Ex-The Witcher 3 lead "would love to time travel and fix" some things in the beloved RPG where "I really hate how we did it"

The Witcher 3 screenshot of Geralt
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

The Witcher 3 lead quest designer Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, who's now leading development on Rebel Wolves' Blood of Dawnwalker, has some regrets from his time at CD Projekt Red.

It's genuinely hard to think of a more universally beloved RPG than The Witcher 3. I could go over its plentiful awards and accolades, but all you really need to know about its legacy is that it topped our list of the 100 best games of its generation back in 2020. Even still, Tomaszkiewicz tells GamesRadar+ there are things he hates so much about it that he'd go as far as to tempt the butterfly effect in order to go back in time and change them.

"I still have stuff in The Witcher 3 that I hate about how we did it," Tomaszkiewicz says. "I really hate how we did it, and I would love to time travel and fix it."

Tomaszkiewicz didn't get into any specifics of what he'd like to change, but he did say "we just took it into our next projects, and just learned from it."

Tomaszkiewicz left CDPR in 2021 after 12 years with the studio, having also served as co-director on Cyberpunk 2077. He's now heading up Rebel Wolves alongside his brother and fellow CDPR alum Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. The studio's debut project, Blood of Dawnwalker, is an open-world RPG set in a dark fantasy world ravaged by plague and ruled by vampires. The main character, Coen, is turned into a human/vampire hybrid called a Dawnwalker, allowing him to navigate both day and night with vampiric powers.

Blood of Dawnwalker has no release date yet, but it's getting a gameplay showcase this summer.

The Witcher 3 director says he left CDPR to make his own open-world vampire game because "those rules of RPGs" can be bent and "a smaller team is capable of doing more."

Jordan Gerblick

After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer, I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.