Filled with raging, raging knights, vibrant magic, and a truck loaded with guns, Witchfire seems like a frantic fun time, especially if you like shooters with a steampunk flavor. But, if you’ve been following its development, you might be wondering why it took the team so long to finish making the game. Finally we have an answer.
Originally announced in 2017, developer The Astronauts has explained the reason for the huge delay: They’ve made Witchfire semi-open world.
Initially, Witchfire was going to be a completely closed world experience. said Creative Director Adrian Chmielarz New blog post (Opens in a new tab). “You enter an area, fight some monsters, and then you have a choice: take that bonus and go left, or take that bonus and go right.” Hades is a good example of the choice-based storytelling that astronauts have been trying to emulate.
However, the developers of Witchfire decided to ramp up the gear and test their limits by implementing a semi-open world. “I realized I hated barriers,” said Chmiellars, thus eliminating the magical barriers that were supposed to trap the player in certain locations.
We also see this on some gaming sites… #Witchfire didn’t become an open world game. The levels are big and now you can explore them freely unlike the old design but that’s it. That’s why we called it “semi-open world” in today’s blog post… pivot-based? closed world? https://t.co/fq9MOmZX9kOctober 12, 2022
It might sound simple in theory, but the change in direction created an enormous amount of work for the team. With the original barriers, when you choose a direction, all enemies and environments below the path you haven’t traveled will be eliminated. However, without barriers, the team now had to decide what to do with all of those creatures. “Should the enemies stay? Should they follow? But what if the player runs to another new area and triggers more spawns? Should the two groups of monsters merge?” said Schmelars.
Fortunately, 95% of this feature is now implemented, according to Chmielarz, so we shouldn’t wait any longer. Soon we will be able to see for ourselves whether barriers can be useful or whether this newfound freedom will be of use to you.
Graphics galore
Until then, it looks like we’ll have to satiate our Witchfire hunger with all the latest trailers that dropped.
For the most part, the astronaut has provided us with dark and epic trailers, not to mention the latest game trailer uploaded by publisher Epic Games. This showed off all of Witchfire’s best fights we can expect to see in the game. Wading through demonic enemies armed with medieval firearms sounds like a great idea.
I don’t want these trailers to get me too excited about Witchfire; Noise is never a good thing. However, I look forward to seeing how the changes to the world system will affect many of the battles that look terribly fun.