In a 3-hour long video, we get to see what The Witcher 3 looked like before CD Projekt RED (CDPR) made some changes to it before its release in 2015.

Moonknight, Ferroxius, Crygreg and Glassfish released the first part of What Lies Unseen. This series explores the development history and evolution of The Witcher 3 and is the basis for the video below. Some big changes have been made! The game was originally subtitled A Time of Sword and Axe instead of The Wild Hunt. A VATS-like focus system was added to target the weak points of the monsters.

There was a lot more traveling between Velen, Skellige, and Novigrad, and the storylines and characters that were more involved in the final version were spread out over several acts. The choice between Yennefer and Triss meant that the other sorceress was absent from the last third of the game. Iorveth from The Witcher 2 also appeared and played an important role. There was a multi-part raid mission in Novigrad that required allies (similar to the Siege of Kaer Morhen). The Bloody Baron storyline was quite different and continued to the end of the game. The ending was more ambiguous and melancholic. Geralt and Avallac’h were teleported to Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City (!) during a mission, and the game had no Gwent, returning instead to the arm wrestling and dice poker known from the first two episodes.No joke: there was a mission that would essentially set up CDPR’s next game, so the Polish studio could hype the audience. Anyway, modders found all this thanks to the REDkit modding toolkit:

The game was huge: it would have taken 150 hours (!!!) to play through, and that’s just for the main missions! The serial killer mission in Novigrad would have revealed a secret society of vampires (a la Vampire: The Masquerade), and the killer would have been a member of it, with the other vampires helping out. Shani from the first episode would have appeared, and all of this would have been revisited in The Witcher 3 DLC. The endings would also have been much darker. Keeping Ciri alive would have kept the power that ate the world for breakfast alive, and the final boss would have been a betrayed Avallac’h. The ending for the Empress of Nilfgaard was completely different, but the tone was the same. Ciri’s Vajak ending would have been about her becoming disillusioned with the monster hunt, feeling guilty about Avallac’h’s death, and deciding to travel the planes to find another way to stop it.

That certainly sounds incredible.

Source: PCGamer