• How to watch Sinners: See the smash horror hit at home

    Table of Contents

    Table of Contents

    Table of Contents
    What is Sinners about?
    Is Sinners worth watching?
    How to watch Sinners at home
    The best HBO Max streaming deals

    The best streaming deals to watch 'Sinners' at home:

    WATCH NOW

    Buy 'Sinners' on Prime Video

    WATCH NOW

    Rent 'Sinners' on Prime Video

    WATCH LATER

    Maxannual subscription

    /yearWATCH LATER

    Max Standard annual subscription

    /yearWATCH LATER FOR FREE

    Max Basic With Ads for Cricket customers

    Free for Cricket customers on the /month unlimited planWATCH LATER FOR FREE

    Max Basic With Ads

    Free for DashPass annual plan subscribersWATCH LATER

    Max Student

    per month for 12 monthsWATCH LATER

    Disney+, Hulu, and Max

    per month, per monthBlack Panther director Ryan Coogler is back with another smash hit. The third movie Warner Bros. has released in 2025 that features an A-lister playing dual roles, Sinners is "easily one of the best movies of the year," according to Mashable's head movie critic.Besides Michael B. Jordan times two, it stars Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, and Delroy Lindo. With bits of horror, history, and musical theater all sprinkled in, it's a genre-fluid movie in every sense of the term. If you haven't caught it in theaters yet, there's still time. However, if you'd rather watch it at home, it's now available on digital-on-demand services as of June 3. Here's everything you need to know about how to watch Sinners at home.

    You May Also Like

    What is Sinners about?Set in the 1930s Jim Crow-era South, Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as Smoke and Stack, twin brothers who return to their hometown with the goal of setting up a juke joint — only for its grand opening to be disrupted by something supernaturally monstrous."There are vampires in the film, but it's really about a lot more than just that. It's one of many elements, and I think we're gonna surprise people with it," director Ryan Coogler explained at a press conference.Check out the official trailer:

    Is Sinners worth watching?Sinners is a huge success story for original horror. It's only the second movie in 2025 to pass the million domestic box office milestone and is one of the 10 highest-grossing horror movies to date. Not only has it been a smash hit at the box office, now climbing to over million worldwide and million domestically, but the reviews are outstanding. It currently holds a near-perfect 97 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 96 percent audience rating. That's no easy feat."Sinners is more than a hell of a thrilling vampire movie. Like Black Panther, it expands beyond the expectations of its genre to become a magnificent film, emanating with spirit, power, and purpose," Mashable's Kristy Puchko writes in her review of the film. "Smoothly blending vampire horror into a unique tale of regret, resilience, and redemption, Coogler and Jordan have made a cinematic marvel that is terrifying, satisfying, and unforgettable."Read our full review of Sinners.How to watch Sinners at home

    Credit: Warner Bros.

    Sinners smashed into theaters on April 18, 2025, and is still floating around in select theaters nationwide. However, if you would rather watch it at home, there are now a couple of different options: purchasing via digital video-on-demand or renting via digital video-on-demand. It will also eventually be streaming, offering a third option.Buy or rent Sinners on digitalAs of June 3, Sinners is available to purchase or rent on digital video-on-demand platforms like Prime Video. You can purchase the movie for your digital collection or rent it for 30 days. If you choose to rent, just note that you'll have 30 days to watch, but only 48 hours to finish once you begin.You can purchase and rent the film at the following retailers:Prime Video — buy for rent for Apple TV — buy for rent for Fandango at Home— buy for rent for Opens in a new window

    Credit: Prime Video

    Rent or buy 'Sinners' at Prime Video

    or Stream Sinners on MaxAs a Warner Bros. Pictures film, we expect that Sinners will make its streaming debut on Max— the Warner Bros.-owned streaming service. While there is no official streaming date yet, we'll be keeping our eyes peeled. Based on the digital-to-streaming trajectory of other recent theatrical hits from Warner Bros. like Companion, Mickey 17, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, we expect that Sinners will make its streaming debut sometime around late July to mid-August.Max subscriptions start at per month, but there are a few different ways to save some money on your plan. Check out the best Max streaming deals below.The best HBO Max streaming dealsBest for most people: 16% on Max Basic annual subscription

    Opens in a new window

    Credit: Max

    Max Basic with ads yearly subscription

    per yearThe Max Basic plan with ads typically goes for per month, but if you pay for the entire year up front, that cost drops down to per month. An annual plan is just total, which saves you about 16% compared to the monthly plan.

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    Mashable Deals

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    Sign up for the Mashable Deals newsletter.

    By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    Thanks for signing up!

    Best Max deal with no ads: up to 16% on a Max Standard annual subscription

    Opens in a new window

    Credit: Max

    Max Standard annual subscription

    per yearSimilarly, you can opt for the annual Max Standard or Premium plans and save about 16% if you'd rather go ad-free. The Standard tier costs either per month or per year, while the Premium tier costs either per month or per year. While both tiers offer ad-free viewing, the Premium tier goes a step further with 4K Ultra HD video quality, Dolby Atmos immersive audio, and the ability to download more offline content.Get HBO Max for free: Switch to Cricket's /month unlimited plan

    Opens in a new window

    Credit: Cricket / Max

    MaxFree for Cricket customers on the /month plan

    If you switch your phone plan to Cricket's per month unlimited plan, you'll get HBO Max included for no extra cost. When you open up the HBO Max app, you'll just select Cricket as your provider and use your credentials to log in. That's all, folks.Get HBO Max for free: Sign up for DashPass annual plan

    Opens in a new window

    Credit: DoorDash / Max

    MaxFree with DashPass annual planAnother way to get HBO Max for free in 2025 is by signing up for a DoorDash DashPass annual plan for per year. A DashPass membership gets you delivery fees and reduced service fees on eligible DoorDash orders all year long. You'll just have to activate your HBO Max with ads subscription through your DoorDash account to get started. If you'd rather watch ad-free, you can upgrade for a discounted rate as well.Best HBO Max deal for students: 50% on Max Basic with ads

    Opens in a new window

    Credit: Max

    Max Student

    per month for 12 months

    College students looking to expand their movie horizons can get an entire year of HBO Max with ads for half price. Just verify your student status with UNiDAYS and retrieve the unique discount code to drop the price from to per month.Best bundle deal: Get Max, Disney+, and Hulu for up to 38% off

    Opens in a new window

    Credit: Disney / Hulu / Max

    Disney+, Hulu, and Max

    per month, per monthFor the most bang for your buck, check out the Disney+ bundle deal that includes Disney+, Hulu, and Max for just per month with ads. That lineup of streamers would usually cost you per month, so you'll keep an extra in your pocket monthly.If you'd rather go ad-free, the bundle will run you per month as opposed to That's up to 38% in savings for access to all three streaming libraries.
    #how #watch #sinners #see #smash
    How to watch Sinners: See the smash horror hit at home
    Table of Contents Table of Contents Table of Contents What is Sinners about? Is Sinners worth watching? How to watch Sinners at home The best HBO Max streaming deals The best streaming deals to watch 'Sinners' at home: WATCH NOW Buy 'Sinners' on Prime Video WATCH NOW Rent 'Sinners' on Prime Video WATCH LATER Maxannual subscription /yearWATCH LATER Max Standard annual subscription /yearWATCH LATER FOR FREE Max Basic With Ads for Cricket customers Free for Cricket customers on the /month unlimited planWATCH LATER FOR FREE Max Basic With Ads Free for DashPass annual plan subscribersWATCH LATER Max Student per month for 12 monthsWATCH LATER Disney+, Hulu, and Max per month, per monthBlack Panther director Ryan Coogler is back with another smash hit. The third movie Warner Bros. has released in 2025 that features an A-lister playing dual roles, Sinners is "easily one of the best movies of the year," according to Mashable's head movie critic.Besides Michael B. Jordan times two, it stars Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, and Delroy Lindo. With bits of horror, history, and musical theater all sprinkled in, it's a genre-fluid movie in every sense of the term. If you haven't caught it in theaters yet, there's still time. However, if you'd rather watch it at home, it's now available on digital-on-demand services as of June 3. Here's everything you need to know about how to watch Sinners at home. You May Also Like What is Sinners about?Set in the 1930s Jim Crow-era South, Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as Smoke and Stack, twin brothers who return to their hometown with the goal of setting up a juke joint — only for its grand opening to be disrupted by something supernaturally monstrous."There are vampires in the film, but it's really about a lot more than just that. It's one of many elements, and I think we're gonna surprise people with it," director Ryan Coogler explained at a press conference.Check out the official trailer: Is Sinners worth watching?Sinners is a huge success story for original horror. It's only the second movie in 2025 to pass the million domestic box office milestone and is one of the 10 highest-grossing horror movies to date. Not only has it been a smash hit at the box office, now climbing to over million worldwide and million domestically, but the reviews are outstanding. It currently holds a near-perfect 97 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 96 percent audience rating. That's no easy feat."Sinners is more than a hell of a thrilling vampire movie. Like Black Panther, it expands beyond the expectations of its genre to become a magnificent film, emanating with spirit, power, and purpose," Mashable's Kristy Puchko writes in her review of the film. "Smoothly blending vampire horror into a unique tale of regret, resilience, and redemption, Coogler and Jordan have made a cinematic marvel that is terrifying, satisfying, and unforgettable."Read our full review of Sinners.How to watch Sinners at home Credit: Warner Bros. Sinners smashed into theaters on April 18, 2025, and is still floating around in select theaters nationwide. However, if you would rather watch it at home, there are now a couple of different options: purchasing via digital video-on-demand or renting via digital video-on-demand. It will also eventually be streaming, offering a third option.Buy or rent Sinners on digitalAs of June 3, Sinners is available to purchase or rent on digital video-on-demand platforms like Prime Video. You can purchase the movie for your digital collection or rent it for 30 days. If you choose to rent, just note that you'll have 30 days to watch, but only 48 hours to finish once you begin.You can purchase and rent the film at the following retailers:Prime Video — buy for rent for Apple TV — buy for rent for Fandango at Home— buy for rent for Opens in a new window Credit: Prime Video Rent or buy 'Sinners' at Prime Video or Stream Sinners on MaxAs a Warner Bros. Pictures film, we expect that Sinners will make its streaming debut on Max— the Warner Bros.-owned streaming service. While there is no official streaming date yet, we'll be keeping our eyes peeled. Based on the digital-to-streaming trajectory of other recent theatrical hits from Warner Bros. like Companion, Mickey 17, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, we expect that Sinners will make its streaming debut sometime around late July to mid-August.Max subscriptions start at per month, but there are a few different ways to save some money on your plan. Check out the best Max streaming deals below.The best HBO Max streaming dealsBest for most people: 16% on Max Basic annual subscription Opens in a new window Credit: Max Max Basic with ads yearly subscription per yearThe Max Basic plan with ads typically goes for per month, but if you pay for the entire year up front, that cost drops down to per month. An annual plan is just total, which saves you about 16% compared to the monthly plan. Related Stories Mashable Deals Want more hand-picked deals from our shopping experts? Sign up for the Mashable Deals newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! Best Max deal with no ads: up to 16% on a Max Standard annual subscription Opens in a new window Credit: Max Max Standard annual subscription per yearSimilarly, you can opt for the annual Max Standard or Premium plans and save about 16% if you'd rather go ad-free. The Standard tier costs either per month or per year, while the Premium tier costs either per month or per year. While both tiers offer ad-free viewing, the Premium tier goes a step further with 4K Ultra HD video quality, Dolby Atmos immersive audio, and the ability to download more offline content.Get HBO Max for free: Switch to Cricket's /month unlimited plan Opens in a new window Credit: Cricket / Max MaxFree for Cricket customers on the /month plan If you switch your phone plan to Cricket's per month unlimited plan, you'll get HBO Max included for no extra cost. When you open up the HBO Max app, you'll just select Cricket as your provider and use your credentials to log in. That's all, folks.Get HBO Max for free: Sign up for DashPass annual plan Opens in a new window Credit: DoorDash / Max MaxFree with DashPass annual planAnother way to get HBO Max for free in 2025 is by signing up for a DoorDash DashPass annual plan for per year. A DashPass membership gets you delivery fees and reduced service fees on eligible DoorDash orders all year long. You'll just have to activate your HBO Max with ads subscription through your DoorDash account to get started. If you'd rather watch ad-free, you can upgrade for a discounted rate as well.Best HBO Max deal for students: 50% on Max Basic with ads Opens in a new window Credit: Max Max Student per month for 12 months College students looking to expand their movie horizons can get an entire year of HBO Max with ads for half price. Just verify your student status with UNiDAYS and retrieve the unique discount code to drop the price from to per month.Best bundle deal: Get Max, Disney+, and Hulu for up to 38% off Opens in a new window Credit: Disney / Hulu / Max Disney+, Hulu, and Max per month, per monthFor the most bang for your buck, check out the Disney+ bundle deal that includes Disney+, Hulu, and Max for just per month with ads. That lineup of streamers would usually cost you per month, so you'll keep an extra in your pocket monthly.If you'd rather go ad-free, the bundle will run you per month as opposed to That's up to 38% in savings for access to all three streaming libraries. #how #watch #sinners #see #smash
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    How to watch Sinners: See the smash horror hit at home
    Table of Contents Table of Contents Table of Contents What is Sinners about? Is Sinners worth watching? How to watch Sinners at home The best HBO Max streaming deals The best streaming deals to watch 'Sinners' at home: WATCH NOW Buy 'Sinners' on Prime Video $24.99 WATCH NOW Rent 'Sinners' on Prime Video $19.99 WATCH LATER Max (With Ads) annual subscription $99.99/year (save $19.89) WATCH LATER Max Standard annual subscription $169.99/year (save $33.89) WATCH LATER FOR FREE Max Basic With Ads for Cricket customers Free for Cricket customers on the $60/month unlimited plan (save $9.99/month) WATCH LATER FOR FREE Max Basic With Ads Free for DashPass annual plan subscribers (save $9.99 per month) WATCH LATER Max Student $4.99 per month for 12 months (save 50%) WATCH LATER Disney+, Hulu, and Max $16.99 per month (with ads), $29.99 per month (no ads) (save up to 38%) Black Panther director Ryan Coogler is back with another smash hit. The third movie Warner Bros. has released in 2025 that features an A-lister playing dual roles, Sinners is "easily one of the best movies of the year," according to Mashable's head movie critic.Besides Michael B. Jordan times two, it stars Hailee Steinfeld (Hawkeye), Jack O’Connell (Ferrari), Wunmi Mosaku (Passenger), Jayme Lawson (The Woman King), Omar Benson Miller (True Lies), and Delroy Lindo (Da 5 Bloods). With bits of horror, history, and musical theater all sprinkled in, it's a genre-fluid movie in every sense of the term. If you haven't caught it in theaters yet, there's still time. However, if you'd rather watch it at home, it's now available on digital-on-demand services as of June 3. Here's everything you need to know about how to watch Sinners at home. You May Also Like What is Sinners about?Set in the 1930s Jim Crow-era South, Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as Smoke and Stack, twin brothers who return to their hometown with the goal of setting up a juke joint — only for its grand opening to be disrupted by something supernaturally monstrous."There are vampires in the film, but it's really about a lot more than just that. It's one of many elements, and I think we're gonna surprise people with it," director Ryan Coogler explained at a press conference.Check out the official trailer: Is Sinners worth watching?Sinners is a huge success story for original horror. It's only the second movie in 2025 to pass the $250 million domestic box office milestone and is one of the 10 highest-grossing horror movies to date. Not only has it been a smash hit at the box office, now climbing to over $338 million worldwide and $258 million domestically, but the reviews are outstanding. It currently holds a near-perfect 97 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 96 percent audience rating. That's no easy feat."Sinners is more than a hell of a thrilling vampire movie. Like Black Panther, it expands beyond the expectations of its genre to become a magnificent film, emanating with spirit, power, and purpose," Mashable's Kristy Puchko writes in her review of the film. "Smoothly blending vampire horror into a unique tale of regret, resilience, and redemption, Coogler and Jordan have made a cinematic marvel that is terrifying, satisfying, and unforgettable."Read our full review of Sinners.How to watch Sinners at home Credit: Warner Bros. Sinners smashed into theaters on April 18, 2025, and is still floating around in select theaters nationwide. However, if you would rather watch it at home, there are now a couple of different options: purchasing via digital video-on-demand or renting via digital video-on-demand. It will also eventually be streaming, offering a third option.Buy or rent Sinners on digitalAs of June 3, Sinners is available to purchase or rent on digital video-on-demand platforms like Prime Video. You can purchase the movie for your digital collection or rent it for 30 days. If you choose to rent, just note that you'll have 30 days to watch, but only 48 hours to finish once you begin.You can purchase and rent the film at the following retailers:Prime Video — buy for $24.99, rent for $19.99Apple TV — buy for $24.99, rent for $19.99Fandango at Home (Vudu) — buy for $24.99, rent for $19.99 Opens in a new window Credit: Prime Video Rent or buy 'Sinners' at Prime Video $19.99 or $24.99 Stream Sinners on MaxAs a Warner Bros. Pictures film, we expect that Sinners will make its streaming debut on Max (soon to be called HBO Max once again) — the Warner Bros.-owned streaming service. While there is no official streaming date yet, we'll be keeping our eyes peeled. Based on the digital-to-streaming trajectory of other recent theatrical hits from Warner Bros. like Companion, Mickey 17, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, we expect that Sinners will make its streaming debut sometime around late July to mid-August.Max subscriptions start at $9.99 per month, but there are a few different ways to save some money on your plan. Check out the best Max streaming deals below.The best HBO Max streaming dealsBest for most people: Save 16% on Max Basic annual subscription Opens in a new window Credit: Max Max Basic with ads yearly subscription $99.99 per year (save $19.89) The Max Basic plan with ads typically goes for $9.99 per month, but if you pay for the entire year up front, that cost drops down to $8.33 per month. An annual plan is just $99.99 total, which saves you about 16% compared to the monthly plan. Related Stories Mashable Deals Want more hand-picked deals from our shopping experts? Sign up for the Mashable Deals newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! Best Max deal with no ads: Save up to 16% on a Max Standard annual subscription Opens in a new window Credit: Max Max Standard annual subscription $169.99 per year (save $33.89) Similarly, you can opt for the annual Max Standard or Premium plans and save about 16% if you'd rather go ad-free. The Standard tier costs either $16.99 per month or $169.99 per year (about $14.16 per month), while the Premium tier costs either $20.99 per month or $209.99 per year (about $17.50 per month). While both tiers offer ad-free viewing, the Premium tier goes a step further with 4K Ultra HD video quality, Dolby Atmos immersive audio, and the ability to download more offline content.Get HBO Max for free: Switch to Cricket's $60/month unlimited plan Opens in a new window Credit: Cricket / Max Max (with ads) Free for Cricket customers on the $60/month plan If you switch your phone plan to Cricket's $60 per month unlimited plan, you'll get HBO Max included for no extra cost. When you open up the HBO Max app, you'll just select Cricket as your provider and use your credentials to log in. That's all, folks.Get HBO Max for free: Sign up for DashPass annual plan Opens in a new window Credit: DoorDash / Max Max (with ads) Free with DashPass annual plan ($8/month) Another way to get HBO Max for free in 2025 is by signing up for a DoorDash DashPass annual plan for $96 per year ($8 per month). A DashPass membership gets you $0 delivery fees and reduced service fees on eligible DoorDash orders all year long. You'll just have to activate your HBO Max with ads subscription through your DoorDash account to get started. If you'd rather watch ad-free, you can upgrade for a discounted rate as well.Best HBO Max deal for students: Save 50% on Max Basic with ads Opens in a new window Credit: Max Max Student $4.99 per month for 12 months College students looking to expand their movie horizons can get an entire year of HBO Max with ads for half price. Just verify your student status with UNiDAYS and retrieve the unique discount code to drop the price from $9.99 to $4.99 per month.Best bundle deal: Get Max, Disney+, and Hulu for up to 38% off Opens in a new window Credit: Disney / Hulu / Max Disney+, Hulu, and Max $16.99 per month (with ads), $29.99 per month (no ads) For the most bang for your buck, check out the Disney+ bundle deal that includes Disney+, Hulu, and Max for just $16.99 per month with ads. That lineup of streamers would usually cost you $25.97 per month, so you'll keep an extra $9 in your pocket monthly.If you'd rather go ad-free, the bundle will run you $29.99 per month as opposed to $48.97. That's up to 38% in savings for access to all three streaming libraries.
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  • Trailer: Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ Finally Comes Alive

