Gaming - News
Why The Witcher 2 Almost Didn't Happen
By JOHN BUDAY
The follow up to CD Projekt Red’s successful “The Witcher,” “The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings” was praised by critics for improving on nearly every aspect of the first game’s foundation. However, the success of “The Witcher 2” belied a development process fraught with debt, layoffs, and partnership frustrations — which almost spelled doom for the entire series.
Before “The Witcher 2,” Atari approached CD Projekt Red about creating a console port of the original game called “The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf.” This would prove to be detrimental to CD Projekt Red, as the company tasked with handling the port, Widescreen Games, quickly began inhaling money while making few development gains.
CD Projekt Red had also already begun building “The Witcher 2” and “The Witcher 3” when it accepted Atari's offer, and juggling several different projects proved too hard on the studio. By April 2009, the Great Recession and previous financial troubles forced the studio and Atari to scrap “The White Wolf” and focus on “The Witcher 2” instead.
