The long-awaited remake of the first Witcher game is seemingly on the back-burner as CD Projekt Red has reportedly added support studio Fool’s Theory to the massive development effort of The Witcher 4. Moreover, there have been recurring rumours of an all-new Witcher 3 DLC made by the same studio. Meanwhile, original lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec has been revisiting Geralt of Rivia’s first big RPG adventure, giving longtime fans all-new insights into the game’s making.

Ganszyniec’s YouTube channel already houses his complete playthrough of the game with valuable commentary, so we highly recommend diehards to slowly chew through it if they have the time. That said, the story designer’s most shocking revelation (hat tip to VGC) came near the very end, during the 26th and final episode of the series, which you can watch below:

At the 1:30:22 mark, once the ‘artwork cutscene’ in line with the rest of the game’s ends, he talks about what happened between the story team and the rest of the studio. Apparently, a final CG cutscene (which is part of the game as we all know it) was added without the team knowing it. “That’s where we wanted the game to end, with an open question and open future… But while we were finishing the game, someone decided – the board decided or Michał Kiciński (co-founder of CDPR) decided – that we needed an animated outro for the game,” Ganszyniec says.

The CG cutscene introduced the idea of Witchers that are hunting down kings, which led directly into The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. “The script for what we’re seeing now, this animation, was created not really involving the story team. It was sort of… we weren’t really paying attention,” the lead story designer adds before elaborating on what the story team’s original plans were. “That’s why the second Witcher is very political and there’s not really room for exploring who Geralt is, his family, his history and stuff like this.” If you’ve played through the entire Geralt trilogy, the shift is obvious, but having more clarity on what went down behind the scenes definitely helps after all these years.

Regardless, even Ganszyniec concludes he’s excited to see how the remake turns out. As for the different route The Witcher 2 took, it could be argued The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt went back to a more personal story with Geralt and his family at the centre of a high-stakes epic.