The Witcher 3 screenwriter revealed details of the Blood and Wine expansion development - the story of the Land of a Thousand Fables and more
The name Blood and Wine sounded much better than what was originally used internally by the CD Projekt RED team.
In May, CD Projekt RED and fans celebrated the anniversary of the Blood and Wine expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Paweł Sasko, quest director for Cyberpunk 2077, who also created quests for The Witcher 3, joined the celebration.
The developer decided to share memories of working on the expansion and revealed some details. For example, for most of the development time, the expansion was not called “Blood and Wine” at CDPR — but BoB (Bells of Beauclair).
“Blood and Wine” came later, when something catchy and conveying the spirit of the expansion was needed:
Bells of Beauclair. That's what it was originally called, chooms. We said we were making BoB, checking and refining BoB. The name “Blood and Wine” came in mid-production because we needed a name that sounded good and conveyed the spirit of the story, and was easier to pronounce and write.
The CD Projekt RED team worked under very tight deadlines:
When the Hearts of Stone expansion was released in October 2015, we were already neck-deep in work on the second expansion. Blood and Wine was released on May 31, 2016, just seven months later. The deadlines were really tight.
Because of this, they had to save resources and sacrifice something. A dispute once arose over a new location: the screenwriters wanted a druid grove for the storyline, while the artists insisted that there wouldn't be enough time and resources. Then an alternative solution was devised: to create a fairy-tale, but dark world, where character archetypes were distorted — in the end, it turned out to be even more expensive than the forest:
Then we changed our approach: what if we made a fairy-tale world? One where fairy tales have rotted and become cruel. Distorted archetypes, perverted stories, a visual style we hadn't touched before. Internally, we called it “Kraina z Bajki”. The artists said “yes” because it really hooked and inspired them. In the end, the fairy-tale world turned out to be much more expensive to produce than a druid forest would have been.
Currently, the Songs of the Past expansion is being developed for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — its release is expected in 2027.
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