CD Projekt and The Witcher author and creator Andrzej Sapkowski have inked a new rights deal for the fantasy franchise.

On the day of the release of The Witcher on Netflix, The Witcher video game developer CD Projekt announced the agreement, which grants it new rights and "confirms" the company's title to The Witcher IP as it relates to video games, graphic novels, board games and merchandise.

Here's the blurb:

Read more

We know Ciri, Geralt's adopted ward, will play a large role in Netflix's The Witcher series when it premieres later this month. Now, a new casting report suggests an unexpected book plotline connected to her may be coming to the screen.

Warning, there may be spoilers ahead!

A new report has revealed an actor cast in the role of False Ciri.

Read more

I'd forgotten how funny The Witcher 3 is.

I laughed a lot while playing this game. I feel like an idiot telling you what amused me because it makes me look simple - but it's the random things people would say. Things like a boy running past me and declaring, "You're grey like my grandma," or the plague cart guy suddenly realising, "Fucking hell that stinks!" I snorted when the guy I took a dive for, in a boxing match, called me a prick afterwards, and I'm still laughing remembering the person who passed me and farted.

I don't want to paint the game as a crude comedy - it's nothing like that - but what I want to get at is how refreshingly unfiltered it all is. The Witcher 3 isn't the fantasy costume party you've been to so many times before. It's a world, like our own, where hard work makes hard people who ain't got no time for pleasantries, and it feels so real because of it.

Read more

Netflix has revealed the episode titles for The Witcher, among other teases.

The Henry Cavill-starring show is set to launch its first season on Netflix, and ahead of time, Netflix took to Twitter to reveal the titles of the first eight episodes.

Alongside each title is a brief description and a gif of its logo, and it's the descriptions that give us an idea of the events and themes the show will touch on.

Read more

Xbox Game Pass really is the gift that keeps on giving. Tonight at X019, Microsoft has announced more than 50 new titles headed to the service in the coming months.

From a collection of Final Fantasy games and The Witcher 3, to indie gems like My Friend Pedro and Phogs, it looks like there's a little something for everyone on the way - and a bunch of new games have even arrived on Game Pass today.

And, separately, Phil Spencer has said a cross-platform Final Fantasy 14 is coming.

Read more

We've not even been graced with Season One of Netflix's live-action take on Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher novels yet, but already the series has been renewed for a second season.

The news comes directly from showrunner Lauren Hissrich, who revealed on Twitter earlier today that "Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri will be back for more adventures... in Season Two."

"I could not be more proud of what the amazing cast and crew of The Witcher have accomplished," Hissrich continued, "and can't wait for the world to dig in and enjoy these stories with us."

Read more

Think back to the first moments of Witcher 3, just after the tutorial section in the witcher keep. Geralt and Vesemir, talking naturally together on the road to Vizima, subtly lay out the backstory, reiterate the mission to find Yennefer and indulge in some playful repartee - the writing feels seamless and uncomplicated, as though it arrived fully formed onto the pages of a performance capture script. According to lead writer Jakub Szamalek, however, it did not.

"I actually checked how many times I edited the dialogue in that scene," he recalls during our interview at Spanish sci-fi festival Celsius232. "I think it was over 120. Sometimes these were minor edits, changing one sentence, but sometimes it was rewriting the whole thing. We did a lot of that: writing something, playing it, tweaking it, scrapping everything then re-doing it. It is just inherent to the process. There are so many moving parts when you're working on a video game, it's unavoidable." It turns out, constructing the narrative behind Witcher 3 - one of the most ambitious and enormous open-world games ever made - was not easy.

Szamalek joined the writing team at CD Projekt Red in May 2012, a few months after pre-production on Witcher 3 had begun. At this point writers Sebastian Stępień, Marcin Blacha and Arkadiusz Borowik had already started to create a master document, a 60-page manual which contained a story synopsis, descriptions of the parts of the Witcher world the story was set to explore as well as background information on the key characters and concepts. The next step was transforming the treatment into a game script. This involved dividing it into smaller parts focusing on the three main hubs - Novigrad, No Man's Land and Skelligeand - then subdividing into quests, writing the dialogue and detail, and linking to other quest and character documents. "It was like a set of Russian nesting dolls," jokes Szamalek.

Read more

Stationary, uniforms, maybe a new laptop - that's what we'd usually expect to see in a Back to School sale. Not for GOG, though. Instead, the cheeky focus is on parents who now have some extra time on their hands to game again.

And there are some serious timesinks available for cheap in the GOG Back to School sale. Massive RPGs, engrossing sims and gripping stories are all well represented, with savings of up to 90 per cent up for grabs.

Of course, as we're dealing with CD Projekt here, you can find the entire Witcher series on sale. If you're still yet to play the latest entry, you can get The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Game of the Year Edition for 10.49. This complete version of the game comes with all previously released DLC. That's both the Hearts of Stone and the Blood and Wine expansions, as well as over a dozen smaller content packs.

Read more

It seems some Witcher fans just couldn't wait until the release of the Netflix series later this year, so one of them has gone ahead and created a mod that puts Henry Cavill into the PC game.

Modder Adnan on Nexus Mods has created the mod to be "a base for different Henry Cavill variations in the future," he wrote. "With scars, dirt, brown hair with blue eyes etc, but first of all, now I'm presenting a look closer to Geralt in Netflix show".

The mod works with all of the physics that it should in the game, so you're able to change Geralt's hairstyle as it grows - like a weird Superman Barbie doll. It also allows for Geralt's toxicity status from the show, and thanks to some other mods that go along with it, you can have his creepy black eyes too.

Read more

Five of the Best is going to be a series! Every Friday lunchtime, UK time, we're going to celebrate a different incidental detail from the world of games. The kind of thing we usually just WASD past, oblivious. But also the kind of thing which adds unforgettable flavour if done right.

Potions! We've been drinking them for years. In games I mean! I hope you haven't been knocking them back in real-life, they're bad for you. Imagine drinking something which alters your behaviour - how ridiculous! But potions we've been drinking for years. Red ones, blue ones... They're so common they've become a universal language. We don't even really see them any more. We just slosh them back when needed. Gulp!

But every so often, we do see them. Once in a while, a memorable potion pops up. Maybe it was a potion which typified a game for you - the port-key to remembering an adventure. A tonic from BioShock, perhaps. Or maybe it was one which made a character drastically more capable, or one which changed who - or what - we were. Can you think of any now? Good - hold onto that! Because I want your input below.

Read more