    Guillermo del Toro keeps transforming old classics for Netflix. He previously directed his vision of the animated favorite Pinocchio; now he’s tackling one of the most famous horror tales of all time: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.For del Toro, this has been a dream project for many years — or maybe decades. He’s been talking about it publicly since at least the 2000s, and after several stabs at the project fell through at various other studios, he finally got to make his dream a reality at Netflix, who funded his version of the Gothic horror classic with an impressive cast that includes Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, and Jacob Elordi as Frankenstein’s Monster. The parallels between Victor Frankenstein pursuing his quixotic dreams of creating life, and del Toro’s own endless quest to create his cinematic vision are already getting me extremely excited for this film. Who doesn’t love a good horror allegory for the act of moviemaking itself?The first trailer for the film confirms that GDT’s Frankenstein will premiere later this year on Netflix. It also confirms that this thing looks like pure unfiltered del Toro Gothic horror. Check out the trailer below to see for yourself:READ MORE: The Best Movie Trailers of the Last 10 YearsHere is the film’s official synopsis:Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein premieres on Netflix in November. Suddenly I am extremely hungry for a pretzel shaped like Frankenstein’s Monster’s head.Get our free mobile appThe Best Horror Movies of the Last 10 YearsThese modern horror movies are sure to keep you up at night. Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
    #trailer #guillermo #del #toros #frankenstein
    Trailer: Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ Finally Comes Alive
    Guillermo del Toro keeps transforming old classics for Netflix. He previously directed his vision of the animated favorite Pinocchio; now he’s tackling one of the most famous horror tales of all time: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.For del Toro, this has been a dream project for many years — or maybe decades. He’s been talking about it publicly since at least the 2000s, and after several stabs at the project fell through at various other studios, he finally got to make his dream a reality at Netflix, who funded his version of the Gothic horror classic with an impressive cast that includes Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, and Jacob Elordi as Frankenstein’s Monster. The parallels between Victor Frankenstein pursuing his quixotic dreams of creating life, and del Toro’s own endless quest to create his cinematic vision are already getting me extremely excited for this film. Who doesn’t love a good horror allegory for the act of moviemaking itself?The first trailer for the film confirms that GDT’s Frankenstein will premiere later this year on Netflix. It also confirms that this thing looks like pure unfiltered del Toro Gothic horror. Check out the trailer below to see for yourself:READ MORE: The Best Movie Trailers of the Last 10 YearsHere is the film’s official synopsis:Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein premieres on Netflix in November. Suddenly I am extremely hungry for a pretzel shaped like Frankenstein’s Monster’s head.Get our free mobile appThe Best Horror Movies of the Last 10 YearsThese modern horror movies are sure to keep you up at night. Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky #trailer #guillermo #del #toros #frankenstein
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    Trailer: Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ Finally Comes Alive
    Guillermo del Toro keeps transforming old classics for Netflix. He previously directed his vision of the animated favorite Pinocchio; now he’s tackling one of the most famous horror tales of all time: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.For del Toro, this has been a dream project for many years — or maybe decades. He’s been talking about it publicly since at least the 2000s, and after several stabs at the project fell through at various other studios, he finally got to make his dream a reality at Netflix, who funded his version of the Gothic horror classic with an impressive cast that includes Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, and Jacob Elordi as Frankenstein’s Monster. The parallels between Victor Frankenstein pursuing his quixotic dreams of creating life, and del Toro’s own endless quest to create his cinematic vision are already getting me extremely excited for this film. Who doesn’t love a good horror allegory for the act of moviemaking itself?The first trailer for the film confirms that GDT’s Frankenstein will premiere later this year on Netflix. It also confirms that this thing looks like pure unfiltered del Toro Gothic horror. Check out the trailer below to see for yourself:READ MORE: The Best Movie Trailers of the Last 10 YearsHere is the film’s official synopsis:Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein premieres on Netflix in November. Suddenly I am extremely hungry for a pretzel shaped like Frankenstein’s Monster’s head.Get our free mobile appThe Best Horror Movies of the Last 10 Years (2015-2024)These modern horror movies are sure to keep you up at night. Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
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  • From Private Parts to Peckham's Medusa: Inside Anna Ginsburg's animated world

    When Anna Ginsburg opened her talk at OFFF Barcelona with her showreel, it landed like a punch to the heart and gut all at once. Immense, emotional, awesome. That three-word review wasn't just for the reel – it set the tone for a talk that was unflinchingly honest, joyously weird, and brimming with creative intensity.
    Anna began her career making music videos, which she admitted were a kind of creative scaffolding: "I didn't yet know what I wanted to say about the world, so I used music as a skeleton to hang visuals on."
    It gave her the freedom to experiment visually and technically with rotoscoping, stop motion and shooting live-action. It was an opportunity to be playful and have fun until she had something pressing to say. Then, Anna began to move into more meaningful territory, blending narrative and aesthetic experimentation.
    Alongside music videos, she became increasingly drawn to animated documentaries. "It's a powerful and overlooked genre," she explained. "When it's just voice recordings and not video, people are more candid. You're protecting your subject, so they're more honest."

    Talking genitals and creative liberation: The making of Private Parts
    A formative moment in Anna's personal and creative life occurred when she saw the artwork 'The Great Wall of Vagina' by Jamie McCartney at the age of 19. It followed an awkward teenage discovery years earlier when, after finally achieving her first orgasm, she proudly shared the news with friends and was met with horror. "Boys got high-fived. Girls got shamed."
    That gap between female pleasure and cultural discomfort became the starting point for Private Parts, her now-famous animated short about masturbation and sexual equality. It began as a personal experiment, sketching vulvas in her studio, imagining what their facial expressions might be. Then, she started interviewing friends about their experiences and animating vulvas to match their voices.
    When It's Nice That and Channel 4 emailed her looking for submissions for a late-night slot, Anna shared a clip of two vulvas in casual conversation, and they were immediately sold. With a shoestring budget of £2,000 and a five-week deadline, she rallied 11 illustrators to help bring the film to life. "I set up a Dropbox, and talking genitals started flooding in from the four corners of the world while I was sitting in my bedroom at my mum's," she laughed.
    One standout moment came from an Amsterdam-based designer who created a CGI Rubik's Cube vagina, then took two weeks off work to spray paint 100 versions of it. The result of what started as a passion project is an iconic, hilarious, and touching film that still resonates ten years on.

    From humour to heartbreak: What Is Beauty
    The talk shifted gear when Anna began to speak about her younger sister's anorexia. In 2017, during her sister's third hospitalisation, Anna found herself questioning the roots of beauty ideals, particularly in Western culture. Witnessing her sister's pain reframed how she saw her own body.
    This sparked a deep dive into beauty through the ages, from the Venus of Willendorf, a 28,000-year-old fertility goddess, to the Versace supermodels of the 1990s and the surgically sculpted Kardashians of today.
    "You realise the pace of the change in beauty ideals," she says. "If you revisit the skeletal female bodies which defined the super skinny era of the 2000s and compare it to the enhanced curves of today, you realise that trying to keep up is not only futile; it's extremely dangerous."
    She also explored the disturbing trend of dismemberment in advertising – shots taken where the heads are intentionally out of frame – and the impact this has on self-perception. Her response was What Is Beauty, released in 2018 on International Women's Day and her sister's birthday. The short film went viral, amassing over 20 million views.
    "It was a love letter to her," Anna said. "Because it didn't have English dialogue, it travelled globally. The simplicity made it resonate." And despite its runaway success, it brought her zero income. "Then I made the worst advert for a bank the world has ever seen," she joked. "I made money, but it broke my creative spirit."

    Enter the Hag: Animation, myth and millennial angst
    OFFF attendees were also treated to the world-exclusive first look at Hag, Anna's new animated short, three years in the making. It's her most ambitious and most personal project yet. Made with the support of the BFI, awarding National Lottery funding, Has is a 16-minute fantasy set in a surreal version of Peckham. The main character is a childless, single, disillusioned woman with snakes for hair.
    "I had just broken up with a lockdown boyfriend after struggling with doubts for nearly 2 years,"' she reveals. "The next day, I was at a baby shower surrounded by friends with rings and babies who recoiled at my touch. I was surrounded by flies, and a dog was doing a poo right next to me. I just felt like a hag."
    Drawing on Greek mythology, Anna reimagines Medusa not as a jealous monster but as a feminist figure of rage, autonomy and misinterpretation. "I didn't know she was a rape victim until I started researching," she told me after the talk. "The story of Athena cursing her out of jealousy is such a tired trope. What if it was solidarity? What if the snakes were power?"
    In Hag, the character initially fights with her snakes – violently clipping them back in shame and battling with them – but by the end, they align. She embraces her monstrous self. "It's a metaphor for learning to love the parts of yourself you've been told are wrong," Anna said. "That journey is universal."

    Making the personal politicalTelling a story so autobiographical wasn't easy. "It's exposing," Anna admitted. "My past work dealt with issues in the world. This one is about how I feel in the world." Even her ex-boyfriend plays himself. "Luckily, he's funny and cool about it. Otherwise, it would've been a disaster."
    She did worry about dramatising the baby shower scene too much. "None of those women were horrible in real life, but for the film, we needed to crank up the emotional tension," she says. "I just wanted to show that societal pressures make women feel monstrous whether they decide to conform or not. This is not a battle between hags and non-hags. These feelings affect us all."
    Co-writing the script with her dear friend and writer Miranda Latimer really helped. "It felt less exposing as we'd both lived versions of the same thing. Collaboration is liberating and makes me feel safer when being so honest," Anna explains.

    Sisterhood, generations and the pressure to conform
    It was very clear from our chat that Anna's younger sisters are a recurring thread throughout her work. "They've helped me understand the world through a Gen Z lens," she said. "Stalking my youngest sister on Instagram was how I noticed the way girls crop their faces or hide behind scribbles. It's dehumanising."
    That intergenerational awareness fuels many of her ideas. "I definitely wouldn't have made What Is Beauty without Maya. Seeing what she was going through just unlocked something."
    She's also keenly aware of the gender gap in healthcare. "So many women I know are living with pain, going years without a diagnosis. It's infuriating. If I get asked to work on anything to do with women's health, I'll say yes."

    Medusa, millennials, and the meaning of self-love
    One of Hag's most biting commentaries is about millennial self-care culture. "There's a scene in the character's bedroom – it's got a faded Dumbledore poster, self-help books, a flashing 'Namaste' sign. It's a shrine to the broken millennial."
    She laughs: "Self-love became a commodity. An expensive candle, a jade roller, and an oil burner from Muji. Like, really? That's it?" Her film pokes at the performative of wellness while still holding space for genuine vulnerability.
    This same self-awareness informs her reflections on generational shifts. "Gen Z is going through the same thing, just with a different flavour. It's all about skincare routines now – 11 steps for a 14-year-old. It's wild."

    Feminism with fangsAnna's feminism is open, intersectional, and laced with humour. "My mum's a lesbian and a Child Protection lawyer who helped to make rape within marriage illegal in the UK," she shared. "She sometimes jokes that my work is a bit basic. But I'm OK with that – I think there's space for approachable feminism, too."
    Importantly, she wants to bring everyone into the conversation. "It means so much when men come up to me after talks. I don't want to alienate anyone. These stories are about people, not just women."
    What's Next?
    Hag will officially premiere later this year, and it's likely to resonate far and wide. It's raw, mythic, funny and furious – and thoroughly modern.
    As Anna put it: "I've been experiencing external pressure and internal longing while making this film. So I'm basically becoming a hag while making Hag."
    As far as metamorphoses go, that's one we'll happily watch unfold.
    #private #parts #peckham039s #medusa #inside
    From Private Parts to Peckham's Medusa: Inside Anna Ginsburg's animated world
    When Anna Ginsburg opened her talk at OFFF Barcelona with her showreel, it landed like a punch to the heart and gut all at once. Immense, emotional, awesome. That three-word review wasn't just for the reel – it set the tone for a talk that was unflinchingly honest, joyously weird, and brimming with creative intensity. Anna began her career making music videos, which she admitted were a kind of creative scaffolding: "I didn't yet know what I wanted to say about the world, so I used music as a skeleton to hang visuals on." It gave her the freedom to experiment visually and technically with rotoscoping, stop motion and shooting live-action. It was an opportunity to be playful and have fun until she had something pressing to say. Then, Anna began to move into more meaningful territory, blending narrative and aesthetic experimentation. Alongside music videos, she became increasingly drawn to animated documentaries. "It's a powerful and overlooked genre," she explained. "When it's just voice recordings and not video, people are more candid. You're protecting your subject, so they're more honest." Talking genitals and creative liberation: The making of Private Parts A formative moment in Anna's personal and creative life occurred when she saw the artwork 'The Great Wall of Vagina' by Jamie McCartney at the age of 19. It followed an awkward teenage discovery years earlier when, after finally achieving her first orgasm, she proudly shared the news with friends and was met with horror. "Boys got high-fived. Girls got shamed." That gap between female pleasure and cultural discomfort became the starting point for Private Parts, her now-famous animated short about masturbation and sexual equality. It began as a personal experiment, sketching vulvas in her studio, imagining what their facial expressions might be. Then, she started interviewing friends about their experiences and animating vulvas to match their voices. When It's Nice That and Channel 4 emailed her looking for submissions for a late-night slot, Anna shared a clip of two vulvas in casual conversation, and they were immediately sold. With a shoestring budget of £2,000 and a five-week deadline, she rallied 11 illustrators to help bring the film to life. "I set up a Dropbox, and talking genitals started flooding in from the four corners of the world while I was sitting in my bedroom at my mum's," she laughed. One standout moment came from an Amsterdam-based designer who created a CGI Rubik's Cube vagina, then took two weeks off work to spray paint 100 versions of it. The result of what started as a passion project is an iconic, hilarious, and touching film that still resonates ten years on. From humour to heartbreak: What Is Beauty The talk shifted gear when Anna began to speak about her younger sister's anorexia. In 2017, during her sister's third hospitalisation, Anna found herself questioning the roots of beauty ideals, particularly in Western culture. Witnessing her sister's pain reframed how she saw her own body. This sparked a deep dive into beauty through the ages, from the Venus of Willendorf, a 28,000-year-old fertility goddess, to the Versace supermodels of the 1990s and the surgically sculpted Kardashians of today. "You realise the pace of the change in beauty ideals," she says. "If you revisit the skeletal female bodies which defined the super skinny era of the 2000s and compare it to the enhanced curves of today, you realise that trying to keep up is not only futile; it's extremely dangerous." She also explored the disturbing trend of dismemberment in advertising – shots taken where the heads are intentionally out of frame – and the impact this has on self-perception. Her response was What Is Beauty, released in 2018 on International Women's Day and her sister's birthday. The short film went viral, amassing over 20 million views. "It was a love letter to her," Anna said. "Because it didn't have English dialogue, it travelled globally. The simplicity made it resonate." And despite its runaway success, it brought her zero income. "Then I made the worst advert for a bank the world has ever seen," she joked. "I made money, but it broke my creative spirit." Enter the Hag: Animation, myth and millennial angst OFFF attendees were also treated to the world-exclusive first look at Hag, Anna's new animated short, three years in the making. It's her most ambitious and most personal project yet. Made with the support of the BFI, awarding National Lottery funding, Has is a 16-minute fantasy set in a surreal version of Peckham. The main character is a childless, single, disillusioned woman with snakes for hair. "I had just broken up with a lockdown boyfriend after struggling with doubts for nearly 2 years,"' she reveals. "The next day, I was at a baby shower surrounded by friends with rings and babies who recoiled at my touch. I was surrounded by flies, and a dog was doing a poo right next to me. I just felt like a hag." Drawing on Greek mythology, Anna reimagines Medusa not as a jealous monster but as a feminist figure of rage, autonomy and misinterpretation. "I didn't know she was a rape victim until I started researching," she told me after the talk. "The story of Athena cursing her out of jealousy is such a tired trope. What if it was solidarity? What if the snakes were power?" In Hag, the character initially fights with her snakes – violently clipping them back in shame and battling with them – but by the end, they align. She embraces her monstrous self. "It's a metaphor for learning to love the parts of yourself you've been told are wrong," Anna said. "That journey is universal." Making the personal politicalTelling a story so autobiographical wasn't easy. "It's exposing," Anna admitted. "My past work dealt with issues in the world. This one is about how I feel in the world." Even her ex-boyfriend plays himself. "Luckily, he's funny and cool about it. Otherwise, it would've been a disaster." She did worry about dramatising the baby shower scene too much. "None of those women were horrible in real life, but for the film, we needed to crank up the emotional tension," she says. "I just wanted to show that societal pressures make women feel monstrous whether they decide to conform or not. This is not a battle between hags and non-hags. These feelings affect us all." Co-writing the script with her dear friend and writer Miranda Latimer really helped. "It felt less exposing as we'd both lived versions of the same thing. Collaboration is liberating and makes me feel safer when being so honest," Anna explains. Sisterhood, generations and the pressure to conform It was very clear from our chat that Anna's younger sisters are a recurring thread throughout her work. "They've helped me understand the world through a Gen Z lens," she said. "Stalking my youngest sister on Instagram was how I noticed the way girls crop their faces or hide behind scribbles. It's dehumanising." That intergenerational awareness fuels many of her ideas. "I definitely wouldn't have made What Is Beauty without Maya. Seeing what she was going through just unlocked something." She's also keenly aware of the gender gap in healthcare. "So many women I know are living with pain, going years without a diagnosis. It's infuriating. If I get asked to work on anything to do with women's health, I'll say yes." Medusa, millennials, and the meaning of self-love One of Hag's most biting commentaries is about millennial self-care culture. "There's a scene in the character's bedroom – it's got a faded Dumbledore poster, self-help books, a flashing 'Namaste' sign. It's a shrine to the broken millennial." She laughs: "Self-love became a commodity. An expensive candle, a jade roller, and an oil burner from Muji. Like, really? That's it?" Her film pokes at the performative of wellness while still holding space for genuine vulnerability. This same self-awareness informs her reflections on generational shifts. "Gen Z is going through the same thing, just with a different flavour. It's all about skincare routines now – 11 steps for a 14-year-old. It's wild." Feminism with fangsAnna's feminism is open, intersectional, and laced with humour. "My mum's a lesbian and a Child Protection lawyer who helped to make rape within marriage illegal in the UK," she shared. "She sometimes jokes that my work is a bit basic. But I'm OK with that – I think there's space for approachable feminism, too." Importantly, she wants to bring everyone into the conversation. "It means so much when men come up to me after talks. I don't want to alienate anyone. These stories are about people, not just women." What's Next? Hag will officially premiere later this year, and it's likely to resonate far and wide. It's raw, mythic, funny and furious – and thoroughly modern. As Anna put it: "I've been experiencing external pressure and internal longing while making this film. So I'm basically becoming a hag while making Hag." As far as metamorphoses go, that's one we'll happily watch unfold. #private #parts #peckham039s #medusa #inside
    WWW.CREATIVEBOOM.COM
    From Private Parts to Peckham's Medusa: Inside Anna Ginsburg's animated world
    When Anna Ginsburg opened her talk at OFFF Barcelona with her showreel, it landed like a punch to the heart and gut all at once. Immense, emotional, awesome. That three-word review wasn't just for the reel – it set the tone for a talk that was unflinchingly honest, joyously weird, and brimming with creative intensity. Anna began her career making music videos, which she admitted were a kind of creative scaffolding: "I didn't yet know what I wanted to say about the world, so I used music as a skeleton to hang visuals on." It gave her the freedom to experiment visually and technically with rotoscoping, stop motion and shooting live-action. It was an opportunity to be playful and have fun until she had something pressing to say. Then, Anna began to move into more meaningful territory, blending narrative and aesthetic experimentation. Alongside music videos, she became increasingly drawn to animated documentaries. "It's a powerful and overlooked genre," she explained. "When it's just voice recordings and not video, people are more candid. You're protecting your subject, so they're more honest." Talking genitals and creative liberation: The making of Private Parts A formative moment in Anna's personal and creative life occurred when she saw the artwork 'The Great Wall of Vagina' by Jamie McCartney at the age of 19. It followed an awkward teenage discovery years earlier when, after finally achieving her first orgasm (post-Cruel Intentions viewing), she proudly shared the news with friends and was met with horror. "Boys got high-fived. Girls got shamed." That gap between female pleasure and cultural discomfort became the starting point for Private Parts, her now-famous animated short about masturbation and sexual equality. It began as a personal experiment, sketching vulvas in her studio, imagining what their facial expressions might be. Then, she started interviewing friends about their experiences and animating vulvas to match their voices. When It's Nice That and Channel 4 emailed her looking for submissions for a late-night slot, Anna shared a clip of two vulvas in casual conversation, and they were immediately sold. With a shoestring budget of £2,000 and a five-week deadline, she rallied 11 illustrators to help bring the film to life. "I set up a Dropbox, and talking genitals started flooding in from the four corners of the world while I was sitting in my bedroom at my mum's," she laughed. One standout moment came from an Amsterdam-based designer who created a CGI Rubik's Cube vagina, then took two weeks off work to spray paint 100 versions of it. The result of what started as a passion project is an iconic, hilarious, and touching film that still resonates ten years on. From humour to heartbreak: What Is Beauty The talk shifted gear when Anna began to speak about her younger sister's anorexia. In 2017, during her sister's third hospitalisation, Anna found herself questioning the roots of beauty ideals, particularly in Western culture. Witnessing her sister's pain reframed how she saw her own body. This sparked a deep dive into beauty through the ages, from the Venus of Willendorf, a 28,000-year-old fertility goddess, to the Versace supermodels of the 1990s and the surgically sculpted Kardashians of today. "You realise the pace of the change in beauty ideals," she says. "If you revisit the skeletal female bodies which defined the super skinny era of the 2000s and compare it to the enhanced curves of today, you realise that trying to keep up is not only futile; it's extremely dangerous." She also explored the disturbing trend of dismemberment in advertising – shots taken where the heads are intentionally out of frame – and the impact this has on self-perception. Her response was What Is Beauty, released in 2018 on International Women's Day and her sister's birthday. The short film went viral, amassing over 20 million views. "It was a love letter to her," Anna said. "Because it didn't have English dialogue, it travelled globally. The simplicity made it resonate." And despite its runaway success, it brought her zero income. "Then I made the worst advert for a bank the world has ever seen," she joked. "I made money, but it broke my creative spirit." Enter the Hag: Animation, myth and millennial angst OFFF attendees were also treated to the world-exclusive first look at Hag, Anna's new animated short, three years in the making. It's her most ambitious and most personal project yet. Made with the support of the BFI, awarding National Lottery funding, Has is a 16-minute fantasy set in a surreal version of Peckham. The main character is a childless, single, disillusioned woman with snakes for hair. "I had just broken up with a lockdown boyfriend after struggling with doubts for nearly 2 years,"' she reveals. "The next day, I was at a baby shower surrounded by friends with rings and babies who recoiled at my touch. I was surrounded by flies, and a dog was doing a poo right next to me. I just felt like a hag." Drawing on Greek mythology, Anna reimagines Medusa not as a jealous monster but as a feminist figure of rage, autonomy and misinterpretation. "I didn't know she was a rape victim until I started researching," she told me after the talk. "The story of Athena cursing her out of jealousy is such a tired trope. What if it was solidarity? What if the snakes were power?" In Hag, the character initially fights with her snakes – violently clipping them back in shame and battling with them – but by the end, they align. She embraces her monstrous self. "It's a metaphor for learning to love the parts of yourself you've been told are wrong," Anna said. "That journey is universal." Making the personal political (and funny) Telling a story so autobiographical wasn't easy. "It's exposing," Anna admitted. "My past work dealt with issues in the world. This one is about how I feel in the world." Even her ex-boyfriend plays himself. "Luckily, he's funny and cool about it. Otherwise, it would've been a disaster." She did worry about dramatising the baby shower scene too much. "None of those women were horrible in real life, but for the film, we needed to crank up the emotional tension," she says. "I just wanted to show that societal pressures make women feel monstrous whether they decide to conform or not. This is not a battle between hags and non-hags. These feelings affect us all." Co-writing the script with her dear friend and writer Miranda Latimer really helped. "It felt less exposing as we'd both lived versions of the same thing. Collaboration is liberating and makes me feel safer when being so honest," Anna explains. Sisterhood, generations and the pressure to conform It was very clear from our chat that Anna's younger sisters are a recurring thread throughout her work. "They've helped me understand the world through a Gen Z lens," she said. "Stalking my youngest sister on Instagram was how I noticed the way girls crop their faces or hide behind scribbles. It's dehumanising." That intergenerational awareness fuels many of her ideas. "I definitely wouldn't have made What Is Beauty without Maya. Seeing what she was going through just unlocked something." She's also keenly aware of the gender gap in healthcare. "So many women I know are living with pain, going years without a diagnosis. It's infuriating. If I get asked to work on anything to do with women's health, I'll say yes." Medusa, millennials, and the meaning of self-love One of Hag's most biting commentaries is about millennial self-care culture. "There's a scene in the character's bedroom – it's got a faded Dumbledore poster, self-help books, a flashing 'Namaste' sign. It's a shrine to the broken millennial." She laughs: "Self-love became a commodity. An expensive candle, a jade roller, and an oil burner from Muji. Like, really? That's it?" Her film pokes at the performative of wellness while still holding space for genuine vulnerability. This same self-awareness informs her reflections on generational shifts. "Gen Z is going through the same thing, just with a different flavour. It's all about skincare routines now – 11 steps for a 14-year-old. It's wild." Feminism with fangs (and a sense of humour) Anna's feminism is open, intersectional, and laced with humour. "My mum's a lesbian and a Child Protection lawyer who helped to make rape within marriage illegal in the UK," she shared. "She sometimes jokes that my work is a bit basic. But I'm OK with that – I think there's space for approachable feminism, too." Importantly, she wants to bring everyone into the conversation. "It means so much when men come up to me after talks. I don't want to alienate anyone. These stories are about people, not just women." What's Next? Hag will officially premiere later this year, and it's likely to resonate far and wide. It's raw, mythic, funny and furious – and thoroughly modern. As Anna put it: "I've been experiencing external pressure and internal longing while making this film. So I'm basically becoming a hag while making Hag." As far as metamorphoses go, that's one we'll happily watch unfold.
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  • What worked in The Witcher 3 and what didn't: looking back on a landmark RPG with CD Projekt Red

    What worked in The Witcher 3 and what didn't: looking back on a landmark RPG with CD Projekt Red
    "We learned a lot of lessons down the road."

