- In many ways, the star of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

isn't Geralt or Ciri,

but the world in which they inhabit.

So today, we're gonna talk to the folks at CD Projekt,

about creating that world,

everything from the locations of points of interest,

to the communities that live in those places,

right down to the food in everyone's cupboards.

To do this, we must talk to the team

about three key areas,

level design, environmental design, and open world design.

Creating a world this size is a monumental effort.

The final version of Wild Hunt features large cities, farms,

bandit camps, monster spawners, hidden castles,

quiet cottages, and plenty more.

But, years before of any of those features

will be finished,

the team would start with a blank landmass.

- [Len Voiceover] We all have our little specialties.

We have one, senior environment artist,

all he does is trees.

(Danny laughing)

Since Witcher one, I think,

like, trees.

Some of us do landscaping.

Some of us like pretty much, set up villages.

Others do, like, the meshes of the actual houses.

Some of us go through the entire world,

and just put pots and pans, basically.

What you see right now, in this tavern, right,

everything that you see right here,

we were putting them on the level.

- It's easy to make a place look really, really nice,

and just, like ah, let's add more stuff to it!

But, at some point, you have to wonder, how do I play this?

Can I even navigate it,

or do I get stuck on every single thing

that has collision there?

And to sort of help guide this process,

and make sure that our environment, obviously,

don't get too crazy,

that's sort of where our level designers sit.

We communicate a lot with the gameplay team,

the quest designers, to see what their needs are,

and make sure that everything is implemented properly

on the world.

And, on the side, we also try to, sort of,

plan how the open world works, or looks like,

where we have forests, where we have mountains,

where villages are,

how dense the amount of villages is on the map,

and how often players should pop into some event.

- So, we had points of interest,

which were combined with environmental points of interest.

Things like bandit camp fires,

abundance of lands, like like hidden treasures.

Then, we had points of encounters.

So, simple spawners of monsters in the woods,

or bandits in the woods.

And then, the communities.

Integration of citizen, in villages.

- [Miles Voiceover] The studio

had never done an open world game.

So, neither did I, neither did the other level designers.

And so, we were sitting there, going,

all right, I guess we need places that we should visit,

but the real question was, how many places do we need,

and what kind of content do we put into these?

So, we started out very roughly,

by taking a 2D screenshot of our world,

and just, and Photoshop,

just placing different items, little markers on the world,

where we thought there should be locations of sorts.

And we roughly define them as well,

to make sure that they're consistent.

So, maybe on this area, we have farming settlements right,

and what could be a POI, maybe a broken down mill

on top of a hill.

And, of course, the farm itself.

But, we also try to make sure that everything is...

The infrastructure is consistent,

so we would try to put these places close to each other,

connected by main roads, et cetera.

But, after that, we just took literally blue cylinders,

I remember vividly, there were blue cylinders,

and we placed them on the map, in 3D,

where we thought these places would be,

and then we started just running in between them,

and taking their time.

Basically going, all right, so,

now, it seems that every minute I run

into one of these occasions, which could be of any size,

like, we didn't really define if this is a major location,

or just your average campfire.

- [Bartosz Voiceover] We did some tests,

and we found out that...

Player is focused on stuff which we produce,

like every 40 seconds, they should see something,

and focus on it, like a pack of deers, some opponents.

Some NPCs wandering about.

So, we have our rule of 40 seconds.

On Skellige, we add a lot of water.

- [Danny] Right!

- So, there was a problem with smuggler's caches on the water.

- [Miles Voiceover] So, it used to be that the,

the bay, with the clan village,

it used to be facing away from Ard Skellig,

which resulted in players

either docking on the wrong side of the island,

going from...

Ard Skellig.

Or, having to go all the way around it, and...

Boat speed used to be much, much slower back then!

(chuckles) I remember we had tests run,

where (exclaims) you going, from one island to the other,

like the bigger islands,

to somewhere in between 25 and 45 minutes.

(Danny laughing)

(chuckles) We quickly realized that this is not,

this is not gonna cut it.

And ended up, rotating the entire island by 180 degrees!

