General Gaming "What Lies Unseen" - an INSANELY ambitious datamined development history/evolution project for The Witcher 3

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The scope of this project is staggering! 

 

With the official release of the REDkit modding tools, the modders have been able to datamine practically every single line of text that was written for the game:

 

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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.

 

The project has so far released two PDF documents for download on GitHub - Volume 1 which is 854 pages long (!) and a "preview" of Volume 3 which is "only" 154 pages long.

 

WhatLiesUnseen/docs at main · glassfish777/WhatLiesUnseen

GITHUB.COM

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Repository for materials related to the What Lies Unseen Project - glassfish777/WhatLiesUnseen

 

PC Gamer has been eagerly plowing (yes, this is a Witcher-based pun) through these documents:

 

Witcher 3 modders just upended everything we know about how it was made with a 584-page breakdown of an early prototype that had a 150-hour main quest, all thanks to a database 'containing almost every single line of text' from its development | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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That's way too long.

 

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Witcher 3 modders Moonknight, Ferroxius, Crygreg, and Glassfish (who contributed to the Brothers in Arms cut content restoration mod) have released the first volume of What Lies Unseen, a planned series chronicling the development history and evolution of The Witcher 3. RPG YouTuber xLetalis has put out a three-hour video going over the first volume, which covers a prototype version of The Witcher 3's story that would have been upwards of three times as long as the game we got. Some of the biggest changes and surprises in this version of The Witcher 3 include:

 

• The game was subtitled "A Time of Sword and Axe" instead of "The Wild Hunt."
• The Witcher 3 had a VATS-like focus system that let you target weak points on monsters.
• There was a lot more travel back and forth between Velen, Skellige, and Novigrad, and plotlines and characters that were more contained in the final game would extend across multiple acts.
• Your choice between Yennefer or Triss would mean that the other sorceress would be absent from the final third of the game.
• The Witcher 2's Iorveth appeared and had a major role.
• There was a multipart heist quest in Novigrad that required allies like the Kaer Morhen siege.
• The Bloody Baron's story was very different, and continued late into the game.
• The endings were much more ambiguous and melancholy.
• Geralt and Avallac'h would teleport to Cyberpunk 2077's Night City in one quest.
• The game didn't have Gwent, and instead saw the return of arm wrestling and dice poker from TW1 and 2.

 

This project came about thanks to the release of CD Projekt's REDkit modding tools, with the authors writing that prior to these tools becoming available, community knowledge of The Witcher 3's development "stemmed from interviews with the company as well as leaked material that was incomplete."

 

 

Witcher 3 modders datamine a quest where Geralt would have teleported to Night City from Cyberpunk 2077: 'Technologically advanced, but broken. Dying.' | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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Sounds nova, preem even.

 

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As part of the insanely ambitious What Lies Unseen datamined development history of The Witcher 3, the project's creators made an amusing discovery: A script for an early version of the quest "Through Time and Space" where Geralt and Avallac'h teleport to Night City from Cyberpunk 2077.

 

Through Time and Space is one of my favorite quests in The Witcher 3: In order to reach the homeworld of the Wild Hunt, the Witcher and sage have to skip from world to world in a dimension-hopping chain of portals. They find themselves braving a desert planet that was once the bed of a sentient ocean, a toxic swamp, an underwater cave, and a world already ruined by the White Frost. It's this bracing, exciting, and surprising bit of high-concept sci-fi in The Witcher 3 that I just really dig.

 

The draft script for Through Time and Space is markedly different from the final one, with Geralt and Avallac'h finding their first portal in a Redanian garrison instead of Novigrad, and they get teleported to, among other places, the court of King Radovid but weeks in the past. The first jaunt, though, would send them to Night City, with Geralt and Avallac'h exchanging the following dialogue:

 

• 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."

 

 

Witcher 3 dataminers detail the enormous scrapped questline that would have brought back The Witcher 2's best character, and maybe saved the game from its worst bit of writing | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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But the stealth elf would have no wealth of health.

 

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The Witcher 3 was an excellent game. An all-timer game. One of the greats. But it had one fatal flaw: The total absence of Iorveth, everyone's favourite focoist guerilla elf boyfriend from The Witcher 2.

 

But per the third volume of What Lies Unseen—a datamined development history of The Witcher 3 from modders Moonknight, Ferroxius, Crygreg, and Glassfish—that wasn't always the case. In fact, Iorveth was going to have a major role, one that saw him attempt an assassination of the Nilfgaardian emperor (you know, Charles Dance) in order to secure a cure for the Catriona plague.

 

In The Witcher 3 we actually got, the Catriona plague is one of the many things that make the war-torn countryside of Velen such an unpleasant place to be. It's ravaging village after village in the wake of Nilfgaard's invasion, but it never really plays a major role in the game's story, outside of Keira Metz' quest-chain to find a possible cure.

 

That wasn't always the case. In a 154-page document, our datamining heroes lay out a huge, scrapped questline centred on finding a cure for the plague featuring Roche, Thaler, Iorveth, Ves, the Emperor Emhyr, and even Mr Mirror, who ended up becoming the main antagonist of the Hearts of Stone DLC. The modders emphasise that this is just what they've pieced together from scrapped info left in the game and "other leaked information," so some elements of it are conjecture. Still, the whole thing is a fascinating glimpse at a game that could have been.

 

A nearly three hours-long YouTube "summary" of Volume 1:

 

[Mr.Vic20]

That is a lot of effort, man people have so much time! 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Bumping due to the Witcher IV announcement.