    Image credit: CD Projekt Red

    Feature

    by Robert Purchese
    Associate Editor

    Published on May 31, 2025

    Do you remember what you were doing when The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released? It came out on 19th May 2015. I remember because I was inside CD Projekt Red at the time, trying to capture the moment for you - a moment I'm unlikely to replicate there or anywhere else. I recall sitting in the studio's canteen in the small hours of the morning, after a midnight launch event in a mall in Warsaw, chewing on a piece of cold pizza and wondering out loud what would come next for the studio, because at the time, who could know? One era was ending and another was about to begin. Would it bring the fame and fortune CD Projekt Red desired?
    Today, more than 60 million sales of The Witcher 3 later, we know the answer is yes. The Witcher 3 became a role-playing classic. It delivered one of the most touchable medieval worlds we've explored, a rough place of craggy rocks and craggier faces, of wonky morales and grim realities, of mud and dirtiness. And monsters, though not all were monstrous to look at. It was a world of grey, of superstition and folklore, and in it stood we, a legendary monster hunter, facing seemingly impossible odds. The Witcher 3 took fantasy seriously.
    But the decade since the game's release has been turbulent for CD Projekt Red. The studio launched its big new sci-fi series in 2020 with Cyberpunk 2077, and though the game has now sold more than 30 million copies, making it monetarily a success, it had a nightmarish launch. The PS4 version had to be removed from sale. It brought enormous pressure, growing pains and intense scrutiny to the studio, and CD Projekt Red would spend a further three years patching and updating - and eventually releasing an expansion - before public opinion would mostly turn around.
    Today the studio returns to safer ground, back to The Witcher world with the new game The Witcher 4, and as we look forward to it we should also look back, to the game that catapulted the studio to fame, and see what has been learnt.

    The Witcher 3 is at version 4.04 today, a number that represents an enormously long period of post-release support.Watch on YouTube
    It all began with naivety, as perhaps any ambitious project should. It's easy to forget that 14 years ago, when The Witcher 3 was being conceived, CD Projekt Red had never made an open-world game before. The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 2 were linear in their approaches. It's also easy to forget that the people making the game were 14 years younger and less experienced. Back then, this was the studio's chance at recognition, so it aimed high in order to be seen. "The Witcher 3 was supposed to be this game that will end all other games," Marcin Blacha, the lead writer of the game, tells me. Simply make an open-world game that's also a story-driven game and release it on all platforms at the same time. How hard could it be?
    "When I'm thinking about our state of mind back in those days, the only word that comes to my mind is enthusiastic," Blacha says. "It was fantastic because we were so enthusiastic that we were full of courage. We were trying to experiment with stuff and we were not afraid. We were convinced that when we work with passion and love, it will pay off eventually."
    Every project has to begin somewhere and for Blacha, the person tasked with imagining the story, The Witcher 3 could only begin with Ciri, the daughter-of-sorts to The Witcher's central monster hunter character Geralt. As Blacha says, "The most important thing about Geralt and the most important thing about the books is the relationship between Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer. I already did two games with no sign of Ciri, no sign of Yennefer, and then we finally had a budget and proper time for pre-production, so for me, it was time to introduce both characters."
    It's a decision that would have major repercussions for the rest of The Witcher series at CD Projekt Red. Blacha didn't know it then, but Ciri would go on to become the protagonist of The Witcher 4. Had she not been the co-protagonist of The Witcher 3 - for you play as her in several sections during the game - who knows if things would have worked out the same way. It's an understandable progression as it is, though there is still some uncertainty among the audience about Ciri's starring role.
    But Ciri's inclusion came with complications, because the Ciri we see in the game is not the Ciri described in the books. That Ciri is much closer to the Ciri in the Netflix Witcher TV show, younger and more rebellious in a typical teenager way. She might be an important part of the fiction, then, but that doesn't mean she was especially well liked. "People were thinking that she's annoying," says Blacha, who grew up reading The Witcher books. CD Projekt Red, then, decided to make a Ciri of its own, aging her and making her more "flesh and bone", as Blacha puts it. He fondly recalls a moment in the game's development when reviewing the Ciri sections of the game, and saying aloud to studio director Adam Badowski how much he liked her. "I didn't know that she's going to be the protagonist of the next game," he says, "but I said to Adam Badowski, she's going to be very popular."
    Once Ciri had been earmarked for inclusion in The Witcher 3, the idea to have her pursued by the phantom-like force of the Wild Hunt - the members of which literally ride horses in the night sky, like Santa Claus' cursed reindeer - came shortly after. CD Projekt Red had introduced the Wild Hunt in The Witcher 2 so it made sense. The outline of the main story was then laid down as a one-page narrative treatment. Then it was expanded to a two-page treatment, a four page treatment, an eight page treatment and so on. At around 10 pages, it already had the White Orchard prologue, almost the entirety of the No Man's Land zone, and a hint of what would happen on Skellige and in Novigrad. When it was around 40 pages long, the quest design team was invited in.

    CD Projekt Red made their Ciri older than she is in the books. | Image credit: CD Projekt Red

    The quest design team's job is to turn a story into a game, and this was a newly created department for The Witcher 3, created because the old way of writers designing the quests wasn't working any more. "We were struggling a bit with making sure that every written story that we have prepared is also a story that we can play well," Paweł Sasko says. He joined CD Projekt Red to be a part of that quest design team.
    The quest design team carves up a narrative treatment, paragraph by paragraph, and expands those into playable questlines for the game. "It's basically something between game design and a movie scenario," Sasko says. There's no dialogue, just a description of what will happen, and even a one-paragraph prompt can balloon into a 20-30 page design. Among the paragraphs Sasko was given to adapt was a storyline in No Man's Land concerning a character known as the Bloody Baron.
    The Bloody Baron storyline is widely acclaimed and has become synonymous with everything Sasko and CD Projekt Red were trying to do with the game. It's a storyline that probes into mature themes like domestic abuse, fatherhood, and love and loss and grief. More importantly, it presents us with a flawed character and allows us time and space to perhaps change our opinion of them. It gives us layers many other games don't go anywhere near.
    When Sasko first encountered the storyline, there was only an outline. "It said that Geralt meets the Bloody Baron who asks Geralt to hunt a monster and look for his wife and daughter, and for that, he is going to share information about Ciri and tell Geralt where she went. That was pretty much it." And Sasko already knew a few things about what he wanted to do. He knew he wanted to show No Man's Land as a Slavic region bathed in superstitions and complex religious beliefs, one that had been ravaged by famine and war. He also knew the tone of the area was horror because this had been outlined by Blacha and the leaders of The Witcher 3 team.
    Says Blacha: "My opinion is that a successful Witcher game is a mix of everything, so you have a horror line, you have a romance, you have adventure, you have exploration. When we started to think about our hubs, we thought about them in terms of a show, so No Man's Land, the hub with the Bloody Baron, was horror; Skellige was supposed to be an adventure; and Novigrad was supposed to be a big city investigation."
    But there were key missing pieces then from the Bloody Baron sequence we know today. The botchling, for instance - the monstrous baby the quest revolves around. It didn't exist. It was an idea that came from Sasko after he read a Slavic bestiary. "Yes," he says, "the botchling idea came from me."

    The Bloody Baron. | Image credit: Eurogamer / CD Projekt Red

    He wanted the botchling to be the conduit through which more mature themes of the story could be approached - something overt to keep you busy while deeper themes sunk in. It's an approach Sasko says he pinched from Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski, after deconstructing his work. "What he's doing is he's trying to find universal truths about human beings and struggles, but he doesn't tell those stories directly," Sasko says. "So for instance racism: he doesn't talk about that directly but he finds an interesting way how, in his world, he can package that and talk about it. I followed his method and mimicked it."
    This way the botchling becomes your focus in the quest, as the Baron carries it back to the manor house and you defend him from wraiths, but while you're doing that, you're also talking and learning more about who the Bloody Baron - who Phillip Strenger - is. "I wanted you to feel almost like you're in the shoes of that Bloody Baron," Sasko says. "Peregrination is this path in Christianity you go through when you want to remove your sins, and that's what this is meant to be. He's just trying to do it, and he's going through all of those things to do something good. And I wanted the player to start feeling like, 'Wow, maybe this dude is not so bad.'"
    It's a quest that leaves a big impression. An email was forwarded to Sasko after the game's release, written by a player who had lost their wife and child as the Baron once had. "And for him," he says, "that moment when Baron was carrying the child was almost like a catharsis, when he was trying so badly to walk that path. And the moment he managed to: he wrote in his letter that he broke down in tears."
    There's one other very significant moment in The Witcher 3 that Sasko had a large hand in, and it's the Battle of Kaer Morhern, where the 'goodies' - the witchers and the sorceresses, and Ciri - make a stand against the titular menace of the Wild Hunt. Sasko designed this section specifically to emotionally tenderise you, through a series of fast-paced and fraught battles, so that by the time the climactic moment came, you were aptly primed to receive it. The moment being Vesemir's death - the leader of the wolf school of witchers and father figure to Geralt. This, too, was Sasko's idea. "We needed to transition Ciri from being a hunted animal to becoming a hunter," he tells me, and the only event big enough and with enough inherent propulsion was Vesemir's death.

    Eredin, the leader of the Wild Hunt, breaks Vesemir's neck. | Image credit: Eurogamer / CD Projekt Red

    But for all of the successful moments in the game there are those that didn't work. To the team that made the game, and to the players, there are things that clearly stand out. Such as Geralt's witcher senses, which allow him to see scent trails and footsteps and clues in the world around him. Geralt's detective mode, in other words. Sasko laughs as he cringes about it now. "We've overdone the witcher senses so much, oh my god," he says. "At the time when we were starting this, we were like, 'We don't have it in the game; we have to use it to make you feel like a witcher.' But then at the end, especially in the expansions, we tried to decrease it so it doesn't feel so overloaded." He'd even turn it down by a further 10 to 20 per cent, he says.
    There were all of the question marks dotted across the map, luring us to places to find meagre hidden treasure rewards. "I think we all scratch our heads about what we were thinking when trying to build this," Sasko tells me. "I guess it just came from fear - from fear that the player will feel that the world is empty." This was the first time CD Projekt Red had really the player's hand go, remember, and not controlled where in the world you would be.
    Shallow gameplay is a criticism many people have, especially in the game's repetitive combat, and again, this is something Sasko and the team are well aware of. "We don't feel that the gameplay in Witcher 3 was deep enough," he says. "It was for the times okay, but nowadays when you play it, even though the story still holds really well, you can see that the gameplay is a bit rusty." Also, the cutscenes could have been paced better and had less exposition in them, and the game in general could have dumped fewer concepts on you at once. Cognitive overload, Sasko calls it. "In every second sentence you have a new concept introduced, a new country mentioned, a new politician..." It was too much.
    More broadly, he would also have liked the open-world to be more closely connected to the game's story, rather than be, mostly, a pretty backdrop. "It's like in the theatre when you have beautiful decorations at the back made of cardboard and paper, and not much happens to them except an actor pulls a rope and it starts to rain or something." he says. It's to do with how the main story influences the world and vice versa, and he thinks the studio can be better at it.

    Ciri and Geralt look at a coin purse in The Witcher 3. This is, coincidentally, the same tavern you begin the game in, with Vesemir, and the same tavern you meet Master Mirror in. | Image credit: Eurogamer / CD Projekt Red

    One conversation that surprises me, when looking back on The Witcher 3, is a conversation about popularity, because it's easy to forget now - with the intense scrutiny the studio seems always to be under - that when development began, not many people knew about CD Projekt Red. The combined sales of both Witcher games in 2013 were only 5 million. Poland knew about it - the Witcher fiction originated there and CD Projekt Red is Polish - and Germany knew about it, and some of the rest of Europe knew about it. But in North America, it was relatively unknown. That's a large part of the reason why the Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2 was made at all, to begin knocking on that door. And The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red hoped, would kick that door open. "We knew that we wanted to play in the major league," says Michał Platkow-Gilewski, vice president of communications and PR, stealing a quote from Cyberpunk character Jackie.
    That's why The Witcher 3 was revealed via a Game Informer cover story in early 2013, because that was deemed the way to do things there - the way to win US hearts, Platkow-Gilewski tells me. And it didn't take long for interest to swell. When Platkow-Gilewski joined CD Projekt Red to help launch the Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2 in 2012, he was handing out flyers at Gamescom with company co-founder Michał Kicinski, just to fill presentations for the game. By the time The Witcher 3 was being shown at Gamescom, a few years later, queues were three to four hours long. People would wait all day to play. "We had to learn how to deal with popularity during the campaign," Platkow-Gilewski says.
    Those game shows were crucial for spreading the word about The Witcher 3 and seeing first-hand the impact the game was having on players and press. "Nothing can beat a good show where you meet with people who are there to see their favourite games just slightly before the rest of the world," he says. "They're investing their time, money, effort, and you feel this support, sometimes love, to the IP you're working on, and it boosts energy the way which you can't compare with anything else. These human to human interactions are unique." He says the studio's leader Adam Badowski would refer to these showings as fuel that would propel development for the next year or so, which is why CD Projekt Red always tried to gather as many developers as possible for them, to feel the energy.
    It was precisely these in-person events that Platkow-Gilewski says CD Projekt Red lacked in the lead up to Cyberpunk's launch, after Covid shut the world down. The company did what it could by pivoting to online events instead - the world-first playtest of Cyberpunk was done online via stream-play software called Parsec; I was a part of it - and talked to fans through trailers, but it was much harder to gauge feedback this way. "It's easy to just go with the flow and way harder to manage expectations," Platkow-Gilewski says, so expectations spiralled. "For me the biggest lesson learned is to always check reality versus expectations, and with Cyberpunk, it was really hard to control and we didn't know how to do it."
    It makes me wonder what the studio will do now with The Witcher 4, because the game show sector of the industry still hasn't bounced back, and I doubt - having seen the effect Covid has had on shows from the inside of an events company - whether it ever will. "Gamescom is growing," Platkow-Gilewski says somewhat optimistically. "Gamescom is back on track." But I don't know if it really is.

    Michał Platkow-Gilewski cites this moment as one of his favourite from the Witcher 3 journey. The crew were at the game show PAX in front of a huge live audience and the dialogue audio wouldn't play. Thankfully, they had Doug Cockle, the English language voice actor of Geralt, with them on the panel, so he live improvised the lines. Watch on YouTube
    Something else I'm surprised to hear from him is mention of The Witcher 3's rocky launch, because 10 years later - and in comparison to Cyberpunk's - that's not how I remember it. But Platkow-Gilewski remembers it differently. "When we released Witcher 3, the reception was not great," he says. "Reviews were amazing but there was, at least in my memories, no common consensus that this is a huge game which will maybe define some, to some extent, the genre."
    I do remember the strain on some faces around the studio at launch, though. I also remember a tense conversation about the perceived graphics downgrade in the game, where people unfavourably compared footage of Witcher 3 at launch, with footage from a marketing gameplay trailer released years before it. There were also a number of bugs in the game's code and its performance was unoptimised. "We knew things were far from being perfect," Platkow-Gilewski says. But the studio worked hard in the years after launch to patch and update the game - The Witcher 3 is now on version 4.04, which is extraordinary for a single-player game - and they released showcase expansions for it.
    Some of Marcin Blacha's favourite work is in those expansions, he tells me, especially the horror storylines of Hearts of Stone, many of which he wrote. That expansion's villain, Master Mirror, is also widely regarded as one of the best in the game, disguised as he is as a plain-looking and unassuming person who happens to have incredible and undefinable power. It's not until deep into the expansion you begin to uncover his devilish identity, and it's this subtle way of presenting a villain, and never over explaining his threat, that makes Master Mirror so memorable. He's gathered such a following that some people have concocted elaborate theories about him.
    Lead character artist Pawel Mielniczuk tells me about one theory whereby someone discovered you can see Master Mirror's face on many other background characters in the game, which you can, and that they believed it was a deliberate tactic used by CD Projekt Red to underline Master Mirror's devilish power. Remember, there was a neat trick with Master Mirror in that you had already met him at the beginning of The Witcher 3 base game, long before the expansion was ever developed, in a tavern in White Orchard. If CD Projekt Red could foreshadow him as far back as that, the theory went, then it could easily put his face on other characters in the game to achieve a similar 'did you see it?' effect.

    The real villain in the Hearts of Stone expansion, Gaunter O'Dimm. Better known to many as Master Mirror. There's a reason why he has such a plain-looking face... | Image credit: CD Projekt Red

    The truth is far more mundane. Other characters in the game do have Master Mirror's face, but only because his face is duplicated across the game in order to fill it out. CD Projekt Red didn't know when it made the original Witcher 3 game that this villager would turn into anyone special. There was a tentative plan but it was very tentative, so this villager got a very villager face. "We just got a request for a tertiary unimportant character," says Mileniczuk. "We had like 30-40 faces for the entire game so we just slapped a random face on him." He laughs. And by the time Hearts of Stone development came around, the face - the identity - had stuck.
    Expansions were an important part of cementing public opinion around The Witcher 3, then, as they were for cementing public opinion around Cyberpunk. They've become something of a golden bullet for the studio, a way to creatively unleash an already trained team and leave a much more positive memory in our heads.
    Exactly what went wrong with Cyberpunk and how CD Projekt Red set about correcting it is a whole other story Chris Tapsell told recently on the site, so I don't want to delve into specifics here. Suffice to say it was a hard time for the studio and many hard lessons had to be learned. "The pressure was huge," Platkow-Gilewski says, "because from underdogs we went to a company which will, for sure, deliver the best experience in the world."
    But while much of the rhetoric around Cyberpunk concerns the launch, there's a lot about the game itself that highlights how much progress the studio made, in terms of making open-world role-playing games. One of my favourite examples is how characters in Cyberpunk walk and talk rather than speak to you while rooted to the spot. It might seem like a small thing but it has a transformative and freeing effect on conversations, allowing the game to walk you places while you talk, and stage dialogue in a variety of cool ways. There's a lot to admire about the density of detail in the world, too, and in the greater variety of body shapes and diversity. Plus let's not forget, this is an actual open world rather than a segmented one as The Witcher 3 was. In many ways, the game was a huge step forward for the studio.
    Cyberpunk wasn't the only very notable thing to happen to the Witcher studio in those 10 years, either. During that time, The Witcher brand changed. Netflix piggybacked the game's popularity and developed a TV series starring Henry Cavill, and with it propelled The Witcher to the wider world.
    Curiously, CD Projekt Red wasn't invited to help, which was odd given executive producer Tomek Baginski was well known to CD Projekt Red, having directed the intro cinematics for all three Witcher video games. But beyond minor pieces of crossover content, no meaningful collaboration ever occurred. "We had no part in the shows," Pawel Mileniczuk says. "But it's Hollywood: different words. I know how hard it was for Tomek to get in there, to convince them to do the show, and then how limited influence is when the production house sits on something. It's many people, many decision makers, high stakes, big money. Nobody there was thinking about, Hey, let's talk to those dudes from Poland making games. It's a missed opportunity to me but what can I say?"

