Acclaimed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt expansion Blood and Wine was originally called Bells of Beauclair, with its final name only being settled on midway through production.
According to CD Projekt Red developer Paweł Sasko, the team eventually plumped for the “captivating title” of Blood and Wine because it grasped “the spirit of the narrative”, while also being “easier to spell out and articulate” than Bells of Beauclair (or BoB, as it became known internally, and I can only read that in the voice of Blackadder).
“When Hearts of Stone shipped in October 2015 we were already hands deep into building the second expansion. Blood and Wine launched May 31st, 2016, seven months later. That production timeline was pretty hardcore. A completely new country, main story, characters, monsters, mechanics, player’s vineyard, and a narrative worthy of closing Geralt’s journey. Oh, and it had to be better than the base game, and Hearts of Stone. I always loved the challenges and the audacity of this one felt just right,” Sasko wrote on X.
But, while Sasko may have personally liked how audacious The Witcher 3’s second expansion felt, there was a problem. “We didn’t have the full main story yet, while Toussaint was already getting constructed and a handful of Quest Designers had to be working on minor quests and side stories for Blood and Wine,” he explained. “We knew the themes of BoB pretty well, atmosphere, inspirations, narrative objectives, but the beat-by-beat writeup wasn’t there yet. When it landed, most of the components we had built were in the right places, and we had to make only a handful of adjustments.”
Apparently the hardest creative debate the team at CDPR had to settle was about a forest. “Writers needed a Druid’s Forest for a specific story thread, something the narrative couldn’t breathe without,” Sasko said. “We went to the Environment Artists and got the answer that everyone feared: not enough time, can’t afford it. So we changed the strategy: what if we build a fairy tale world?”
Unlike the fairy tales that may immediately come to mind, though, the developer instead envisioned something more “rotten and savage ” for its expansion. The team was thinking along the lines of “twisted archetypes, corrupted stories [and] a visual language we hadn’t touched before”, Sasko said, adding it was called Kraina z Bajki internally. This new approach ultimately got the go ahead from The Witcher 3’s artists, “because it stylistically intrigued and inspired” them, though “The Fairy Tale turned out to be way more expensive to build than the Druid’s Forest ever would”, Sasko admitted.
“One of my favorite production memories is about a cemetery. Mère-Lachaiselongue Cemetery, in the quest about the spoon collector I made. To make it right all the graves needed inscriptions. Most were written by Karolina Stachyra, who cheerfully demanded dead bodies from her colleagues. A big chunk of the dev team ended up buried in Toussaint. And the scene where Regis and Geralt sit together on the tombstone and talk? They are sitting on the graves that belong to Karolina and Pavel Sasco,” he closed.
“Ten years. A decade of players exploring every corner of Toussaint, debating choices, discovering secrets, keeping stories alive with a ferocity that still floors me. You surpassed any expectation we had about The Witcher 3’s longevity. To everyone who worked on BoB: you built something that may outlive all of us. I am proud of you, I am proud of what we made.
“And to everyone who played it, thank you for keeping Toussaint alive.”
This little trip down memory lane comes just days after CDPR announced a third expansion for The Witcher 3. This one is known as Songs of the Past, and is once again based around Geralt. Songs of the Past is coming out next year on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X. CD Projekt Red has significantly increased The Witcher 3 PC minimum system requirements in preparation for the expansion, most notably now requiring Windows 11 and an SSD to run the game. The Witcher 4 is also in development, and will feature Ciri in the lead role.
