The original game’s voice acting was a little on the rough side, and I doubt many players would complain if CD Projekt Red got The Witcher 3’s voice cast back on board for the remake instead. We can safely assume that the remake will have brand-new graphics. For argument’s sake, though, let’s pretend that CD Projekt Red wants to take the latter route, since The Witcher has a lot of rough edges that could use some sanding down. When CD Projekt Red says that it intends to remake the game “from the ground up,” we don’t know whether it will be a shot-for-shot remake, like Demon’s Souls, or a more open-ended reimagining, like the Final Fantasy VII Remake. To start with a caveat, we have almost no information about The Witcher Remake. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but The Witcher 2 and 3 have shown us that the series can be accessible without losing any story or gameplay depth in the process. The original Witcher makes you work for your fun. To put it another way, you can jump into The Witcher 3 and start having fun within the first 10 minutes.

There’s actually a fairly storied history of “ Eurojank” games like The Witcher - ambitious cult classics from Eastern European developers, which nonetheless take a lot of patience to fully appreciate. While series such as Dragon Age, Pillars of Eternity, Diablo and Fallout are widely available on consoles today, they used to require fairly powerful gaming rigs - not to mention a player base that was willing to tolerate both a steep learning curve and a bevy of technical issues.

It's also worth remembering that PC-style RPGs were a whole lot less universally accessible in 2007 than they are today. Not that gamers would necessarily have recognized the connection in its initial translation, the story used the word “Hexer” rather than “Witcher.”

Before CD Projekt’s game came out, the only exposure English-speaking audiences had to The Witcher was a single translation of a short story in 2000. While today, The Witcher has half-a-dozen bestselling games, a beloved Netflix adaptation and a full series of translated books, the series’ cultural cachet in 2007 looked much different. However, it’s important to remember that gamers went into The Witcher, by and large, without any preconceived notions.

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