    The debut trailer for The Witcher 4.Watch on YouTube
    Nevertheless, the Netflix show had a surprisingly positive effect on the studio, with sales of The Witcher 3 spiking in 2019 and 2020 when the first season aired. "It was a really amazing year for us sales wise," Platkow-Gilewski says. This not only means more revenue for the studio but also wider understanding; more people are more familiar with The Witcher world now than ever before, which bodes very well for The Witcher 4. Not that it influenced or affected the studio's plans to return to that world, by the way. "We knew already that we wanted to come back to The Witcher," Platkow-Gilewski says. "Some knew that they wanted to tell a Ciri story while we were still working on Witcher 3."
    But, again, with popularity also comes pressure. "We'll have hopefully millions of people already hooked in from the get-go but with some expectations and visions and dreams which we have to, or may not be able to, fulfil," Platkow-Gilewski adds. You can already sense this pressure in comments threads about the new game. Many people already have their ideas about what a new Witcher game should be. The Witcher 4 might seem like a return to safer ground, then, but the relationship with the audience has changed in the intervening 10 years.
    "I think people are again with us," Platkow-Gilewski says. "There are some who are way more careful than they used to be; I don't see the hype train. We also learned how to talk about our game, what to show, when to show. But I think people believe again. Not everyone, and maybe it's slightly harder to talk with the whole internet. It's impossible now. It's way more polarised than it used to be. But I believe that we'll have something special for those who love The Witcher."
    Here we are a decade later, then, looking forward to another Witcher game by CD Projekt Red. But many things have changed. The studio has grown and shuffled people around and the roles of the people I speak to have changed. Marcin Blacha and Pawel Mielniczuk aren't working on The Witcher 4, but on new IP Project Hadar, in addition to their managerial responsibilities, and Pawel Sasko is full-time on Cyberpunk 2. It's only really Michał Platkow-Gilewski who'll do a similar job for The Witcher 4 as on The Witcher 3, although this time with dozens more people to help. But they will all still consult and they're confident in the abilities of The Witcher 4 team. "They really know what they're doing," says Sasko, "they are a very seasoned team."
    "We learned a lot of lessons down the road," Platkow-Gilewski says, in closing. "I started this interview saying that we had this bliss of ignorance; now we know more, but hopefully we can still be brave. Before, we were launching a rocket and figuring out how to land on the moon. Now, we know the dangers but we are way more experienced, so we'll find a way to navigate through these uncharted territories. We have a map already so hopefully it won't be such a hard trip."
    #what #worked #witcher #didn039t #looking
    What worked in The Witcher 3 and what didn't: looking back on a landmark RPG with CD Projekt Red
    What worked in The Witcher 3 and what didn't: looking back on a landmark RPG with CD Projekt Red "We learned a lot of lessons down the road." Image credit: CD Projekt Red Feature by Robert Purchese Associate Editor Published on May 31, 2025 Do you remember what you were doing when The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released? It came out on 19th May 2015. I remember because I was inside CD Projekt Red at the time, trying to capture the moment for you - a moment I'm unlikely to replicate there or anywhere else. I recall sitting in the studio's canteen in the small hours of the morning, after a midnight launch event in a mall in Warsaw, chewing on a piece of cold pizza and wondering out loud what would come next for the studio, because at the time, who could know? One era was ending and another was about to begin. Would it bring the fame and fortune CD Projekt Red desired? Today, more than 60 million sales of The Witcher 3 later, we know the answer is yes. The Witcher 3 became a role-playing classic. It delivered one of the most touchable medieval worlds we've explored, a rough place of craggy rocks and craggier faces, of wonky morales and grim realities, of mud and dirtiness. And monsters, though not all were monstrous to look at. It was a world of grey, of superstition and folklore, and in it stood we, a legendary monster hunter, facing seemingly impossible odds. The Witcher 3 took fantasy seriously. But the decade since the game's release has been turbulent for CD Projekt Red. The studio launched its big new sci-fi series in 2020 with Cyberpunk 2077, and though the game has now sold more than 30 million copies, making it monetarily a success, it had a nightmarish launch. The PS4 version had to be removed from sale. It brought enormous pressure, growing pains and intense scrutiny to the studio, and CD Projekt Red would spend a further three years patching and updating - and eventually releasing an expansion - before public opinion would mostly turn around. Today the studio returns to safer ground, back to The Witcher world with the new game The Witcher 4, and as we look forward to it we should also look back, to the game that catapulted the studio to fame, and see what has been learnt. The Witcher 3 is at version 4.04 today, a number that represents an enormously long period of post-release support.Watch on YouTube It all began with naivety, as perhaps any ambitious project should. It's easy to forget that 14 years ago, when The Witcher 3 was being conceived, CD Projekt Red had never made an open-world game before. The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 2 were linear in their approaches. It's also easy to forget that the people making the game were 14 years younger and less experienced. Back then, this was the studio's chance at recognition, so it aimed high in order to be seen. "The Witcher 3 was supposed to be this game that will end all other games," Marcin Blacha, the lead writer of the game, tells me. Simply make an open-world game that's also a story-driven game and release it on all platforms at the same time. How hard could it be? "When I'm thinking about our state of mind back in those days, the only word that comes to my mind is enthusiastic," Blacha says. "It was fantastic because we were so enthusiastic that we were full of courage. We were trying to experiment with stuff and we were not afraid. We were convinced that when we work with passion and love, it will pay off eventually." Every project has to begin somewhere and for Blacha, the person tasked with imagining the story, The Witcher 3 could only begin with Ciri, the daughter-of-sorts to The Witcher's central monster hunter character Geralt. As Blacha says, "The most important thing about Geralt and the most important thing about the books is the relationship between Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer. I already did two games with no sign of Ciri, no sign of Yennefer, and then we finally had a budget and proper time for pre-production, so for me, it was time to introduce both characters." It's a decision that would have major repercussions for the rest of The Witcher series at CD Projekt Red. Blacha didn't know it then, but Ciri would go on to become the protagonist of The Witcher 4. Had she not been the co-protagonist of The Witcher 3 - for you play as her in several sections during the game - who knows if things would have worked out the same way. It's an understandable progression as it is, though there is still some uncertainty among the audience about Ciri's starring role. But Ciri's inclusion came with complications, because the Ciri we see in the game is not the Ciri described in the books. That Ciri is much closer to the Ciri in the Netflix Witcher TV show, younger and more rebellious in a typical teenager way. She might be an important part of the fiction, then, but that doesn't mean she was especially well liked. "People were thinking that she's annoying," says Blacha, who grew up reading The Witcher books. CD Projekt Red, then, decided to make a Ciri of its own, aging her and making her more "flesh and bone", as Blacha puts it. He fondly recalls a moment in the game's development when reviewing the Ciri sections of the game, and saying aloud to studio director Adam Badowski how much he liked her. "I didn't know that she's going to be the protagonist of the next game," he says, "but I said to Adam Badowski, she's going to be very popular." Once Ciri had been earmarked for inclusion in The Witcher 3, the idea to have her pursued by the phantom-like force of the Wild Hunt - the members of which literally ride horses in the night sky, like Santa Claus' cursed reindeer - came shortly after. CD Projekt Red had introduced the Wild Hunt in The Witcher 2 so it made sense. The outline of the main story was then laid down as a one-page narrative treatment. Then it was expanded to a two-page treatment, a four page treatment, an eight page treatment and so on. At around 10 pages, it already had the White Orchard prologue, almost the entirety of the No Man's Land zone, and a hint of what would happen on Skellige and in Novigrad. When it was around 40 pages long, the quest design team was invited in. CD Projekt Red made their Ciri older than she is in the books. | Image credit: CD Projekt Red The quest design team's job is to turn a story into a game, and this was a newly created department for The Witcher 3, created because the old way of writers designing the quests wasn't working any more. "We were struggling a bit with making sure that every written story that we have prepared is also a story that we can play well," Paweł Sasko says. He joined CD Projekt Red to be a part of that quest design team. The quest design team carves up a narrative treatment, paragraph by paragraph, and expands those into playable questlines for the game. "It's basically something between game design and a movie scenario," Sasko says. There's no dialogue, just a description of what will happen, and even a one-paragraph prompt can balloon into a 20-30 page design. Among the paragraphs Sasko was given to adapt was a storyline in No Man's Land concerning a character known as the Bloody Baron. The Bloody Baron storyline is widely acclaimed and has become synonymous with everything Sasko and CD Projekt Red were trying to do with the game. It's a storyline that probes into mature themes like domestic abuse, fatherhood, and love and loss and grief. More importantly, it presents us with a flawed character and allows us time and space to perhaps change our opinion of them. It gives us layers many other games don't go anywhere near. When Sasko first encountered the storyline, there was only an outline. "It said that Geralt meets the Bloody Baron who asks Geralt to hunt a monster and look for his wife and daughter, and for that, he is going to share information about Ciri and tell Geralt where she went. That was pretty much it." And Sasko already knew a few things about what he wanted to do. He knew he wanted to show No Man's Land as a Slavic region bathed in superstitions and complex religious beliefs, one that had been ravaged by famine and war. He also knew the tone of the area was horror because this had been outlined by Blacha and the leaders of The Witcher 3 team. Says Blacha: "My opinion is that a successful Witcher game is a mix of everything, so you have a horror line, you have a romance, you have adventure, you have exploration. When we started to think about our hubs, we thought about them in terms of a show, so No Man's Land, the hub with the Bloody Baron, was horror; Skellige was supposed to be an adventure; and Novigrad was supposed to be a big city investigation." But there were key missing pieces then from the Bloody Baron sequence we know today. The botchling, for instance - the monstrous baby the quest revolves around. It didn't exist. It was an idea that came from Sasko after he read a Slavic bestiary. "Yes," he says, "the botchling idea came from me." The Bloody Baron. | Image credit: Eurogamer / CD Projekt Red He wanted the botchling to be the conduit through which more mature themes of the story could be approached - something overt to keep you busy while deeper themes sunk in. It's an approach Sasko says he pinched from Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski, after deconstructing his work. "What he's doing is he's trying to find universal truths about human beings and struggles, but he doesn't tell those stories directly," Sasko says. "So for instance racism: he doesn't talk about that directly but he finds an interesting way how, in his world, he can package that and talk about it. I followed his method and mimicked it." This way the botchling becomes your focus in the quest, as the Baron carries it back to the manor house and you defend him from wraiths, but while you're doing that, you're also talking and learning more about who the Bloody Baron - who Phillip Strenger - is. "I wanted you to feel almost like you're in the shoes of that Bloody Baron," Sasko says. "Peregrination is this path in Christianity you go through when you want to remove your sins, and that's what this is meant to be. He's just trying to do it, and he's going through all of those things to do something good. And I wanted the player to start feeling like, 'Wow, maybe this dude is not so bad.'" It's a quest that leaves a big impression. An email was forwarded to Sasko after the game's release, written by a player who had lost their wife and child as the Baron once had. "And for him," he says, "that moment when Baron was carrying the child was almost like a catharsis, when he was trying so badly to walk that path. And the moment he managed to: he wrote in his letter that he broke down in tears." There's one other very significant moment in The Witcher 3 that Sasko had a large hand in, and it's the Battle of Kaer Morhern, where the 'goodies' - the witchers and the sorceresses, and Ciri - make a stand against the titular menace of the Wild Hunt. Sasko designed this section specifically to emotionally tenderise you, through a series of fast-paced and fraught battles, so that by the time the climactic moment came, you were aptly primed to receive it. The moment being Vesemir's death - the leader of the wolf school of witchers and father figure to Geralt. This, too, was Sasko's idea. "We needed to transition Ciri from being a hunted animal to becoming a hunter," he tells me, and the only event big enough and with enough inherent propulsion was Vesemir's death. Eredin, the leader of the Wild Hunt, breaks Vesemir's neck. | Image credit: Eurogamer / CD Projekt Red But for all of the successful moments in the game there are those that didn't work. To the team that made the game, and to the players, there are things that clearly stand out. Such as Geralt's witcher senses, which allow him to see scent trails and footsteps and clues in the world around him. Geralt's detective mode, in other words. Sasko laughs as he cringes about it now. "We've overdone the witcher senses so much, oh my god," he says. "At the time when we were starting this, we were like, 'We don't have it in the game; we have to use it to make you feel like a witcher.' But then at the end, especially in the expansions, we tried to decrease it so it doesn't feel so overloaded." He'd even turn it down by a further 10 to 20 per cent, he says. There were all of the question marks dotted across the map, luring us to places to find meagre hidden treasure rewards. "I think we all scratch our heads about what we were thinking when trying to build this," Sasko tells me. "I guess it just came from fear - from fear that the player will feel that the world is empty." This was the first time CD Projekt Red had really the player's hand go, remember, and not controlled where in the world you would be. Shallow gameplay is a criticism many people have, especially in the game's repetitive combat, and again, this is something Sasko and the team are well aware of. "We don't feel that the gameplay in Witcher 3 was deep enough," he says. "It was for the times okay, but nowadays when you play it, even though the story still holds really well, you can see that the gameplay is a bit rusty." Also, the cutscenes could have been paced better and had less exposition in them, and the game in general could have dumped fewer concepts on you at once. Cognitive overload, Sasko calls it. "In every second sentence you have a new concept introduced, a new country mentioned, a new politician..." It was too much. More broadly, he would also have liked the open-world to be more closely connected to the game's story, rather than be, mostly, a pretty backdrop. "It's like in the theatre when you have beautiful decorations at the back made of cardboard and paper, and not much happens to them except an actor pulls a rope and it starts to rain or something." he says. It's to do with how the main story influences the world and vice versa, and he thinks the studio can be better at it. Ciri and Geralt look at a coin purse in The Witcher 3. This is, coincidentally, the same tavern you begin the game in, with Vesemir, and the same tavern you meet Master Mirror in. | Image credit: Eurogamer / CD Projekt Red One conversation that surprises me, when looking back on The Witcher 3, is a conversation about popularity, because it's easy to forget now - with the intense scrutiny the studio seems always to be under - that when development began, not many people knew about CD Projekt Red. The combined sales of both Witcher games in 2013 were only 5 million. Poland knew about it - the Witcher fiction originated there and CD Projekt Red is Polish - and Germany knew about it, and some of the rest of Europe knew about it. But in North America, it was relatively unknown. That's a large part of the reason why the Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2 was made at all, to begin knocking on that door. And The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red hoped, would kick that door open. "We knew that we wanted to play in the major league," says Michał Platkow-Gilewski, vice president of communications and PR, stealing a quote from Cyberpunk character Jackie. That's why The Witcher 3 was revealed via a Game Informer cover story in early 2013, because that was deemed the way to do things there - the way to win US hearts, Platkow-Gilewski tells me. And it didn't take long for interest to swell. When Platkow-Gilewski joined CD Projekt Red to help launch the Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2 in 2012, he was handing out flyers at Gamescom with company co-founder Michał Kicinski, just to fill presentations for the game. By the time The Witcher 3 was being shown at Gamescom, a few years later, queues were three to four hours long. People would wait all day to play. "We had to learn how to deal with popularity during the campaign," Platkow-Gilewski says. Those game shows were crucial for spreading the word about The Witcher 3 and seeing first-hand the impact the game was having on players and press. "Nothing can beat a good show where you meet with people who are there to see their favourite games just slightly before the rest of the world," he says. "They're investing their time, money, effort, and you feel this support, sometimes love, to the IP you're working on, and it boosts energy the way which you can't compare with anything else. These human to human interactions are unique." He says the studio's leader Adam Badowski would refer to these showings as fuel that would propel development for the next year or so, which is why CD Projekt Red always tried to gather as many developers as possible for them, to feel the energy. It was precisely these in-person events that Platkow-Gilewski says CD Projekt Red lacked in the lead up to Cyberpunk's launch, after Covid shut the world down. The company did what it could by pivoting to online events instead - the world-first playtest of Cyberpunk was done online via stream-play software called Parsec; I was a part of it - and talked to fans through trailers, but it was much harder to gauge feedback this way. "It's easy to just go with the flow and way harder to manage expectations," Platkow-Gilewski says, so expectations spiralled. "For me the biggest lesson learned is to always check reality versus expectations, and with Cyberpunk, it was really hard to control and we didn't know how to do it." It makes me wonder what the studio will do now with The Witcher 4, because the game show sector of the industry still hasn't bounced back, and I doubt - having seen the effect Covid has had on shows from the inside of an events company - whether it ever will. "Gamescom is growing," Platkow-Gilewski says somewhat optimistically. "Gamescom is back on track." But I don't know if it really is. Michał Platkow-Gilewski cites this moment as one of his favourite from the Witcher 3 journey. The crew were at the game show PAX in front of a huge live audience and the dialogue audio wouldn't play. Thankfully, they had Doug Cockle, the English language voice actor of Geralt, with them on the panel, so he live improvised the lines. Watch on YouTube Something else I'm surprised to hear from him is mention of The Witcher 3's rocky launch, because 10 years later - and in comparison to Cyberpunk's - that's not how I remember it. But Platkow-Gilewski remembers it differently. "When we released Witcher 3, the reception was not great," he says. "Reviews were amazing but there was, at least in my memories, no common consensus that this is a huge game which will maybe define some, to some extent, the genre." I do remember the strain on some faces around the studio at launch, though. I also remember a tense conversation about the perceived graphics downgrade in the game, where people unfavourably compared footage of Witcher 3 at launch, with footage from a marketing gameplay trailer released years before it. There were also a number of bugs in the game's code and its performance was unoptimised. "We knew things were far from being perfect," Platkow-Gilewski says. But the studio worked hard in the years after launch to patch and update the game - The Witcher 3 is now on version 4.04, which is extraordinary for a single-player game - and they released showcase expansions for it. Some of Marcin Blacha's favourite work is in those expansions, he tells me, especially the horror storylines of Hearts of Stone, many of which he wrote. That expansion's villain, Master Mirror, is also widely regarded as one of the best in the game, disguised as he is as a plain-looking and unassuming person who happens to have incredible and undefinable power. It's not until deep into the expansion you begin to uncover his devilish identity, and it's this subtle way of presenting a villain, and never over explaining his threat, that makes Master Mirror so memorable. He's gathered such a following that some people have concocted elaborate theories about him. Lead character artist Pawel Mielniczuk tells me about one theory whereby someone discovered you can see Master Mirror's face on many other background characters in the game, which you can, and that they believed it was a deliberate tactic used by CD Projekt Red to underline Master Mirror's devilish power. Remember, there was a neat trick with Master Mirror in that you had already met him at the beginning of The Witcher 3 base game, long before the expansion was ever developed, in a tavern in White Orchard. If CD Projekt Red could foreshadow him as far back as that, the theory went, then it could easily put his face on other characters in the game to achieve a similar 'did you see it?' effect. The real villain in the Hearts of Stone expansion, Gaunter O'Dimm. Better known to many as Master Mirror. There's a reason why he has such a plain-looking face... | Image credit: CD Projekt Red The truth is far more mundane. Other characters in the game do have Master Mirror's face, but only because his face is duplicated across the game in order to fill it out. CD Projekt Red didn't know when it made the original Witcher 3 game that this villager would turn into anyone special. There was a tentative plan but it was very tentative, so this villager got a very villager face. "We just got a request for a tertiary unimportant character," says Mileniczuk. "We had like 30-40 faces for the entire game so we just slapped a random face on him." He laughs. And by the time Hearts of Stone development came around, the face - the identity - had stuck. Expansions were an important part of cementing public opinion around The Witcher 3, then, as they were for cementing public opinion around Cyberpunk. They've become something of a golden bullet for the studio, a way to creatively unleash an already trained team and leave a much more positive memory in our heads. Exactly what went wrong with Cyberpunk and how CD Projekt Red set about correcting it is a whole other story Chris Tapsell told recently on the site, so I don't want to delve into specifics here. Suffice to say it was a hard time for the studio and many hard lessons had to be learned. "The pressure was huge," Platkow-Gilewski says, "because from underdogs we went to a company which will, for sure, deliver the best experience in the world." But while much of the rhetoric around Cyberpunk concerns the launch, there's a lot about the game itself that highlights how much progress the studio made, in terms of making open-world role-playing games. One of my favourite examples is how characters in Cyberpunk walk and talk rather than speak to you while rooted to the spot. It might seem like a small thing but it has a transformative and freeing effect on conversations, allowing the game to walk you places while you talk, and stage dialogue in a variety of cool ways. There's a lot to admire about the density of detail in the world, too, and in the greater variety of body shapes and diversity. Plus let's not forget, this is an actual open world rather than a segmented one as The Witcher 3 was. In many ways, the game was a huge step forward for the studio. Cyberpunk wasn't the only very notable thing to happen to the Witcher studio in those 10 years, either. During that time, The Witcher brand changed. Netflix piggybacked the game's popularity and developed a TV series starring Henry Cavill, and with it propelled The Witcher to the wider world. Curiously, CD Projekt Red wasn't invited to help, which was odd given executive producer Tomek Baginski was well known to CD Projekt Red, having directed the intro cinematics for all three Witcher video games. But beyond minor pieces of crossover content, no meaningful collaboration ever occurred. "We had no part in the shows," Pawel Mileniczuk says. "But it's Hollywood: different words. I know how hard it was for Tomek to get in there, to convince them to do the show, and then how limited influence is when the production house sits on something. It's many people, many decision makers, high stakes, big money. Nobody there was thinking about, Hey, let's talk to those dudes from Poland making games. It's a missed opportunity to me but what can I say?" The debut trailer for The Witcher 4.Watch on YouTube Nevertheless, the Netflix show had a surprisingly positive effect on the studio, with sales of The Witcher 3 spiking in 2019 and 2020 when the first season aired. "It was a really amazing year for us sales wise," Platkow-Gilewski says. This not only means more revenue for the studio but also wider understanding; more people are more familiar with The Witcher world now than ever before, which bodes very well for The Witcher 4. Not that it influenced or affected the studio's plans to return to that world, by the way. "We knew already that we wanted to come back to The Witcher," Platkow-Gilewski says. "Some knew that they wanted to tell a Ciri story while we were still working on Witcher 3." But, again, with popularity also comes pressure. "We'll have hopefully millions of people already hooked in from the get-go but with some expectations and visions and dreams which we have to, or may not be able to, fulfil," Platkow-Gilewski adds. You can already sense this pressure in comments threads about the new game. Many people already have their ideas about what a new Witcher game should be. The Witcher 4 might seem like a return to safer ground, then, but the relationship with the audience has changed in the intervening 10 years. "I think people are again with us," Platkow-Gilewski says. "There are some who are way more careful than they used to be; I don't see the hype train. We also learned how to talk about our game, what to show, when to show. But I think people believe again. Not everyone, and maybe it's slightly harder to talk with the whole internet. It's impossible now. It's way more polarised than it used to be. But I believe that we'll have something special for those who love The Witcher." Here we are a decade later, then, looking forward to another Witcher game by CD Projekt Red. But many things have changed. The studio has grown and shuffled people around and the roles of the people I speak to have changed. Marcin Blacha and Pawel Mielniczuk aren't working on The Witcher 4, but on new IP Project Hadar, in addition to their managerial responsibilities, and Pawel Sasko is full-time on Cyberpunk 2. It's only really Michał Platkow-Gilewski who'll do a similar job for The Witcher 4 as on The Witcher 3, although this time with dozens more people to help. But they will all still consult and they're confident in the abilities of The Witcher 4 team. "They really know what they're doing," says Sasko, "they are a very seasoned team." "We learned a lot of lessons down the road," Platkow-Gilewski says, in closing. "I started this interview saying that we had this bliss of ignorance; now we know more, but hopefully we can still be brave. Before, we were launching a rocket and figuring out how to land on the moon. Now, we know the dangers but we are way more experienced, so we'll find a way to navigate through these uncharted territories. We have a map already so hopefully it won't be such a hard trip." #what #worked #witcher #didn039t #looking
