Then there are its elves, an impoverished subclass eking out an existence in the margins of a dominant human civilisation. In retrospect, Dragon Age's warrior order is a clear echo of Geralt's: a gaggle of lonely monster hunters, maligned by wider society, subjected to a strange cocktail during training that kills off most initiates and leaves just a handful of elite mutants. It was the first time CD Projekt had out-BioWare'd its mentors, and wouldn't be the last.

(Image credit: CD Projekt, user brandonzxcv on YouTube)Įven when BioWare put out Dragon Age: Origins two years later-its own spiritual sequel to the D&D games of the '90s-it failed to match The Witcher for its sense of danger in the wilderness, a trait Baldur's Gate had exemplified a decade before. None of its peers could offer the sight of a pirouetting Geralt severing a drowner's head from its dank blue shoulders-leaving the monster to ragdoll down an embankment into the rain-pounded river from whence it came. Yet somehow, despite its lack of pedigree and staff of former bankers and doctors, CD Projekt upped the standard. Since the shift to 3D, Western RPG fans had resigned themselves to stiff animations and clunky conversations-the trade-offs for scale and reactivity. And there was something worth zooming in for: though The Witcher had its share of jank, it also possessed unusual flair for its genre. Pulling the once-isometric camera close to Geralt's shoulder, it situated players among the filth and flora of Vizima. With the benefit of half a decade's visual and atmospheric advancements, CD Projekt put Neverwinter Nights' tech to more powerful use than BioWare could have. (Make no mistake, BioWare got behind The Witcher I first saw Geralt when a dramatic piece of art appeared in the launcher for Neverwinter Nights, a space otherwise reserved purely for that game's expansions and DLC.) CD Projekt knew Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka well enough to license the Aurora engine, and the two doctors even lent their Polish cousins a corner of their booth at E3.

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