Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales Review
A year ago, CD Projekt RED announced a story campaign for Gwent called Gwent: Thronebreaker. But over the year of development, the concept of the project has changed dramatically. For starters, the word “Gwent” is no longer here – now the game is called Thronebreaker: The Witcher. Stories” (respectively, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales) and is released as a completely independent product, and only in the GOG store. I visited the head office of the Polish studio and found out what the legendary developers are offering us this time.
Unlike the format, the story line has not changed. We play as Meve, the queen of Lyria and Rivia – she appeared on the pages of The Witcher Saga, but Andrzej Sapkowski did not dwell on her fate in detail. One way or another, at the beginning of the game, the army of Nilfgaard attacks her lands, and our task will be to lead Meva to victory in a bloody conflict. In the books, these events are called the Second Northern War, or the Second War with Nilfgaard – it is against its background that the fourth and subsequent volumes of the original saga take place.
Therefore, at the start of the game, Ciri is running around somewhere in the desert of Korat and is just beginning to realize her abilities; Geralt in the Brokilon forest moves away from the fight with Vilgefortz; and Yennefer and Triss plot as part of the newly formed Lodge of Enchantresses (or, as Yennefer puts it, “the international women’s republic”). Nevertheless, the developers do not exclude that in the course of their wanderings, Meva may meet one of those who fell in love with the players in the main witcher trilogy.
Despite a much closer connection with the books, Andrzej Sapkowski did not work on Thronebreaker even as a consultant. But the Poles themselves have already become fairly imbued with this world for almost two decades of work on the series.
My overall impressions of nearly two hours alone with Thronebreaker are mostly positive. There are a couple of minor bugs, of course, but they will probably have time to fix all this before the release. But here you can already see a great story, a desire to experiment in genres new to the studio, as well as a rather original, and most importantly, effective and correct (well, in my opinion, of course) attempt to attract a wide audience to Gwent, which is the main one before popularity ” Witcher series is still growing and growing.
And it is correct, if only because the developers do not use fleeting discounts and gifts for this, but a sea of unique high-quality content. And at the same time they are promoting their GOG.com store, because the PC version of Thronebreaker will be sold only there. By the way, pre-orders for it are already being accepted, and the release of the project is less than a month later, on October 23 (on consoles – December 4), so I appeal to everyone interested: welcome back to the world of The Witcher.