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    What worked in The Witcher 3 and what didn't: looking back on a landmark RPG with CD Projekt Red
    What worked in The Witcher 3 and what didn't: looking back on a landmark RPG with CD Projekt Red "We learned a lot of lessons down the road." Image credit: CD Projekt Red Feature by Robert Purchese Associate Editor Published on May 31, 2025 Do you remember what you were doing when The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released? It came out on 19th May 2015. I remember because I was inside CD Projekt Red at the time, trying to capture the moment for you - a moment I'm unlikely to replicate there or anywhere else. I recall sitting in the studio's canteen in the small hours of the morning, after a midnight launch event in a mall in Warsaw, chewing on a piece of cold pizza and wondering out loud what would come next for the studio, because at the time, who could know? One era was ending and another was about to begin. Would it bring the fame and fortune CD Projekt Red desired? Today, more than 60 million sales of The Witcher 3 later, we know the answer is yes. The Witcher 3 became a role-playing classic. It delivered one of the most touchable medieval worlds we've explored, a rough place of craggy rocks and craggier faces, of wonky morales and grim realities, of mud and dirtiness. And monsters, though not all were monstrous to look at. It was a world of grey, of superstition and folklore, and in it stood we, a legendary monster hunter, facing seemingly impossible odds. The Witcher 3 took fantasy seriously. But the decade since the game's release has been turbulent for CD Projekt Red. The studio launched its big new sci-fi series in 2020 with Cyberpunk 2077, and though the game has now sold more than 30 million copies, making it monetarily a success, it had a nightmarish launch. The PS4 version had to be removed from sale. It brought enormous pressure, growing pains and intense scrutiny to the studio, and CD Projekt Red would spend a further three years patching and updating - and eventually releasing an expansion - before public opinion would mostly turn around. Today the studio returns to safer ground, back to The Witcher world with the new game The Witcher 4, and as we look forward to it we should also look back, to the game that catapulted the studio to fame, and see what has been learnt. The Witcher 3 is at version 4.04 today, a number that represents an enormously long period of post-release support.Watch on YouTube It all began with naivety, as perhaps any ambitious project should. It's easy to forget that 14 years ago, when The Witcher 3 was being conceived, CD Projekt Red had never made an open-world game before. The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 2 were linear in their approaches. It's also easy to forget that the people making the game were 14 years younger and less experienced. Back then, this was the studio's chance at recognition, so it aimed high in order to be seen. "The Witcher 3 was supposed to be this game that will end all other games," Marcin Blacha, the lead writer of the game, tells me. Simply make an open-world game that's also a story-driven game and release it on all platforms at the same time. How hard could it be? "When I'm thinking about our state of mind back in those days, the only word that comes to my mind is enthusiastic," Blacha says. "It was fantastic because we were so enthusiastic that we were full of courage. We were trying to experiment with stuff and we were not afraid. We were convinced that when we work with passion and love, it will pay off eventually." Every project has to begin somewhere and for Blacha, the person tasked with imagining the story, The Witcher 3 could only begin with Ciri, the daughter-of-sorts to The Witcher's central monster hunter character Geralt. As Blacha says, "The most important thing about Geralt and the most important thing about the books is the relationship between Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer. I already did two games with no sign of Ciri, no sign of Yennefer, and then we finally had a budget and proper time for pre-production, so for me, it was time to introduce both characters." It's a decision that would have major repercussions for the rest of The Witcher series at CD Projekt Red. Blacha didn't know it then, but Ciri would go on to become the protagonist of The Witcher 4. Had she not been the co-protagonist of The Witcher 3 - for you play as her in several sections during the game - who knows if things would have worked out the same way. It's an understandable progression as it is, though there is still some uncertainty among the audience about Ciri's starring role. But Ciri's inclusion came with complications, because the Ciri we see in the game is not the Ciri described in the books. That Ciri is much closer to the Ciri in the Netflix Witcher TV show, younger and more rebellious in a typical teenager way. She might be an important part of the fiction, then, but that doesn't mean she was especially well liked. "People were thinking that she's annoying," says Blacha, who grew up reading The Witcher books. CD Projekt Red, then, decided to make a Ciri of its own, aging her and making her more "flesh and bone", as Blacha puts it. He fondly recalls a moment in the game's development when reviewing the Ciri sections of the game, and saying aloud to studio director Adam Badowski how much he liked her. "I didn't know that she's going to be the protagonist of the next game," he says, "but I said to Adam Badowski, she's going to be very popular." Once Ciri had been earmarked for inclusion in The Witcher 3, the idea to have her pursued by the phantom-like force of the Wild Hunt - the members of which literally ride horses in the night sky, like Santa Claus' cursed reindeer - came shortly after. CD Projekt Red had introduced the Wild Hunt in The Witcher 2 so it made sense. The outline of the main story was then laid down as a one-page narrative treatment. Then it was expanded to a two-page treatment, a four page treatment, an eight page treatment and so on. At around 10 pages, it already had the White Orchard prologue, almost the entirety of the No Man's Land zone, and a hint of what would happen on Skellige and in Novigrad. When it was around 40 pages long, the quest design team was invited in. CD Projekt Red made their Ciri older than she is in the books. | Image credit: CD Projekt Red The quest design team's job is to turn a story into a game, and this was a newly created department for The Witcher 3, created because the old way of writers designing the quests wasn't working any more. "We were struggling a bit with making sure that every written story that we have prepared is also a story that we can play well," Paweł Sasko says. He joined CD Projekt Red to be a part of that quest design team. The quest design team carves up a narrative treatment, paragraph by paragraph, and expands those into playable questlines for the game. "It's basically something between game design and a movie scenario," Sasko says. There's no dialogue, just a description of what will happen, and even a one-paragraph prompt can balloon into a 20-30 page design. Among the paragraphs Sasko was given to adapt was a storyline in No Man's Land concerning a character known as the Bloody Baron. The Bloody Baron storyline is widely acclaimed and has become synonymous with everything Sasko and CD Projekt Red were trying to do with the game. It's a storyline that probes into mature themes like domestic abuse, fatherhood, and love and loss and grief. More importantly, it presents us with a flawed character and allows us time and space to perhaps change our opinion of them. It gives us layers many other games don't go anywhere near. When Sasko first encountered the storyline, there was only an outline. "It said that Geralt meets the Bloody Baron who asks Geralt to hunt a monster and look for his wife and daughter, and for that, he is going to share information about Ciri and tell Geralt where she went. That was pretty much it." And Sasko already knew a few things about what he wanted to do. He knew he wanted to show No Man's Land as a Slavic region bathed in superstitions and complex religious beliefs, one that had been ravaged by famine and war. He also knew the tone of the area was horror because this had been outlined by Blacha and the leaders of The Witcher 3 team. Says Blacha: "My opinion is that a successful Witcher game is a mix of everything, so you have a horror line, you have a romance, you have adventure, you have exploration. When we started to think about our hubs, we thought about them in terms of a show, so No Man's Land, the hub with the Bloody Baron, was horror; Skellige was supposed to be an adventure; and Novigrad was supposed to be a big city investigation." But there were key missing pieces then from the Bloody Baron sequence we know today. The botchling, for instance - the monstrous baby the quest revolves around. It didn't exist. It was an idea that came from Sasko after he read a Slavic bestiary. "Yes," he says, "the botchling idea came from me." The Bloody Baron. | Image credit: Eurogamer / CD Projekt Red He wanted the botchling to be the conduit through which more mature themes of the story could be approached - something overt to keep you busy while deeper themes sunk in. It's an approach Sasko says he pinched from Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski, after deconstructing his work. "What he's doing is he's trying to find universal truths about human beings and struggles, but he doesn't tell those stories directly," Sasko says. "So for instance racism: he doesn't talk about that directly but he finds an interesting way how, in his world, he can package that and talk about it. I followed his method and mimicked it." This way the botchling becomes your focus in the quest, as the Baron carries it back to the manor house and you defend him from wraiths, but while you're doing that, you're also talking and learning more about who the Bloody Baron - who Phillip Strenger - is. "I wanted you to feel almost like you're in the shoes of that Bloody Baron," Sasko says. "Peregrination is this path in Christianity you go through when you want to remove your sins, and that's what this is meant to be. He's just trying to do it, and he's going through all of those things to do something good. And I wanted the player to start feeling like, 'Wow, maybe this dude is not so bad.'" It's a quest that leaves a big impression. An email was forwarded to Sasko after the game's release, written by a player who had lost their wife and child as the Baron once had. "And for him," he says, "that moment when Baron was carrying the child was almost like a catharsis, when he was trying so badly to walk that path. And the moment he managed to: he wrote in his letter that he broke down in tears." There's one other very significant moment in The Witcher 3 that Sasko had a large hand in, and it's the Battle of Kaer Morhern, where the 'goodies' - the witchers and the sorceresses, and Ciri - make a stand against the titular menace of the Wild Hunt. Sasko designed this section specifically to emotionally tenderise you, through a series of fast-paced and fraught battles, so that by the time the climactic moment came, you were aptly primed to receive it. The moment being Vesemir's death - the leader of the wolf school of witchers and father figure to Geralt. This, too, was Sasko's idea. "We needed to transition Ciri from being a hunted animal to becoming a hunter," he tells me, and the only event big enough and with enough inherent propulsion was Vesemir's death. Eredin, the leader of the Wild Hunt, breaks Vesemir's neck. | Image credit: Eurogamer / CD Projekt Red But for all of the successful moments in the game there are those that didn't work. To the team that made the game, and to the players, there are things that clearly stand out. Such as Geralt's witcher senses, which allow him to see scent trails and footsteps and clues in the world around him. Geralt's detective mode, in other words. Sasko laughs as he cringes about it now. "We've overdone the witcher senses so much, oh my god," he says. "At the time when we were starting this, we were like, 'We don't have it in the game; we have to use it to make you feel like a witcher.' But then at the end, especially in the expansions, we tried to decrease it so it doesn't feel so overloaded." He'd even turn it down by a further 10 to 20 per cent, he says. There were all of the question marks dotted across the map, luring us to places to find meagre hidden treasure rewards. "I think we all scratch our heads about what we were thinking when trying to build this," Sasko tells me. "I guess it just came from fear - from fear that the player will feel that the world is empty." This was the first time CD Projekt Red had really the player's hand go, remember, and not controlled where in the world you would be. Shallow gameplay is a criticism many people have, especially in the game's repetitive combat, and again, this is something Sasko and the team are well aware of. "We don't feel that the gameplay in Witcher 3 was deep enough," he says. "It was for the times okay, but nowadays when you play it, even though the story still holds really well, you can see that the gameplay is a bit rusty." Also, the cutscenes could have been paced better and had less exposition in them, and the game in general could have dumped fewer concepts on you at once. Cognitive overload, Sasko calls it. "In every second sentence you have a new concept introduced, a new country mentioned, a new politician..." It was too much. More broadly, he would also have liked the open-world to be more closely connected to the game's story, rather than be, mostly, a pretty backdrop. "It's like in the theatre when you have beautiful decorations at the back made of cardboard and paper, and not much happens to them except an actor pulls a rope and it starts to rain or something." he says. It's to do with how the main story influences the world and vice versa, and he thinks the studio can be better at it. Ciri and Geralt look at a coin purse in The Witcher 3. This is, coincidentally, the same tavern you begin the game in, with Vesemir, and the same tavern you meet Master Mirror in. | Image credit: Eurogamer / CD Projekt Red One conversation that surprises me, when looking back on The Witcher 3, is a conversation about popularity, because it's easy to forget now - with the intense scrutiny the studio seems always to be under - that when development began, not many people knew about CD Projekt Red. The combined sales of both Witcher games in 2013 were only 5 million. Poland knew about it - the Witcher fiction originated there and CD Projekt Red is Polish - and Germany knew about it, and some of the rest of Europe knew about it. But in North America, it was relatively unknown. That's a large part of the reason why the Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2 was made at all, to begin knocking on that door. And The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red hoped, would kick that door open. "We knew that we wanted to play in the major league," says Michał Platkow-Gilewski, vice president of communications and PR, stealing a quote from Cyberpunk character Jackie. That's why The Witcher 3 was revealed via a Game Informer cover story in early 2013, because that was deemed the way to do things there - the way to win US hearts, Platkow-Gilewski tells me. And it didn't take long for interest to swell. When Platkow-Gilewski joined CD Projekt Red to help launch the Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2 in 2012, he was handing out flyers at Gamescom with company co-founder Michał Kicinski, just to fill presentations for the game. By the time The Witcher 3 was being shown at Gamescom, a few years later, queues were three to four hours long. People would wait all day to play. "We had to learn how to deal with popularity during the campaign," Platkow-Gilewski says. Those game shows were crucial for spreading the word about The Witcher 3 and seeing first-hand the impact the game was having on players and press. "Nothing can beat a good show where you meet with people who are there to see their favourite games just slightly before the rest of the world," he says. "They're investing their time, money, effort, and you feel this support, sometimes love, to the IP you're working on, and it boosts energy the way which you can't compare with anything else. These human to human interactions are unique." He says the studio's leader Adam Badowski would refer to these showings as fuel that would propel development for the next year or so, which is why CD Projekt Red always tried to gather as many developers as possible for them, to feel the energy. It was precisely these in-person events that Platkow-Gilewski says CD Projekt Red lacked in the lead up to Cyberpunk's launch, after Covid shut the world down. The company did what it could by pivoting to online events instead - the world-first playtest of Cyberpunk was done online via stream-play software called Parsec; I was a part of it - and talked to fans through trailers, but it was much harder to gauge feedback this way. "It's easy to just go with the flow and way harder to manage expectations," Platkow-Gilewski says, so expectations spiralled. "For me the biggest lesson learned is to always check reality versus expectations, and with Cyberpunk, it was really hard to control and we didn't know how to do it." It makes me wonder what the studio will do now with The Witcher 4, because the game show sector of the industry still hasn't bounced back, and I doubt - having seen the effect Covid has had on shows from the inside of an events company - whether it ever will. "Gamescom is growing," Platkow-Gilewski says somewhat optimistically. "Gamescom is back on track." But I don't know if it really is. Michał Platkow-Gilewski cites this moment as one of his favourite from the Witcher 3 journey. The crew were at the game show PAX in front of a huge live audience and the dialogue audio wouldn't play. Thankfully, they had Doug Cockle, the English language voice actor of Geralt, with them on the panel, so he live improvised the lines. Watch on YouTube Something else I'm surprised to hear from him is mention of The Witcher 3's rocky launch, because 10 years later - and in comparison to Cyberpunk's - that's not how I remember it. But Platkow-Gilewski remembers it differently. "When we released Witcher 3, the reception was not great," he says. "Reviews were amazing but there was, at least in my memories, no common consensus that this is a huge game which will maybe define some, to some extent, the genre." I do remember the strain on some faces around the studio at launch, though. I also remember a tense conversation about the perceived graphics downgrade in the game, where people unfavourably compared footage of Witcher 3 at launch, with footage from a marketing gameplay trailer released years before it. There were also a number of bugs in the game's code and its performance was unoptimised. "We knew things were far from being perfect," Platkow-Gilewski says. But the studio worked hard in the years after launch to patch and update the game - The Witcher 3 is now on version 4.04, which is extraordinary for a single-player game - and they released showcase expansions for it. Some of Marcin Blacha's favourite work is in those expansions, he tells me, especially the horror storylines of Hearts of Stone, many of which he wrote. That expansion's villain, Master Mirror, is also widely regarded as one of the best in the game, disguised as he is as a plain-looking and unassuming person who happens to have incredible and undefinable power. It's not until deep into the expansion you begin to uncover his devilish identity, and it's this subtle way of presenting a villain, and never over explaining his threat, that makes Master Mirror so memorable. He's gathered such a following that some people have concocted elaborate theories about him. Lead character artist Pawel Mielniczuk tells me about one theory whereby someone discovered you can see Master Mirror's face on many other background characters in the game, which you can, and that they believed it was a deliberate tactic used by CD Projekt Red to underline Master Mirror's devilish power. Remember, there was a neat trick with Master Mirror in that you had already met him at the beginning of The Witcher 3 base game, long before the expansion was ever developed, in a tavern in White Orchard. If CD Projekt Red could foreshadow him as far back as that, the theory went, then it could easily put his face on other characters in the game to achieve a similar 'did you see it?' effect. The real villain in the Hearts of Stone expansion, Gaunter O'Dimm. Better known to many as Master Mirror. There's a reason why he has such a plain-looking face... | Image credit: CD Projekt Red The truth is far more mundane. Other characters in the game do have Master Mirror's face, but only because his face is duplicated across the game in order to fill it out. CD Projekt Red didn't know when it made the original Witcher 3 game that this villager would turn into anyone special. There was a tentative plan but it was very tentative, so this villager got a very villager face. "We just got a request for a tertiary unimportant character," says Mileniczuk. "We had like 30-40 faces for the entire game so we just slapped a random face on him." He laughs. And by the time Hearts of Stone development came around, the face - the identity - had stuck. Expansions were an important part of cementing public opinion around The Witcher 3, then, as they were for cementing public opinion around Cyberpunk. They've become something of a golden bullet for the studio, a way to creatively unleash an already trained team and leave a much more positive memory in our heads. Exactly what went wrong with Cyberpunk and how CD Projekt Red set about correcting it is a whole other story Chris Tapsell told recently on the site, so I don't want to delve into specifics here. Suffice to say it was a hard time for the studio and many hard lessons had to be learned. "The pressure was huge," Platkow-Gilewski says, "because from underdogs we went to a company which will, for sure, deliver the best experience in the world." But while much of the rhetoric around Cyberpunk concerns the launch, there's a lot about the game itself that highlights how much progress the studio made, in terms of making open-world role-playing games. One of my favourite examples is how characters in Cyberpunk walk and talk rather than speak to you while rooted to the spot. It might seem like a small thing but it has a transformative and freeing effect on conversations, allowing the game to walk you places while you talk, and stage dialogue in a variety of cool ways. There's a lot to admire about the density of detail in the world, too, and in the greater variety of body shapes and diversity. Plus let's not forget, this is an actual open world rather than a segmented one as The Witcher 3 was. In many ways, the game was a huge step forward for the studio. Cyberpunk wasn't the only very notable thing to happen to the Witcher studio in those 10 years, either. During that time, The Witcher brand changed. Netflix piggybacked the game's popularity and developed a TV series starring Henry Cavill, and with it propelled The Witcher to the wider world. Curiously, CD Projekt Red wasn't invited to help, which was odd given executive producer Tomek Baginski was well known to CD Projekt Red, having directed the intro cinematics for all three Witcher video games. But beyond minor pieces of crossover content, no meaningful collaboration ever occurred. "We had no part in the shows," Pawel Mileniczuk says. "But it's Hollywood: different words. I know how hard it was for Tomek to get in there, to convince them to do the show, and then how limited influence is when the production house sits on something. It's many people, many decision makers, high stakes, big money. Nobody there was thinking about, Hey, let's talk to those dudes from Poland making games. It's a missed opportunity to me but what can I say?" The debut trailer for The Witcher 4.Watch on YouTube Nevertheless, the Netflix show had a surprisingly positive effect on the studio, with sales of The Witcher 3 spiking in 2019 and 2020 when the first season aired. "It was a really amazing year for us sales wise," Platkow-Gilewski says. This not only means more revenue for the studio but also wider understanding; more people are more familiar with The Witcher world now than ever before, which bodes very well for The Witcher 4. Not that it influenced or affected the studio's plans to return to that world, by the way. "We knew already that we wanted to come back to The Witcher," Platkow-Gilewski says. "Some knew that they wanted to tell a Ciri story while we were still working on Witcher 3." But, again, with popularity also comes pressure. "We'll have hopefully millions of people already hooked in from the get-go but with some expectations and visions and dreams which we have to, or may not be able to, fulfil," Platkow-Gilewski adds. You can already sense this pressure in comments threads about the new game. Many people already have their ideas about what a new Witcher game should be. The Witcher 4 might seem like a return to safer ground, then, but the relationship with the audience has changed in the intervening 10 years. "I think people are again with us," Platkow-Gilewski says. "There are some who are way more careful than they used to be; I don't see the hype train. We also learned how to talk about our game, what to show, when to show. But I think people believe again. Not everyone, and maybe it's slightly harder to talk with the whole internet. It's impossible now. It's way more polarised than it used to be. But I believe that we'll have something special for those who love The Witcher." Here we are a decade later, then, looking forward to another Witcher game by CD Projekt Red. But many things have changed. The studio has grown and shuffled people around and the roles of the people I speak to have changed. Marcin Blacha and Pawel Mielniczuk aren't working on The Witcher 4, but on new IP Project Hadar, in addition to their managerial responsibilities, and Pawel Sasko is full-time on Cyberpunk 2. It's only really Michał Platkow-Gilewski who'll do a similar job for The Witcher 4 as on The Witcher 3, although this time with dozens more people to help. But they will all still consult and they're confident in the abilities of The Witcher 4 team. "They really know what they're doing," says Sasko, "they are a very seasoned team." "We learned a lot of lessons down the road," Platkow-Gilewski says, in closing. "I started this interview saying that we had this bliss of ignorance; now we know more, but hopefully we can still be brave. Before, we were launching a rocket and figuring out how to land on the moon. Now, we know the dangers but we are way more experienced, so we'll find a way to navigate through these uncharted territories. We have a map already so hopefully it won't be such a hard trip."
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  • ‘Gratis’ Sees You Selling Magically Monstrous Wares

