During the half-decade he worked at CD Projekt Red, Jakub Rokosz rose to the rank of senior quest designer and contributed to Geralt's two most beloved adventures: The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Yet he couldn't shake the sense that he'd arrived late. "It always bothered me that I missed the first [Witcher game]," he says. "I wanted a chance to give it the justice it deserved." Several years later – and by then the CEO of his own studio – Rokosz met with a few former colleagues to reminisce about the fun they'd had developing one of the best RPGs of all-time. And just a few weeks after that, CDPR studio head Adam Badowski called with a proposal: that Rokosz and his team tackle the remake of the very first Witcher game. The one he hadn't managed to put his stamp on.
Rokosz calls it serendipity, and there's a certain amount of romance in the telling of his story. Yet he's clear-eyed about the task ahead. "First and foremost, we need an honest, down-to-earth analysis of which parts are simply bad, outdated, or unnecessarily convoluted and need to be remade," he says, "While at the same time highlighting the parts that are great, should be retained, or are direct key pillars that can't be discarded." After that, Fool’s Theory can begin the redesign process: "This involves removing the bad parts and rearranging the good ones to create something that is both satisfying and still resonates with the feel of the original."