So that players would actually goes,

we'd be able to go straight,

and that cut down the traveling time,

to do that harbor, by 15 minutes or so.

It was nuts.

I think what we did for forests

is we sort of started embracing the fact

that it is hard to see things,

because most of the time,

when you're walking around the open world,

you kind of have a pretty good idea where you're headed.

You know, maybe you'll find yourself in Skellige,

and you see Ard Skellig,

the fortress with gray castle.

The way we designed the world,

was that maybe you'd have the starting point,

from one village,

and you'd see the point in the distance, like that castle,

but somewhere in between,

the road would be lost, right?

So, you'd see your starting point of your adventure,

which is where you are. (chuckles)

You know the end,

and you know the rough general direction that you head for,

but sometimes we put a forest in between,

just to get, to allow the player to get lost.

When we did that, we usually, still had our main roads,

the more safer spaces,

that if you were to just ride through them,

you shouldn't really be attacked by most monsters,

unless we really wanted you to.

- Ghoul nest.

Oughta just destroy it.

Now, how long are you gonna have me wait?

- [Miles Voiceover] Making POIs,

that allow the player to navigate the world much easier,

that just simply looking around, and like,

ah, there was this, this fort on the hill

that I've seen a couple times here,

but now, I seem to see it from this side,

so I know, in relation to that, this is where I am,

I think the landscape does help with that,

and Novigrad sort of lended itself to this,

with the temple island being there, the...

The most highest point,

and then you have the richer areas,

which are higher than the poor area,

so you have this gradient throughout the city,

and I guess some clever road placement.

Overall, if you look at the city,

there's just a handful of main roads.

I think there's like two,

and the areas can be very broadly defined, like the harbor,

you have the fish market, you have the main square,

the poor area, the rich area, and the temple island, so...

This definitely helps allowing the player

to sort of figure his way, his way around the city,

without actually having to consult the map all the time.

- [Danny] Right.

- So, the...

work starts in our environmental team,

they preparing buildings,

like a whole setup of the village.

Then, my team is deciding what kind of purposes

people have in those spots.

Then, we are recasting animations,

and preparing dialogues for them.

So then, we will have,

we have the whole village prepared.

For example, we have a village on the coast,

of the Ard Skellig,

so we need to set up like a fishermen community,

so requesting rocks for fishermen,

and then preparing dialogues for them,

and then, together, everything creates believable settlement.

- So, some of us do, like,

more, more or less, rough paths.

So, we put the house there, we put the road there,

and we put the couple of wheel barrows,

and then it just looks like that.

The houses are empty, nothing.

And then, another guy comes in,

or potentially stumbles upon it, in our editor,

and they're like, this looks so bare!

I need to do something about it!

(Danny laughing)

And so, they're like, okay, let me plant some flowers,

and stuff like that!

Like, let me put some more rocks, and stuff like that,

or like...

Let's add more decals on the wall,

like a little bit more moss,

so it looks a little bit more detailed,

and then they leave, because they're like,

okay, my work is done.

It looks okay, now.

And then, the quest guy comes in, and he's like,

oh, what's this cute, little village?

Ah, let me put something in it!

But it, the houses are empty.

And then, they put on a request,

take it, and put something in there, you know?

And so, some of us go right in,

and we start decorating,

and we interview, actually, the quest designer.

What's your story about?

Like, who are the characters involved?

Do they get along?

What, this person is dead?

Okay, are they supposed to be dead inside the house,

or are they supposed to,

you know, and these kinds of questions.

You take that into account,

and with that bit of information,

we designed inside of the house,

the tailor, that kind of personality,

or other people looking in it.

And then, after that, we leave the house, and we're like,

this place is still quite barren, you know?

And then, I'll just sneak in a couple of barrels over here.

And then, little by little,

people just like, were sweeping through he landscape,

are like, this feels so...

I plant a little bit more here, and you know?

And eventually, the village is made.

- [Danny Voiceover] It takes a village to build a village,

and the process involves a number of steps,

first figuring out where to put them, how to design them,