    Gratis sees you twisting what people want when they come to your shop, selling them unsettling horrors under the guise of helping them.

    You’ve set up shop in a new town. I’m not quite sure who or what you are, but you definitely excel at having just the right thing your customer thinks they need. Or at least something that seems like what they need. Each day, a series of unique, colorful people will walk through your doors. Jesters, knights, children, guardians, workers – every person thinks they need something, don’t they? And they all eventually make their way to your shop to see what you have for them. Especially as word of mouth spreads early on.

    You will have an array of items to offer each day, although there is a specific item for each person. This narrative horror game won’t let you giving that cackling skull to just anyone. Still, you can practically feel who each item is meant for, so you won’t take long finding what they need. As the days progress, the items will gain more sinister abilities, but you’ll pluck them from your shelf and offer them all the same. As the Jester’s laughter spreads, you almost can’t help to hand them something else that will make the mirth more and more uncontrollable. Whether you do it from compulsion, malice, or cruel curiosity, you’ll keep giving these folks what they want if they dare to step through your door.
    Gratis offers a handful of different storylines based on the random people you serve each time you play it, giving you an array of grim stories each time you work through it’s fifteen to twenty minute play time. It’s worth coming back to feel out how these various stories play out, although you might not feel too good about yourself once you close up shop on the final day.
    Gratis is available nowon itch.io.
    About The Author
    #gratis #sees #you #selling #magically
    ‘Gratis’ Sees You Selling Magically Monstrous Wares
    Gratis sees you twisting what people want when they come to your shop, selling them unsettling horrors under the guise of helping them. You’ve set up shop in a new town. I’m not quite sure who or what you are, but you definitely excel at having just the right thing your customer thinks they need. Or at least something that seems like what they need. Each day, a series of unique, colorful people will walk through your doors. Jesters, knights, children, guardians, workers – every person thinks they need something, don’t they? And they all eventually make their way to your shop to see what you have for them. Especially as word of mouth spreads early on. You will have an array of items to offer each day, although there is a specific item for each person. This narrative horror game won’t let you giving that cackling skull to just anyone. Still, you can practically feel who each item is meant for, so you won’t take long finding what they need. As the days progress, the items will gain more sinister abilities, but you’ll pluck them from your shelf and offer them all the same. As the Jester’s laughter spreads, you almost can’t help to hand them something else that will make the mirth more and more uncontrollable. Whether you do it from compulsion, malice, or cruel curiosity, you’ll keep giving these folks what they want if they dare to step through your door. Gratis offers a handful of different storylines based on the random people you serve each time you play it, giving you an array of grim stories each time you work through it’s fifteen to twenty minute play time. It’s worth coming back to feel out how these various stories play out, although you might not feel too good about yourself once you close up shop on the final day. Gratis is available nowon itch.io. About The Author #gratis #sees #you #selling #magically
    INDIEGAMESPLUS.COM
    ‘Gratis’ Sees You Selling Magically Monstrous Wares
    Gratis sees you twisting what people want when they come to your shop, selling them unsettling horrors under the guise of helping them. You’ve set up shop in a new town. I’m not quite sure who or what you are, but you definitely excel at having just the right thing your customer thinks they need. Or at least something that seems like what they need. Each day, a series of unique, colorful people will walk through your doors. Jesters, knights, children, guardians, workers – every person thinks they need something, don’t they? And they all eventually make their way to your shop to see what you have for them. Especially as word of mouth spreads early on. You will have an array of items to offer each day, although there is a specific item for each person. This narrative horror game won’t let you giving that cackling skull to just anyone. Still, you can practically feel who each item is meant for, so you won’t take long finding what they need. As the days progress, the items will gain more sinister abilities (although even the more-innocent ones on the early days feel like the have a darker side to them), but you’ll pluck them from your shelf and offer them all the same. As the Jester’s laughter spreads, you almost can’t help to hand them something else that will make the mirth more and more uncontrollable. Whether you do it from compulsion, malice, or cruel curiosity, you’ll keep giving these folks what they want if they dare to step through your door. Gratis offers a handful of different storylines based on the random people you serve each time you play it, giving you an array of grim stories each time you work through it’s fifteen to twenty minute play time. It’s worth coming back to feel out how these various stories play out, although you might not feel too good about yourself once you close up shop on the final day. Gratis is available now (for whatever you wish to pay for it) on itch.io. About The Author
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  • Intel just greenlit a monstrous dual-GPU video card with 48GB of RAM just for AI - and here it is

    Maxsun’s Intel Arc Pro B60 Dual GPU targets AI and workstation users with 48GB VRAM, low power draw, and a sub-price point.
    #intel #just #greenlit #monstrous #dualgpu
    Intel just greenlit a monstrous dual-GPU video card with 48GB of RAM just for AI - and here it is
    Maxsun’s Intel Arc Pro B60 Dual GPU targets AI and workstation users with 48GB VRAM, low power draw, and a sub-price point. #intel #just #greenlit #monstrous #dualgpu
    WWW.TECHRADAR.COM
    Intel just greenlit a monstrous dual-GPU video card with 48GB of RAM just for AI - and here it is
    Maxsun’s Intel Arc Pro B60 Dual GPU targets AI and workstation users with 48GB VRAM, low power draw, and a sub-$1,000 price point.
    0 Comentários 0 Compartilhamentos 0 Anterior
  • [Alinea Analytics] Elden Ring’s player engagement is through the roof: 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours

    Angie
    Best Avatar Thread Ever!
    Member

    Nov 20, 2017

    49,860

    Kingdom of Corona

    Elden Ring's player engagement is through the roof: Over 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours

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    Steam accounts for 15.7 million players – 43% of the game's audience – meaning Steam is Elden Ring's biggest platform. PlayStation comes in second with 13.2 million, while Xbox accounts for the remaining 7.4 million:

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    Elden Ring – and especially its DLC – is hard. While it abandons the linear structure of FromSoftware's previous games, giving players more choice when they're stuck, Elden Ring's bosses are some of the most challenging out there.

    I'm looking at you, Malenia and Promised Consort Radahn.
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    Despite the game's mercilessness, 10.9% of Elden Ring players on PlayStation and 10.2% on Steam have unlocked every trophy/achievement in the game. However, just 3.7% of Xbox players managed this feat.

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    The trophy/achievement data clearly shows that Elden Ring players are dedicated – especially on Steam and Xbox. But looking deeper at Alinea's playtime distribution data reveals just how dedicated they really are:

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    The results are striking:

    64% of Elden Ring players on Steam have played for over 50 hoursPlayStation players have triple the share of under-5-hours players, signalling that Elden Ring didn't click for everyone on the platform – perhaps due to the difficulty
    Seven million Steam players – 44.7% of Elden Ring's Steam audience – have played for over 100 hours. That share is 36.7%But perhaps most remarkably of all, almost 700K players across PlayStationand Steamhave played Elden Ring for over 500 hours. Talk about dedication!

    Elden Ring’s player engagement is through the roof: 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours

    Elden Ring’s player engagement is through the roof: Over 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours Elden Ring is one of the most successful premium games of all time.

    alineaanalytics.com

     

    OP

    OP

    Angie
    Best Avatar Thread Ever!
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    Nov 20, 2017

    49,860

    Kingdom of Corona

    Despite the game's mercilessness, 10.9% of Elden Ring players on PlayStation and 10.2% on Steam have unlocked every trophy/achievement in the game. However, just 3.7% of Xbox players managed this feat.

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    I think this is the craziest stat for me.
    A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies. 

    Last edited: Today at 5:32 AM

    Kalentan
    Member

    Oct 25, 2017

    50,699

    2.5 million is still a big gap, but for some reason I thought the gap between PC and PS4/5 sales of the game was like... monstrously bigger, like 6 - 8 million range.
     

    ResetGreyWolf
    Member

    Oct 27, 2017

    6,768

    That's impressive, but also, is this company genuinely calling Silksong a soulslike or am I reading that wrong? What, just because you have to reclaim your money if you die?
     

    dusan
    Member

    Aug 2, 2020

    6,763

    Nightreign trainings begins.

     

    Jolkien
    Member

    Oct 25, 2017

    4,310

    Anchorage/Alaska

    Angie said:

    I think this is the craziest stat for me.

    A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies. And that includes the DLC
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    I mean most game is way under that percentage, that it's close to 10% makes it fairly common. My rarest trophy is the Diablo 2 Platinum at 1.27% rarity. Both Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 are under 2.50% as well 

    OP

    OP

    Angie
    Best Avatar Thread Ever!
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    Nov 20, 2017

    49,860

    Kingdom of Corona

    Jolkien said:

    I mean most game is way under that percentage, that it's close to 10% makes it fairly common. My rarest trophy is the Diablo 2 Platinum at 1.27% rarity. Both Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 are under 2.50% as wellClick to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    That is why is crazy to me

    Minecraft Platinum

    The game not even hard 

    PlayBee
    One Winged Slayer
    Member

    Nov 8, 2017

    6,738

    Angie said:

    I think this is the craziest stat for me.

    A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies. And that includes the DLC
    Click to expand...
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    There are no DLC trophies
     

    EvilBoris
    Prophet of Truth - HDTVtest
    Verified

    Oct 29, 2017

    18,087

    Does steam make this available or is this estimations from sites that look at user activity?
     

    OP

    OP

    Angie
    Best Avatar Thread Ever!
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    Nov 20, 2017

    49,860

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    PlayBee said:

    There are no DLC trophies

    Click to expand...
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    The expansion didn't had any Trophy?
     

    PlayBee
    One Winged Slayer
    Member

    Nov 8, 2017

    6,738

    Angie said:

    The expansion didn't had any Trophy?

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    Nope, same with Dark Souls. Bloodborne is the only one that added trophies with DLC
     

    OP

    OP

    Angie
    Best Avatar Thread Ever!
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    Nov 20, 2017

    49,860

    Kingdom of Corona

    PlayBee said:

    Nope, same with Dark Souls. Bloodborne is the only one that added trophies with DLC

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    I was not aware of that. I will edit it out.

    Always assumed that expansions had Trophies. But I never played them. 

    southwest
    Member

    Sep 15, 2022

    2,759

    Heh I have it on both Steam and PlayStation. About 95 hours on Steam and 4 on PlayStation.
     

    antitrop
    Member

    Oct 25, 2017

    14,949

    There are only three games I've topped 100 hours on a single playthrough: Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
     

    Necron
    ▲ Legend ▲
    Member

    Oct 25, 2017

    9,850

    Switzerland

    10% got all the trophies/achievements?!I did it for both PC and PS5.  

    Mung
    Member

    Nov 2, 2017

    4,454

    PS sales much closer to PC than I expected.
     

    Last edited: Today at 6:00 AM

    Dyno
    AVALANCHE
    The Fallen

    Oct 25, 2017

    16,830

    Angie said:

    I think this is the craziest stat for me.

    A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies.
    Click to expand...
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    If anything it says a lot more about how overstated the difficulty is to me. People do it for the bragging rights because it's perceived as hard, but DMC DMD mode etc are far far harder, just they dont have the same hype cycle and rep so people don't try for it as much I guess.
     

    ArjanN
    Member

    Oct 25, 2017

    11,493

    Dyno said:

    If anything it says a lot more about how overstated the difficulty is to me. People do it for the bragging rights because it's perceived as hard, but DMC DMD mode etc are far far harder, just they dont have the same hype cycle and rep so people don't try for it as much I guess.

    Click to expand...
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    Angie said:

    That is why is crazy to me

    Minecraft Platinum

    The game not even hard
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    Minecraft has the GTA/Skyrim thing, where most of the audience is playing it as a sandbox.

    I've noticed harder games tend to have a decent amount of self-selection, where a really challenging roguelike or bullethell shmup has higher completion percentages on the harder achievements than a more mainstream game with much lower difficulty. 

    Last edited: Today at 5:59 AM

    Menome
    "This guy are sick"
    Member

    Oct 25, 2017

    7,133

    I've got 280 hours on Steam, about 200 hours on PS5 and I'm likely to start a new full playthrough once the Tarnished Edition contents are available on Steam.

    Yeah, I kinda like this game. 

    Creamium
    Member

    Oct 25, 2017

    10,466

    Belgium

    The high 100% achievement stat is crazy. People really went in on ER.

    I have 100+ hours on PS5 and once I get a new pc it's pretty likely that I replay this at some point. 

    Shahadan
    Member

    Oct 27, 2017

    5,591

    I should have been an analyst
     

    Nateo
    Member

    Oct 27, 2017

    8,987

    Because hard games don't just instantly hand you solutions. Games with friction and the need to actually put time in a learn for a majority of people will have high engagement especially if its a good game.
     

    Mr.Deadshot
    Member

    Oct 27, 2017

    23,203

    I put 110h into it and it would have been a lot better if it was half that time. Too much bloat and repetition.
     

    FF Seraphim
    Member

    Oct 26, 2017

    16,615

    Tokyo

    Holy fuck over 10% of players on both PC and PS5 got 100%? That is a fucking high percentage.

    God damn.
    Let me check my stats:
    Yep 100%, 215 hours as well.
    Love the game but I didn't expect it to resonate with so many people that that many would get the 100% achievement. 

    Dyno
    AVALANCHE
    The Fallen

    Oct 25, 2017

    16,830

    ArjanN said:

    Minecraft has the GTA/Skyrim thing, where most of the audience is playing it as a sandbox.

    I've noticed harder games tend to have a decent amount of self-selection, where a really challenging roguelike or bullethell shmup has higher completion percentages on the harder achievements than a more mainstream game with much lower difficulty.
    Click to expand...
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    Makes sense tbh. I suppose to a degree that's the pull for some. For example I bought Furi for that OST and what looked like fun combat. By the end I was playing on the hardest difficulty for the thrill of pulling it off to that OST despite no plans to push that deep into the game.

    I do think the souls series has a certain pull with that kind of audience though, and I suspect half the reason it takes so well is because all the fights are, well in all honesty far from the worst out there. They're mostly fair with the occasional 'cheap' move and beyond learning to work around the few attacks a boss will throw your way that you don't instantly gel with, they're pretty chill. I'd happily argue in favor of something like NG2 being multiple times harder etc. And I think that's why souls games work. They feel hard, but they're pretty lax to overcome too 

    Redis
    Member

    Mar 1, 2025

    222

    I have 520h+ on PS4/5.

    Also played around 25h on my brother 's Series X.
    Will definitely replay it on Switch 2 this year.
    Game is generational. 

    Last edited: Today at 6:34 AM

    Z'ard
    "This guy are sick"
    Member

    Mar 5, 2019

    1,550

    Ukraine

    Yeah i have over 500 hours as well and i'll definitely play it again at one point.
     

    thezboson
    Member

    Oct 27, 2017

    1,380

    I have over 1000 hours in ER. I tried runs where I played "traditionally" by not using summons and AoW etc and played it like a Dark Souls game basically. And have to say, for those of us that like to play Fromsoft games that way, ER is by far the hardest game I have ever played. Much harder than Sekiro.

    Yet, the game is easy enough that 10% can grab the Platinum. A real triumph in game design and my favorite game of all time. I still think of the lore from time to time. 

    Bede-x
    Member

    Oct 25, 2017

    12,058

    To think there was a time where Steam wasn't included at launch for Souls games and now it's outperforming not just PS5, but two generations of Playstations. So much have changed in the last decade or so and Steam is such a juggernaut now.

    Seems to have done well everywhere though. 

    jaymzi
    Member

    Jul 22, 2019

    7,202

    First I thought how is this possible as 45% is more than the amount of people that finished the game.

    Then I realised Elden Ring can easily take over 100 hours to finish. 

    onibirdo
    Member

    Dec 9, 2020

    3,590

    GOAT
     

    raketenrolf
    Member

    Oct 28, 2017

    5,919

    Germany

    Yeah, it's already one of the best games of all time, easily.

    I need to start Shadow of the Erdtree. But holding off because the Switch 2 is launching soon. 

    Mephissto
    Member

    Mar 8, 2024

    1,231

    Pretty insane. Considering how much it sold especially.
     

    Rud
    Member

    Mar 3, 2025

    140

    United States

    Dyno said:

    If anything it says a lot more about how overstated the difficulty is to me. People do it for the bragging rights because it's perceived as hard, but DMC DMD mode etc are far far harder, just they dont have the same hype cycle and rep so people don't try for it as much I guess.

    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    You don't have to play in that mode though so it doesn't matter how hard it is. With Elden Ring everyone has to play under the same conditions so when you brag to someone else they know what it is that you are talking about.
     

    Gelf
    Member

    Oct 27, 2017

    6,156

    I remember when I finally beat the game for the first time after about a month of solid playing since launch I was impressed by the overall percentage stats of people who had already got the late game achievements. It was higher than many games I've seen that are vastly easier and are over in less than 20 hours.

    I'm nowhere close to getting 100% though. 

    Oliver James
    Avenger

    Oct 25, 2017

    9,838

    Is it really that good? I finished De - Da123 Bb, should I play it as a lapsed Souls player?
     

    Dyno
    AVALANCHE
    The Fallen

    Oct 25, 2017

    16,830

    Rud said:

    You don't have to play in that mode though so it doesn't matter how hard it is. With Elden Ring everyone has to play under the same conditions so when you brag to someone else they know what it is that you are talking about.

    Click to expand...
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    Oh for sure, I just think that as harder games go ER and the souls games are pretty chill. There's a fair push and pull to them and in most cases, reasonable room to recover. It may just be a personal thing but I find in the harder hack n slash game modes losing your rhythm is a death sentence, but the souls games have that bit more time to recover and rethink I suppose and just feel fairly mellow despite the challenge.

    You're right that the challenge is universal but tbh even that can kinda be defined by the build. My first run of demons was tragic to say the least, then I tried magic on run 2 and had a very different experience 

    hydrophilic attack
    went to hypogean jail
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    Oct 25, 2017

    23,622

    Sweden

    wow that's a big difference in completion percentage between platforms
     

    Western Yokai
    Member

    Feb 14, 2025

    175

    The game is harder than average, the game is better than average, the game let's you play how you find it's better, while puts everyone in the same level of accomplisment in regards of difficulty.

    Of course people will be engaged to do 100% when they feel they're progressing, and not just beating everything first time, watching a cutscene, hence and repeat. 

    Rud
    Member

    Mar 3, 2025

    140

    United States

    Dyno said:

    Oh for sure, I just think that as harder games go ER and the souls games are pretty chill. There's a fair push and pull to them and in most cases, reasonable room to recover. It may just be a personal thing but I find in the harder hack n slash game modes losing your rhythm is a death sentence, but the souls games have that bit more time to recover and rethink I suppose and just feel fairly mellow despite the challenge.

    You're right that the challenge is universal but tbh even that can kinda be defined by the build. My first run of demons was tragic to say the least, then I tried magic on run 2 and had a very different experience
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Shared experiences are a big difference makers with these games i think.

    In Elden Ring i never beat that Scarlet Rot Breath Dragon in Caelid despite trying many many times with different strategies and even with the help of online guides, could never beat that thing. If one of my friend told me they beat that guy that would be impressive to me simply because I could not do it but my friend could.

    Conversely if Elden Ring had diffulty settings and my friend told me he beat that Scarlet Rot Breath Dragon in easy mode than that would mean absolutely nothing to me.... because we're not even playing the same game. Hell if my friend beat that thing in Ultra Hard mode while I could not even beat it in Normal mode I like would have no context of that even means, the difference is unimaginable at that point.... I might be tempted to accuse my friend of trying to flex on me or something 

    Last edited: Today at 7:17 AM

    Flying Caterpillar
    Member

    Aug 14, 2024

    202

    I just checked my play time and I was surprised to see it past 500 hours. I still want to do another playthrough of the DLC. 

    mrmickfran
    The Fallen

    Oct 27, 2017

    33,239

    Gongaga

    I keep meaning to go for my last trophies too, I just got to do the other ending trophies.
     

    Last edited: Today at 7:19 AM

    Menchin
    Member

    Apr 1, 2019

    6,012

    Oliver James said:

    Is it really that good? I finished De - Da123 Bb, should I play it as a lapsed Souls player?

    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    If you liked those games then you'll probably like this too so go for it 

    Rainer516
    Member

    Oct 29, 2017

    1,491

    I have it on both Steam and PlayStation. Around 400 hours on playstation and 150ish on Steam. It is my "comfort food" game. I bought it 9n Steam so I could play it on my steamdeck when I travel for work and need to unwind.
     

