations. Expect many slightly differing dialogue summaries with flashes of art based on the events and choices that came before. Like the Witcher 2's endings.

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      March 26, 2013 11:03 AM

      Damn, we are all cynical as hell.

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        March 26, 2013 11:09 AM

        fool me once, i'll stab you in the eye.

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        March 26, 2013 2:00 PM

        ea/bioware ruined it for everyone but most in the thread are joking; anyone who played the witcher games knows that the dev is good for it. the witcher series is the one rpg series where choice and consequence are actually relevant to the game mechanics and narrative in a meaningful and rewarding way.

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      March 26, 2013 11:06 AM

      I am confident about this, as it's CdProjekt, not Bioware.

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      March 26, 2013 11:16 AM

      The ending to Fallout 3 was such garbage too speaking of "multiple endings". It was just different cinematic clips spliced together and worse was how Ron Perlman gets upset with you if you didn't sacrifice yourself at the end.

      Another game with a terrible multiple ending(s) was Army of Two 2 where you either A) Kill your partner, save the city, and blame society for it or B) Kill the bad guy, save your partner and the city, and blame society for creating the bad guy in the first place. There were a bunch of random choices peppered in the campaign too like Free the Tiger, it kills a robber you never encounter, or Kill the Tiger, Robber gets away with crime; Tell kid to stop being a hero, kid gets pissed and lives or tell kid to help, and he is happy but gets shot by a sniper.

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      March 26, 2013 11:40 AM

      It's all based on how many baby geralts there are running around.

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      March 26, 2013 1:48 PM

      Did anyone get the T-Shirt they promised for seeing all the endings of 2?

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      March 26, 2013 2:15 PM

      man i just cannot get into witcher 2 I'm in the first town, and its just... not compelling :(

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        March 26, 2013 2:19 PM

        kill yourself right now

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        March 26, 2013 2:19 PM

        [deleted]

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        March 26, 2013 2:31 PM

        That was me with the first one. Combat was clunky too.

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        March 26, 2013 2:33 PM

        you gotta turn it to easy mode. I haven't finished either, might be like 4 hours in. it's like EvE online with magic and swords. holyshitwtfcomplicated.

        THIS RUNE COUNTERS THAT ENEMY MOVE BUT YOU NEED TO INVOKE THIS OTHER RUNE BEFORE FIGHTING TO THEN LAUNCH A DIFFERENT RUNE

        O_O

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        March 26, 2013 3:34 PM

        in this subthread people who don't know what the fuck is up

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        March 26, 2013 3:35 PM

        I can't get into it because it runs like absolute crap on my MBP. Even on low settings :(

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        March 26, 2013 3:38 PM

        Funny enough, the hardest part of that game is the whole "flashback" intro sequences. Easy is a lot more fun, Hard and higher is for sadistic people who like their challenges to be "Geralt is a 90 pound weakling"

        Seriously, I under the concept of a challenge. But not being at least a little bad-ass breaks the character experience. And the controls are pretty damn difficult to master at those higher levels.

        Gothic 2 had the best system for this, you were totally weak to start but your character got better and you got used to the controls and it felt like learning skill and getting stronger. Nothing quite matches that experience.

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          March 26, 2013 5:00 PM

          It's really not that hard, people just have the attention spans of gnats and refuse to put even a tiny bit of time into learning combat mechanics. Also some people prefer a bit of a challenge, that doesn't change the experience of being a 'badass' at all.

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          March 26, 2013 5:12 PM

          Good lord you guys are just bad at games.

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          March 27, 2013 6:08 AM

          [deleted]

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      March 26, 2013 4:30 PM

      if you multiply all the binary endings for individual characters in Stalker CoP, you're probably north of 36 :)

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