When thinking about why The Witcher and Reigns go together like bread and butter, comedy admittedly isn't the first thing that comes to mind - but you know what, it makes sense, especially when the team at Nerial explains why. I got to speak with Nerial's narrative director, Oscar Harrington-Shaw, and design director, Francois Alliot, about the game, and I was keen to discover what led the team to want to work with the famed IP or Reigns: The Witcher.
Beyond the fact that that "Geralt is an outcast" and that the various factions in The Witcher lend themselves to the "balancing act" you see in Reigns games, the pair tell me that "The other thing that makes The Witcher such a great fit for Reigns is its comedy; the world of The Witcher is dark and harrowing, but Geralt faces it all with a dry sense of humour, which we could convey very well in his responses to the often laughably bleak scenarios."
In my The Witcher Reigns preview, I pointed out how humorous the game is, causing me to chuckle on more than a few occasions - I'm still not over going on a journey to find love, only to find myself at the gallows with a noose instead. Jokes and humor aside, other things helped with this adaptation of The Witcher, namely the nature of our hero.
Alliot and Harrington-Shaw tell me that, when creating the game, it was "like having Geralt towering behind your back, making critical grunts about how we decided to portray his adventures, which fit our game very well, as it's really about the stories that Dandelion tells about the Witcher rather than what actually happened. We're both very close and very far from the source material."
If you're unfamiliar with the story, "Dandelion bets Geralt that he will become the most famous bard in the world by telling the stories of Geralt's adventures, and sets about performing in front of the patrons of a tavern, each one a different epic played through the eyes of Geralt, each one a run of the game. We tried to really capture the spirit and dynamic of the quests of the Witcher games and books." Trust me, this bet absolutely lends itself to comedy, given that Dandelion is making up these outrageous tales to prove Geralt wrong.
However, humor isn't the only reason for centering on Dandelion, as having the bard tell the tales "is a way for us to stay as close as possible to the lore of the Witcher universe while keeping the game open and free to explore this universe in a new and creative way." Harrington-Shaw and Alliot liken it to "what we did in Reigns Game of Thrones, where you were playing as Melisandre looking into the fire, trying to determine who could be the next ruler of the Seven Kingdoms."
If you want to learn more about the story and the Reigns: The Witcher references, make sure you check out that portion of our interview with Harrington-Shaw and Alliot. However, you might also want to learn more about how the Reigns: The Witcher CD Projekt Red collaboration came about before the game releases later this month.
Reigns: The Witcher is coming to mobile and PC, though while there's no Switch port at launch, the devs tell me that "we're considering it."