    RPGam3r
    Member

    Oct 27, 2017

    16,450

    ArjanN said:

    Minecraft has the GTA/Skyrim thing, where most of the audience is playing it as a sandbox.

    I've noticed harder games tend to have a decent amount of self-selection, where a really challenging roguelike or bullethell shmup has higher completion percentages on the harder achievements than a more mainstream game with much lower difficulty.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Yeah in games like Skyrim I don't even try for completion on trophies whatsoever. I have 1000s hours in Skyrim and do not have 100% in achievements/platinum trophy. Same for Minecraft. 

    jotun?
    Member

    Oct 28, 2017

    5,167

    I have 1041h on PS, but I certainly haven't actually played for that much. I have a habit of leaving it on while doing chores and stuff. Also lots of time just waiting for summons/invasions while doing other things. I actually have it up on my second monitor on my desk right now
     

    Altima VII
    Member

    Mar 2, 2025

    177

    To be honest my biggest takeaway from these stats is wondering what ludicrous business decisions are keeping Sony from releasing Demons Souls on Steam.
     

    Kill3r7
    Member

    Oct 25, 2017

    29,077

    202 hours on Xbox but that includes the DLC.
     

    CladInShadows
    Member

    May 2, 2024

    292

    The overall completion statistics make a level of sense - it's a game where the main appeal is the gameplay, overcoming challenges, etc. If you are enjoying that, why wouldn't you want to experience every challenge the game has for you? The achievement list essentially just becomes a checklist for everything there is to get out of the game.

    It's a contrast to most modern games where such a big part of the audience is just there for a story, with no intention to fully engage with any mechanics and who'd get upset and give up upon encountering anything they weren't able to beat first try. They're not going to hang around after beating the main story to do any optional side content or challenges that are often tied to achievements. These people probably didn't pick up Elden Ring in the first place. 

    Sumio Mondo
    Member

    Oct 25, 2017

    10,753

    United Kingdom

    I don't think it's really sunk in how much of an event this game actually was in the mainstream. So much bigger than their other games.
     
    #alinea #analytics #elden #rings #player
    [Alinea Analytics] Elden Ring’s player engagement is through the roof: 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours
    Angie Best Avatar Thread Ever! Member Nov 20, 2017 49,860 Kingdom of Corona Elden Ring's player engagement is through the roof: Over 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours Click to expand... Click to shrink... Steam accounts for 15.7 million players – 43% of the game's audience – meaning Steam is Elden Ring's biggest platform. PlayStation comes in second with 13.2 million, while Xbox accounts for the remaining 7.4 million: Click to expand... Click to shrink... Elden Ring – and especially its DLC – is hard. While it abandons the linear structure of FromSoftware's previous games, giving players more choice when they're stuck, Elden Ring's bosses are some of the most challenging out there. I'm looking at you, Malenia and Promised Consort Radahn. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Despite the game's mercilessness, 10.9% of Elden Ring players on PlayStation and 10.2% on Steam have unlocked every trophy/achievement in the game. However, just 3.7% of Xbox players managed this feat. Click to expand... Click to shrink... The trophy/achievement data clearly shows that Elden Ring players are dedicated – especially on Steam and Xbox. But looking deeper at Alinea's playtime distribution data reveals just how dedicated they really are: Click to expand... Click to shrink... The results are striking: 64% of Elden Ring players on Steam have played for over 50 hoursPlayStation players have triple the share of under-5-hours players, signalling that Elden Ring didn't click for everyone on the platform – perhaps due to the difficulty Seven million Steam players – 44.7% of Elden Ring's Steam audience – have played for over 100 hours. That share is 36.7%But perhaps most remarkably of all, almost 700K players across PlayStationand Steamhave played Elden Ring for over 500 hours. Talk about dedication! Elden Ring’s player engagement is through the roof: 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours Elden Ring’s player engagement is through the roof: Over 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours Elden Ring is one of the most successful premium games of all time. alineaanalytics.com   OP OP Angie Best Avatar Thread Ever! Member Nov 20, 2017 49,860 Kingdom of Corona Despite the game's mercilessness, 10.9% of Elden Ring players on PlayStation and 10.2% on Steam have unlocked every trophy/achievement in the game. However, just 3.7% of Xbox players managed this feat. Click to expand... Click to shrink... I think this is the craziest stat for me. A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies.  Last edited: Today at 5:32 AM Kalentan Member Oct 25, 2017 50,699 2.5 million is still a big gap, but for some reason I thought the gap between PC and PS4/5 sales of the game was like... monstrously bigger, like 6 - 8 million range.   ResetGreyWolf Member Oct 27, 2017 6,768 That's impressive, but also, is this company genuinely calling Silksong a soulslike or am I reading that wrong? What, just because you have to reclaim your money if you die?   dusan Member Aug 2, 2020 6,763 Nightreign trainings begins.   Jolkien Member Oct 25, 2017 4,310 Anchorage/Alaska Angie said: I think this is the craziest stat for me. A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies. And that includes the DLC Click to expand... Click to shrink... I mean most game is way under that percentage, that it's close to 10% makes it fairly common. My rarest trophy is the Diablo 2 Platinum at 1.27% rarity. Both Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 are under 2.50% as well  OP OP Angie Best Avatar Thread Ever! Member Nov 20, 2017 49,860 Kingdom of Corona Jolkien said: I mean most game is way under that percentage, that it's close to 10% makes it fairly common. My rarest trophy is the Diablo 2 Platinum at 1.27% rarity. Both Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 are under 2.50% as wellClick to expand... Click to shrink... That is why is crazy to me Minecraft Platinum The game not even hard  PlayBee One Winged Slayer Member Nov 8, 2017 6,738 Angie said: I think this is the craziest stat for me. A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies. And that includes the DLC Click to expand... Click to shrink... There are no DLC trophies   EvilBoris Prophet of Truth - HDTVtest Verified Oct 29, 2017 18,087 Does steam make this available or is this estimations from sites that look at user activity?   OP OP Angie Best Avatar Thread Ever! Member Nov 20, 2017 49,860 Kingdom of Corona PlayBee said: There are no DLC trophies Click to expand... Click to shrink... The expansion didn't had any Trophy?   PlayBee One Winged Slayer Member Nov 8, 2017 6,738 Angie said: The expansion didn't had any Trophy? Click to expand... Click to shrink... Nope, same with Dark Souls. Bloodborne is the only one that added trophies with DLC   OP OP Angie Best Avatar Thread Ever! Member Nov 20, 2017 49,860 Kingdom of Corona PlayBee said: Nope, same with Dark Souls. Bloodborne is the only one that added trophies with DLC Click to expand... Click to shrink... I was not aware of that. I will edit it out. Always assumed that expansions had Trophies. But I never played them.  southwest Member Sep 15, 2022 2,759 Heh I have it on both Steam and PlayStation. About 95 hours on Steam and 4 on PlayStation.   antitrop Member Oct 25, 2017 14,949 There are only three games I've topped 100 hours on a single playthrough: Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.   Necron ▲ Legend ▲ Member Oct 25, 2017 9,850 Switzerland 10% got all the trophies/achievements?!I did it for both PC and PS5. 👁️   Mung Member Nov 2, 2017 4,454 PS sales much closer to PC than I expected.   Last edited: Today at 6:00 AM Dyno AVALANCHE The Fallen Oct 25, 2017 16,830 Angie said: I think this is the craziest stat for me. A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies. Click to expand... Click to shrink... If anything it says a lot more about how overstated the difficulty is to me. People do it for the bragging rights because it's perceived as hard, but DMC DMD mode etc are far far harder, just they dont have the same hype cycle and rep so people don't try for it as much I guess.   ArjanN Member Oct 25, 2017 11,493 Dyno said: If anything it says a lot more about how overstated the difficulty is to me. People do it for the bragging rights because it's perceived as hard, but DMC DMD mode etc are far far harder, just they dont have the same hype cycle and rep so people don't try for it as much I guess. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Angie said: That is why is crazy to me Minecraft Platinum The game not even hard Click to expand... Click to shrink... Minecraft has the GTA/Skyrim thing, where most of the audience is playing it as a sandbox. I've noticed harder games tend to have a decent amount of self-selection, where a really challenging roguelike or bullethell shmup has higher completion percentages on the harder achievements than a more mainstream game with much lower difficulty.  Last edited: Today at 5:59 AM Menome "This guy are sick" Member Oct 25, 2017 7,133 I've got 280 hours on Steam, about 200 hours on PS5 and I'm likely to start a new full playthrough once the Tarnished Edition contents are available on Steam. Yeah, I kinda like this game.  Creamium Member Oct 25, 2017 10,466 Belgium The high 100% achievement stat is crazy. People really went in on ER. I have 100+ hours on PS5 and once I get a new pc it's pretty likely that I replay this at some point.  Shahadan Member Oct 27, 2017 5,591 I should have been an analyst   Nateo Member Oct 27, 2017 8,987 Because hard games don't just instantly hand you solutions. Games with friction and the need to actually put time in a learn for a majority of people will have high engagement especially if its a good game.   Mr.Deadshot Member Oct 27, 2017 23,203 I put 110h into it and it would have been a lot better if it was half that time. Too much bloat and repetition.   FF Seraphim Member Oct 26, 2017 16,615 Tokyo Holy fuck over 10% of players on both PC and PS5 got 100%? That is a fucking high percentage. God damn. Let me check my stats: Yep 100%, 215 hours as well. Love the game but I didn't expect it to resonate with so many people that that many would get the 100% achievement.  Dyno AVALANCHE The Fallen Oct 25, 2017 16,830 ArjanN said: Minecraft has the GTA/Skyrim thing, where most of the audience is playing it as a sandbox. I've noticed harder games tend to have a decent amount of self-selection, where a really challenging roguelike or bullethell shmup has higher completion percentages on the harder achievements than a more mainstream game with much lower difficulty. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Makes sense tbh. I suppose to a degree that's the pull for some. For example I bought Furi for that OST and what looked like fun combat. By the end I was playing on the hardest difficulty for the thrill of pulling it off to that OST despite no plans to push that deep into the game. I do think the souls series has a certain pull with that kind of audience though, and I suspect half the reason it takes so well is because all the fights are, well in all honesty far from the worst out there. They're mostly fair with the occasional 'cheap' move and beyond learning to work around the few attacks a boss will throw your way that you don't instantly gel with, they're pretty chill. I'd happily argue in favor of something like NG2 being multiple times harder etc. And I think that's why souls games work. They feel hard, but they're pretty lax to overcome too  Redis Member Mar 1, 2025 222 I have 520h+ on PS4/5. Also played around 25h on my brother 's Series X. Will definitely replay it on Switch 2 this year. Game is generational.  Last edited: Today at 6:34 AM Z'ard "This guy are sick" Member Mar 5, 2019 1,550 Ukraine Yeah i have over 500 hours as well and i'll definitely play it again at one point.   thezboson Member Oct 27, 2017 1,380 I have over 1000 hours in ER. I tried runs where I played "traditionally" by not using summons and AoW etc and played it like a Dark Souls game basically. And have to say, for those of us that like to play Fromsoft games that way, ER is by far the hardest game I have ever played. Much harder than Sekiro. Yet, the game is easy enough that 10% can grab the Platinum. A real triumph in game design and my favorite game of all time. I still think of the lore from time to time.  Bede-x Member Oct 25, 2017 12,058 To think there was a time where Steam wasn't included at launch for Souls games and now it's outperforming not just PS5, but two generations of Playstations. So much have changed in the last decade or so and Steam is such a juggernaut now. Seems to have done well everywhere though.  jaymzi Member Jul 22, 2019 7,202 First I thought how is this possible as 45% is more than the amount of people that finished the game. Then I realised Elden Ring can easily take over 100 hours to finish.  onibirdo Member Dec 9, 2020 3,590 GOAT   raketenrolf Member Oct 28, 2017 5,919 Germany Yeah, it's already one of the best games of all time, easily. I need to start Shadow of the Erdtree. But holding off because the Switch 2 is launching soon.  Mephissto Member Mar 8, 2024 1,231 Pretty insane. Considering how much it sold especially.   Rud Member Mar 3, 2025 140 United States Dyno said: If anything it says a lot more about how overstated the difficulty is to me. People do it for the bragging rights because it's perceived as hard, but DMC DMD mode etc are far far harder, just they dont have the same hype cycle and rep so people don't try for it as much I guess. Click to expand... Click to shrink... You don't have to play in that mode though so it doesn't matter how hard it is. With Elden Ring everyone has to play under the same conditions so when you brag to someone else they know what it is that you are talking about.   Gelf Member Oct 27, 2017 6,156 I remember when I finally beat the game for the first time after about a month of solid playing since launch I was impressed by the overall percentage stats of people who had already got the late game achievements. It was higher than many games I've seen that are vastly easier and are over in less than 20 hours. I'm nowhere close to getting 100% though.  Oliver James Avenger Oct 25, 2017 9,838 Is it really that good? I finished De - Da123 Bb, should I play it as a lapsed Souls player?   Dyno AVALANCHE The Fallen Oct 25, 2017 16,830 Rud said: You don't have to play in that mode though so it doesn't matter how hard it is. With Elden Ring everyone has to play under the same conditions so when you brag to someone else they know what it is that you are talking about. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Oh for sure, I just think that as harder games go ER and the souls games are pretty chill. There's a fair push and pull to them and in most cases, reasonable room to recover. It may just be a personal thing but I find in the harder hack n slash game modes losing your rhythm is a death sentence, but the souls games have that bit more time to recover and rethink I suppose and just feel fairly mellow despite the challenge. You're right that the challenge is universal but tbh even that can kinda be defined by the build. My first run of demons was tragic to say the least, then I tried magic on run 2 and had a very different experience  hydrophilic attack went to hypogean jail Member Oct 25, 2017 23,622 Sweden wow that's a big difference in completion percentage between platforms   Western Yokai Member Feb 14, 2025 175 The game is harder than average, the game is better than average, the game let's you play how you find it's better, while puts everyone in the same level of accomplisment in regards of difficulty. Of course people will be engaged to do 100% when they feel they're progressing, and not just beating everything first time, watching a cutscene, hence and repeat.  Rud Member Mar 3, 2025 140 United States Dyno said: Oh for sure, I just think that as harder games go ER and the souls games are pretty chill. There's a fair push and pull to them and in most cases, reasonable room to recover. It may just be a personal thing but I find in the harder hack n slash game modes losing your rhythm is a death sentence, but the souls games have that bit more time to recover and rethink I suppose and just feel fairly mellow despite the challenge. You're right that the challenge is universal but tbh even that can kinda be defined by the build. My first run of demons was tragic to say the least, then I tried magic on run 2 and had a very different experience Click to expand... Click to shrink... Shared experiences are a big difference makers with these games i think. In Elden Ring i never beat that Scarlet Rot Breath Dragon in Caelid despite trying many many times with different strategies and even with the help of online guides, could never beat that thing. If one of my friend told me they beat that guy that would be impressive to me simply because I could not do it but my friend could. Conversely if Elden Ring had diffulty settings and my friend told me he beat that Scarlet Rot Breath Dragon in easy mode than that would mean absolutely nothing to me.... because we're not even playing the same game. Hell if my friend beat that thing in Ultra Hard mode while I could not even beat it in Normal mode I like would have no context of that even means, the difference is unimaginable at that point.... I might be tempted to accuse my friend of trying to flex on me or something  Last edited: Today at 7:17 AM Flying Caterpillar Member Aug 14, 2024 202 I just checked my play time and I was surprised to see it past 500 hours. I still want to do another playthrough of the DLC.  mrmickfran The Fallen Oct 27, 2017 33,239 Gongaga I keep meaning to go for my last trophies too, I just got to do the other ending trophies.   Last edited: Today at 7:19 AM Menchin Member Apr 1, 2019 6,012 Oliver James said: Is it really that good? I finished De - Da123 Bb, should I play it as a lapsed Souls player? Click to expand... Click to shrink... If you liked those games then you'll probably like this too so go for it  Rainer516 Member Oct 29, 2017 1,491 I have it on both Steam and PlayStation. Around 400 hours on playstation and 150ish on Steam. It is my "comfort food" game. I bought it 9n Steam so I could play it on my steamdeck when I travel for work and need to unwind.   RPGam3r Member Oct 27, 2017 16,450 ArjanN said: Minecraft has the GTA/Skyrim thing, where most of the audience is playing it as a sandbox. I've noticed harder games tend to have a decent amount of self-selection, where a really challenging roguelike or bullethell shmup has higher completion percentages on the harder achievements than a more mainstream game with much lower difficulty. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yeah in games like Skyrim I don't even try for completion on trophies whatsoever. I have 1000s hours in Skyrim and do not have 100% in achievements/platinum trophy. Same for Minecraft.  jotun? Member Oct 28, 2017 5,167 I have 1041h on PS, but I certainly haven't actually played for that much. I have a habit of leaving it on while doing chores and stuff. Also lots of time just waiting for summons/invasions while doing other things. I actually have it up on my second monitor on my desk right now   Altima VII Member Mar 2, 2025 177 To be honest my biggest takeaway from these stats is wondering what ludicrous business decisions are keeping Sony from releasing Demons Souls on Steam.   Kill3r7 Member Oct 25, 2017 29,077 202 hours on Xbox but that includes the DLC.   CladInShadows Member May 2, 2024 292 The overall completion statistics make a level of sense - it's a game where the main appeal is the gameplay, overcoming challenges, etc. If you are enjoying that, why wouldn't you want to experience every challenge the game has for you? The achievement list essentially just becomes a checklist for everything there is to get out of the game. It's a contrast to most modern games where such a big part of the audience is just there for a story, with no intention to fully engage with any mechanics and who'd get upset and give up upon encountering anything they weren't able to beat first try. They're not going to hang around after beating the main story to do any optional side content or challenges that are often tied to achievements. These people probably didn't pick up Elden Ring in the first place.  Sumio Mondo Member Oct 25, 2017 10,753 United Kingdom I don't think it's really sunk in how much of an event this game actually was in the mainstream. So much bigger than their other games.   #alinea #analytics #elden #rings #player
    WWW.RESETERA.COM
    [Alinea Analytics] Elden Ring’s player engagement is through the roof: 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours
    Angie Best Avatar Thread Ever! Member Nov 20, 2017 49,860 Kingdom of Corona Elden Ring's player engagement is through the roof: Over 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours Click to expand... Click to shrink... Steam accounts for 15.7 million players – 43% of the game's audience – meaning Steam is Elden Ring's biggest platform. PlayStation comes in second with 13.2 million, while Xbox accounts for the remaining 7.4 million: Click to expand... Click to shrink... Elden Ring – and especially its DLC – is hard. While it abandons the linear structure of FromSoftware's previous games, giving players more choice when they're stuck, Elden Ring's bosses are some of the most challenging out there. I'm looking at you, Malenia and Promised Consort Radahn. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Despite the game's mercilessness, 10.9% of Elden Ring players on PlayStation and 10.2% on Steam have unlocked every trophy/achievement in the game. However, just 3.7% of Xbox players managed this feat. Click to expand... Click to shrink... The trophy/achievement data clearly shows that Elden Ring players are dedicated – especially on Steam and Xbox. But looking deeper at Alinea's playtime distribution data reveals just how dedicated they really are: Click to expand... Click to shrink... The results are striking: 64% of Elden Ring players on Steam have played for over 50 hours (versus 49% for PlayStation players) PlayStation players have triple the share of under-5-hours players, signalling that Elden Ring didn't click for everyone on the platform – perhaps due to the difficulty Seven million Steam players – 44.7% of Elden Ring's Steam audience – have played for over 100 hours. That share is 36.7% (almost 5 million players for PlayStation) But perhaps most remarkably of all, almost 700K players across PlayStation (2.7%) and Steam (2.1%) have played Elden Ring for over 500 hours. Talk about dedication! Elden Ring’s player engagement is through the roof: 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours Elden Ring’s player engagement is through the roof: Over 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours Elden Ring is one of the most successful premium games of all time. alineaanalytics.com   OP OP Angie Best Avatar Thread Ever! Member Nov 20, 2017 49,860 Kingdom of Corona Despite the game's mercilessness, 10.9% of Elden Ring players on PlayStation and 10.2% on Steam have unlocked every trophy/achievement in the game. However, just 3.7% of Xbox players managed this feat. Click to expand... Click to shrink... I think this is the craziest stat for me. A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies.  Last edited: Today at 5:32 AM Kalentan Member Oct 25, 2017 50,699 2.5 million is still a big gap, but for some reason I thought the gap between PC and PS4/5 sales of the game was like... monstrously bigger, like 6 - 8 million range.   ResetGreyWolf Member Oct 27, 2017 6,768 That's impressive, but also, is this company genuinely calling Silksong a soulslike or am I reading that wrong? What, just because you have to reclaim your money if you die?   dusan Member Aug 2, 2020 6,763 Nightreign trainings begins.   Jolkien Member Oct 25, 2017 4,310 Anchorage/Alaska Angie said: I think this is the craziest stat for me. A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies. And that includes the DLC Click to expand... Click to shrink... I mean most game is way under that percentage, that it's close to 10% makes it fairly common. My rarest trophy is the Diablo 2 Platinum at 1.27% rarity. Both Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 are under 2.50% as well (on PlayStation)  OP OP Angie Best Avatar Thread Ever! Member Nov 20, 2017 49,860 Kingdom of Corona Jolkien said: I mean most game is way under that percentage, that it's close to 10% makes it fairly common. My rarest trophy is the Diablo 2 Platinum at 1.27% rarity. Both Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 are under 2.50% as well (on PlayStation) Click to expand... Click to shrink... That is why is crazy to me Minecraft Platinum The game not even hard  PlayBee One Winged Slayer Member Nov 8, 2017 6,738 Angie said: I think this is the craziest stat for me. A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies. And that includes the DLC Click to expand... Click to shrink... There are no DLC trophies   EvilBoris Prophet of Truth - HDTVtest Verified Oct 29, 2017 18,087 Does steam make this available or is this estimations from sites that look at user activity?   OP OP Angie Best Avatar Thread Ever! Member Nov 20, 2017 49,860 Kingdom of Corona PlayBee said: There are no DLC trophies Click to expand... Click to shrink... The expansion didn't had any Trophy?   PlayBee One Winged Slayer Member Nov 8, 2017 6,738 Angie said: The expansion didn't had any Trophy? Click to expand... Click to shrink... Nope, same with Dark Souls. Bloodborne is the only one that added trophies with DLC   OP OP Angie Best Avatar Thread Ever! Member Nov 20, 2017 49,860 Kingdom of Corona PlayBee said: Nope, same with Dark Souls. Bloodborne is the only one that added trophies with DLC Click to expand... Click to shrink... I was not aware of that. I will edit it out. Always assumed that expansions had Trophies. But I never played them.  southwest Member Sep 15, 2022 2,759 Heh I have it on both Steam and PlayStation. About 95 hours on Steam and 4 on PlayStation.   antitrop Member Oct 25, 2017 14,949 There are only three games I've topped 100 hours on a single playthrough: Elden Ring (110), Baldur's Gate 3 (130), and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (120).   Necron ▲ Legend ▲ Member Oct 25, 2017 9,850 Switzerland 10% got all the trophies/achievements?! [Insanity] I did it for both PC and PS5. 👁️   Mung Member Nov 2, 2017 4,454 PS sales much closer to PC than I expected.   Last edited: Today at 6:00 AM Dyno AVALANCHE The Fallen Oct 25, 2017 16,830 Angie said: I think this is the craziest stat for me. A game so hard having 10% of the players to unlock all trophies. Click to expand... Click to shrink... If anything it says a lot more about how overstated the difficulty is to me. People do it for the bragging rights because it's perceived as hard, but DMC DMD mode etc are far far harder, just they dont have the same hype cycle and rep so people don't try for it as much I guess.   ArjanN Member Oct 25, 2017 11,493 Dyno said: If anything it says a lot more about how overstated the difficulty is to me. People do it for the bragging rights because it's perceived as hard, but DMC DMD mode etc are far far harder, just they dont have the same hype cycle and rep so people don't try for it as much I guess. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Angie said: That is why is crazy to me Minecraft Platinum The game not even hard Click to expand... Click to shrink... Minecraft has the GTA/Skyrim thing, where most of the audience is playing it as a sandbox. I've noticed harder games tend to have a decent amount of self-selection, where a really challenging roguelike or bullethell shmup has higher completion percentages on the harder achievements than a more mainstream game with much lower difficulty.  Last edited: Today at 5:59 AM Menome "This guy are sick" Member Oct 25, 2017 7,133 I've got 280 hours on Steam, about 200 hours on PS5 and I'm likely to start a new full playthrough once the Tarnished Edition contents are available on Steam. Yeah, I kinda like this game.  Creamium Member Oct 25, 2017 10,466 Belgium The high 100% achievement stat is crazy. People really went in on ER. I have 100+ hours on PS5 and once I get a new pc it's pretty likely that I replay this at some point.  Shahadan Member Oct 27, 2017 5,591 I should have been an analyst   Nateo Member Oct 27, 2017 8,987 Because hard games don't just instantly hand you solutions. Games with friction and the need to actually put time in a learn for a majority of people will have high engagement especially if its a good game.   Mr.Deadshot Member Oct 27, 2017 23,203 I put 110h into it and it would have been a lot better if it was half that time. Too much bloat and repetition.   FF Seraphim Member Oct 26, 2017 16,615 Tokyo Holy fuck over 10% of players on both PC and PS5 got 100%? That is a fucking high percentage. God damn. Let me check my stats: Yep 100%, 215 hours as well. Love the game but I didn't expect it to resonate with so many people that that many would get the 100% achievement.  Dyno AVALANCHE The Fallen Oct 25, 2017 16,830 ArjanN said: Minecraft has the GTA/Skyrim thing, where most of the audience is playing it as a sandbox. I've noticed harder games tend to have a decent amount of self-selection, where a really challenging roguelike or bullethell shmup has higher completion percentages on the harder achievements than a more mainstream game with much lower difficulty. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Makes sense tbh. I suppose to a degree that's the pull for some. For example I bought Furi for that OST and what looked like fun combat. By the end I was playing on the hardest difficulty for the thrill of pulling it off to that OST despite no plans to push that deep into the game. I do think the souls series has a certain pull with that kind of audience though, and I suspect half the reason it takes so well is because all the fights are, well in all honesty far from the worst out there. They're mostly fair with the occasional 'cheap' move and beyond learning to work around the few attacks a boss will throw your way that you don't instantly gel with, they're pretty chill. I'd happily argue in favor of something like NG2 being multiple times harder etc. And I think that's why souls games work. They feel hard, but they're pretty lax to overcome too  Redis Member Mar 1, 2025 222 I have 520h+ on PS4/5 (two Platinum trophies, around 8 full playthroughs and two SotE playthroughs+ one rune level 1 run). Also played around 25h on my brother 's Series X. Will definitely replay it on Switch 2 this year. Game is generational.  Last edited: Today at 6:34 AM Z'ard "This guy are sick" Member Mar 5, 2019 1,550 Ukraine Yeah i have over 500 hours as well and i'll definitely play it again at one point.   thezboson Member Oct 27, 2017 1,380 I have over 1000 hours in ER. I tried runs where I played "traditionally" by not using summons and AoW etc and played it like a Dark Souls game basically. And have to say, for those of us that like to play Fromsoft games that way, ER is by far the hardest game I have ever played. Much harder than Sekiro. Yet, the game is easy enough that 10% can grab the Platinum. A real triumph in game design and my favorite game of all time. I still think of the lore from time to time.  Bede-x Member Oct 25, 2017 12,058 To think there was a time where Steam wasn't included at launch for Souls games and now it's outperforming not just PS5, but two generations of Playstations. So much have changed in the last decade or so and Steam is such a juggernaut now. Seems to have done well everywhere though.  jaymzi Member Jul 22, 2019 7,202 First I thought how is this possible as 45% is more than the amount of people that finished the game. Then I realised Elden Ring can easily take over 100 hours to finish.  onibirdo Member Dec 9, 2020 3,590 GOAT   raketenrolf Member Oct 28, 2017 5,919 Germany Yeah, it's already one of the best games of all time, easily. I need to start Shadow of the Erdtree. But holding off because the Switch 2 is launching soon.  Mephissto Member Mar 8, 2024 1,231 Pretty insane. Considering how much it sold especially.   Rud Member Mar 3, 2025 140 United States Dyno said: If anything it says a lot more about how overstated the difficulty is to me. People do it for the bragging rights because it's perceived as hard, but DMC DMD mode etc are far far harder, just they dont have the same hype cycle and rep so people don't try for it as much I guess. Click to expand... Click to shrink... You don't have to play in that mode though so it doesn't matter how hard it is. With Elden Ring everyone has to play under the same conditions so when you brag to someone else they know what it is that you are talking about.   Gelf Member Oct 27, 2017 6,156 I remember when I finally beat the game for the first time after about a month of solid playing since launch I was impressed by the overall percentage stats of people who had already got the late game achievements. It was higher than many games I've seen that are vastly easier and are over in less than 20 hours. I'm nowhere close to getting 100% though.  Oliver James Avenger Oct 25, 2017 9,838 Is it really that good? I finished De - Da123 Bb, should I play it as a lapsed Souls player?   Dyno AVALANCHE The Fallen Oct 25, 2017 16,830 Rud said: You don't have to play in that mode though so it doesn't matter how hard it is. With Elden Ring everyone has to play under the same conditions so when you brag to someone else they know what it is that you are talking about. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Oh for sure, I just think that as harder games go ER and the souls games are pretty chill. There's a fair push and pull to them and in most cases, reasonable room to recover. It may just be a personal thing but I find in the harder hack n slash game modes losing your rhythm is a death sentence, but the souls games have that bit more time to recover and rethink I suppose and just feel fairly mellow despite the challenge. You're right that the challenge is universal but tbh even that can kinda be defined by the build. My first run of demons was tragic to say the least, then I tried magic on run 2 and had a very different experience  hydrophilic attack went to hypogean jail Member Oct 25, 2017 23,622 Sweden wow that's a big difference in completion percentage between platforms   Western Yokai Member Feb 14, 2025 175 The game is harder than average, the game is better than average, the game let's you play how you find it's better, while puts everyone in the same level of accomplisment in regards of difficulty. Of course people will be engaged to do 100% when they feel they're progressing, and not just beating everything first time, watching a cutscene, hence and repeat.  Rud Member Mar 3, 2025 140 United States Dyno said: Oh for sure, I just think that as harder games go ER and the souls games are pretty chill. There's a fair push and pull to them and in most cases, reasonable room to recover. It may just be a personal thing but I find in the harder hack n slash game modes losing your rhythm is a death sentence, but the souls games have that bit more time to recover and rethink I suppose and just feel fairly mellow despite the challenge. You're right that the challenge is universal but tbh even that can kinda be defined by the build. My first run of demons was tragic to say the least, then I tried magic on run 2 and had a very different experience Click to expand... Click to shrink... Shared experiences are a big difference makers with these games i think. In Elden Ring i never beat that Scarlet Rot Breath Dragon in Caelid despite trying many many times with different strategies and even with the help of online guides, could never beat that thing. If one of my friend told me they beat that guy that would be impressive to me simply because I could not do it but my friend could. Conversely if Elden Ring had diffulty settings and my friend told me he beat that Scarlet Rot Breath Dragon in easy mode than that would mean absolutely nothing to me.... because we're not even playing the same game. Hell if my friend beat that thing in Ultra Hard mode while I could not even beat it in Normal mode I like would have no context of that even means, the difference is unimaginable at that point.... I might be tempted to accuse my friend of trying to flex on me or something ("nobody told you to play on Ultra hard don't try to flex on my like that makes you better" or something like that)  Last edited: Today at 7:17 AM Flying Caterpillar Member Aug 14, 2024 202 I just checked my play time and I was surprised to see it past 500 hours. I still want to do another playthrough of the DLC.  mrmickfran The Fallen Oct 27, 2017 33,239 Gongaga I keep meaning to go for my last trophies too, I just got to do the other ending trophies.   Last edited: Today at 7:19 AM Menchin Member Apr 1, 2019 6,012 Oliver James said: Is it really that good? I finished De - Da123 Bb, should I play it as a lapsed Souls player? Click to expand... Click to shrink... If you liked those games then you'll probably like this too so go for it  Rainer516 Member Oct 29, 2017 1,491 I have it on both Steam and PlayStation. Around 400 hours on playstation and 150ish on Steam. It is my "comfort food" game. I bought it 9n Steam so I could play it on my steamdeck when I travel for work and need to unwind.   RPGam3r Member Oct 27, 2017 16,450 ArjanN said: Minecraft has the GTA/Skyrim thing, where most of the audience is playing it as a sandbox. I've noticed harder games tend to have a decent amount of self-selection, where a really challenging roguelike or bullethell shmup has higher completion percentages on the harder achievements than a more mainstream game with much lower difficulty. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yeah in games like Skyrim I don't even try for completion on trophies whatsoever. I have 1000s hours in Skyrim and do not have 100% in achievements/platinum trophy. Same for Minecraft.  jotun? Member Oct 28, 2017 5,167 I have 1041h on PS, but I certainly haven't actually played for that much. I have a habit of leaving it on while doing chores and stuff. Also lots of time just waiting for summons/invasions while doing other things. I actually have it up on my second monitor on my desk right now   Altima VII Member Mar 2, 2025 177 To be honest my biggest takeaway from these stats is wondering what ludicrous business decisions are keeping Sony from releasing Demons Souls on Steam.   Kill3r7 Member Oct 25, 2017 29,077 202 hours on Xbox but that includes the DLC.   CladInShadows Member May 2, 2024 292 The overall completion statistics make a level of sense - it's a game where the main appeal is the gameplay, overcoming challenges, etc. If you are enjoying that, why wouldn't you want to experience every challenge the game has for you? The achievement list essentially just becomes a checklist for everything there is to get out of the game. It's a contrast to most modern games where such a big part of the audience is just there for a story, with no intention to fully engage with any mechanics and who'd get upset and give up upon encountering anything they weren't able to beat first try. They're not going to hang around after beating the main story to do any optional side content or challenges that are often tied to achievements. These people probably didn't pick up Elden Ring in the first place.  Sumio Mondo Member Oct 25, 2017 10,753 United Kingdom I don't think it's really sunk in how much of an event this game actually was in the mainstream. So much bigger than their other games.  
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  • Colorful RTX 5080 DOOM Edition, Neptune Liquid-Cooled RTX 5090 & DDR5 Memory, Monster 3200W PSU With 8x 16-Pin Connectors & BTF Connector GPU Pictured

    Colorful has gone all out, showcasing impressive themed RTX 5090/5080 GPUs, monstrous PSUs up to 3200W & the latest BTF designs at Computex.
    Colorful Unveils plethora of Products at Computex, Including Doom-Themed RTX 5080 GPU, 3200W PSU, Liquid-Cooled DDR5 Memory & BTF Designs
    DOOM: The Dark Ages is taking the spotlight on many booths, as that is one game that GPU makers are using as the theme of some of their new limited-edition models.
    Colorful is also making one of those in a brand-new design, which uses an acrylic shroud with a foggy finish that is colored green and houses the Slayer logo in the middle fin. This is a high-end 3-slot design with triple-fan cooling and is going to come in RTX 5080 GPU flavors.

    2 of 9

    Even the heatsink underneath the shroud is colored green, and on the back, you get a full-coverage backplate with a circular cut-out for higher airflow and the Dark Ages cover photo engraved on the entirety of the backplate. The card uses a single 16-pin connector and will be a limited edition model with a premium price point.

    2 of 9

    Colorful is also expanding into the BTF ecosystem with new products that include GPUs, motherboards, and PSUs. An iGame Ultra RTX 5070 Ti GPU was showcased, which uses modular BTF connectors, one with the standard BTF to 16-pin and the other with a BTF to BTF connector. Both connectors are rated at up to 600W and easily swap into place. The 16-pin connector is also angled, making it easier to avoid any unwanted bends in the cable.

    2 of 9

    The BTF PSU also replaces the 24-pin ATX connection and uses a specialized BTF connector that can be connected to a compatible BTF motherboard, such as the one from the iGame Ultra series. It is still an early design for the DIY market, but Colorful is shipping such systems pre-built within the Asian marketplace.
    One of these systems is the iGame Neptune design, which makes use of a full-on aluminum build and houses some impressive components. One of these is the GeForce RTX 5090 Neptune, which is an AIO-cooled design with a 360mm radiator and uses some sleek silver-aluminum and blue hints on the shroud. The system will also feature Neptune-branded DDR5 memory, which runs at really fast speeds and also comes with liquid-cooling, delivering better thermal capabilities than air-cooled designs.

    2 of 9

    For power delivery, Colorful's sister brand has developed a powerful 3200W solution, which is rated at 80 Plus Titanium and makes use of the latest ATX 3.1 / PCIe 5.1 standards.

    2 of 9

    This comes with eight 16-pinpower connectors and is built using the latest components as displayed below:

    And lastly, Colorful is also rolling out two brand-new Mini PCs, including one that will feature AMD's Ryzen AI MAX "Strix Halo" APUs and a smaller "Colorful SMART" solution that makes use of the Ryzen 200 and Ryzen AI 300 APUs.

    2 of 9

    That's all from Colorful, and it goes off to show how big the company really is and how many product lineups they are involved in. You can expect more details, such as pricing, in the coming months, so stay tuned.

    Deal of the Day
    #colorful #rtx #doom #edition #neptune
    Colorful RTX 5080 DOOM Edition, Neptune Liquid-Cooled RTX 5090 & DDR5 Memory, Monster 3200W PSU With 8x 16-Pin Connectors & BTF Connector GPU Pictured
    Colorful has gone all out, showcasing impressive themed RTX 5090/5080 GPUs, monstrous PSUs up to 3200W & the latest BTF designs at Computex. Colorful Unveils plethora of Products at Computex, Including Doom-Themed RTX 5080 GPU, 3200W PSU, Liquid-Cooled DDR5 Memory & BTF Designs DOOM: The Dark Ages is taking the spotlight on many booths, as that is one game that GPU makers are using as the theme of some of their new limited-edition models. Colorful is also making one of those in a brand-new design, which uses an acrylic shroud with a foggy finish that is colored green and houses the Slayer logo in the middle fin. This is a high-end 3-slot design with triple-fan cooling and is going to come in RTX 5080 GPU flavors. 2 of 9 Even the heatsink underneath the shroud is colored green, and on the back, you get a full-coverage backplate with a circular cut-out for higher airflow and the Dark Ages cover photo engraved on the entirety of the backplate. The card uses a single 16-pin connector and will be a limited edition model with a premium price point. 2 of 9 Colorful is also expanding into the BTF ecosystem with new products that include GPUs, motherboards, and PSUs. An iGame Ultra RTX 5070 Ti GPU was showcased, which uses modular BTF connectors, one with the standard BTF to 16-pin and the other with a BTF to BTF connector. Both connectors are rated at up to 600W and easily swap into place. The 16-pin connector is also angled, making it easier to avoid any unwanted bends in the cable. 2 of 9 The BTF PSU also replaces the 24-pin ATX connection and uses a specialized BTF connector that can be connected to a compatible BTF motherboard, such as the one from the iGame Ultra series. It is still an early design for the DIY market, but Colorful is shipping such systems pre-built within the Asian marketplace. One of these systems is the iGame Neptune design, which makes use of a full-on aluminum build and houses some impressive components. One of these is the GeForce RTX 5090 Neptune, which is an AIO-cooled design with a 360mm radiator and uses some sleek silver-aluminum and blue hints on the shroud. The system will also feature Neptune-branded DDR5 memory, which runs at really fast speeds and also comes with liquid-cooling, delivering better thermal capabilities than air-cooled designs. 2 of 9 For power delivery, Colorful's sister brand has developed a powerful 3200W solution, which is rated at 80 Plus Titanium and makes use of the latest ATX 3.1 / PCIe 5.1 standards. 2 of 9 This comes with eight 16-pinpower connectors and is built using the latest components as displayed below: And lastly, Colorful is also rolling out two brand-new Mini PCs, including one that will feature AMD's Ryzen AI MAX "Strix Halo" APUs and a smaller "Colorful SMART" solution that makes use of the Ryzen 200 and Ryzen AI 300 APUs. 2 of 9 That's all from Colorful, and it goes off to show how big the company really is and how many product lineups they are involved in. You can expect more details, such as pricing, in the coming months, so stay tuned. Deal of the Day #colorful #rtx #doom #edition #neptune
    WCCFTECH.COM
    Colorful RTX 5080 DOOM Edition, Neptune Liquid-Cooled RTX 5090 & DDR5 Memory, Monster 3200W PSU With 8x 16-Pin Connectors & BTF Connector GPU Pictured
    Colorful has gone all out, showcasing impressive themed RTX 5090/5080 GPUs, monstrous PSUs up to 3200W & the latest BTF designs at Computex. Colorful Unveils plethora of Products at Computex, Including Doom-Themed RTX 5080 GPU, 3200W PSU, Liquid-Cooled DDR5 Memory & BTF Designs DOOM: The Dark Ages is taking the spotlight on many booths, as that is one game that GPU makers are using as the theme of some of their new limited-edition models. Colorful is also making one of those in a brand-new design, which uses an acrylic shroud with a foggy finish that is colored green and houses the Slayer logo in the middle fin. This is a high-end 3-slot design with triple-fan cooling and is going to come in RTX 5080 GPU flavors. 2 of 9 Even the heatsink underneath the shroud is colored green, and on the back, you get a full-coverage backplate with a circular cut-out for higher airflow and the Dark Ages cover photo engraved on the entirety of the backplate. The card uses a single 16-pin connector and will be a limited edition model with a premium price point. 2 of 9 Colorful is also expanding into the BTF ecosystem with new products that include GPUs, motherboards, and PSUs. An iGame Ultra RTX 5070 Ti GPU was showcased, which uses modular BTF connectors, one with the standard BTF to 16-pin and the other with a BTF to BTF connector. Both connectors are rated at up to 600W and easily swap into place. The 16-pin connector is also angled, making it easier to avoid any unwanted bends in the cable. 2 of 9 The BTF PSU also replaces the 24-pin ATX connection and uses a specialized BTF connector that can be connected to a compatible BTF motherboard, such as the one from the iGame Ultra series. It is still an early design for the DIY market, but Colorful is shipping such systems pre-built within the Asian marketplace. One of these systems is the iGame Neptune design, which makes use of a full-on aluminum build and houses some impressive components. One of these is the GeForce RTX 5090 Neptune, which is an AIO-cooled design with a 360mm radiator and uses some sleek silver-aluminum and blue hints on the shroud. The system will also feature Neptune-branded DDR5 memory, which runs at really fast speeds and also comes with liquid-cooling, delivering better thermal capabilities than air-cooled designs. 2 of 9 For power delivery, Colorful's sister brand has developed a powerful 3200W solution, which is rated at 80 Plus Titanium and makes use of the latest ATX 3.1 / PCIe 5.1 standards. 2 of 9 This comes with eight 16-pin (12V-2x6) power connectors and is built using the latest components as displayed below: And lastly, Colorful is also rolling out two brand-new Mini PCs, including one that will feature AMD's Ryzen AI MAX "Strix Halo" APUs and a smaller "Colorful SMART" solution that makes use of the Ryzen 200 and Ryzen AI 300 APUs. 2 of 9 That's all from Colorful, and it goes off to show how big the company really is and how many product lineups they are involved in. You can expect more details, such as pricing, in the coming months, so stay tuned. Deal of the Day
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