The Witcher Remake Needs Resident Evil's Restraint, Not Wild Hunt's Scale

In case you missed it, the remake of the original 2007 Witcher game, currently in development as a collaboration between Fool's Theory and CD Projekt RED, has been confirmed as a full open-world title, for better or worse. While we're still waiting to see how this approach lands in the final product, not everyone is convinced it's the right direction. So far, I'm among the skeptics. After all, scaling The Witcher up doesn't automatically improve a game.

One notable voice of caution is the original's lead story designer, Artur Ganszyniec. He recently pointed out that such drastic changes would transform the game into something fundamentally different, sacrificing its deliberate pacing, modest scale, and carefully curated story progression (via Gamesradar+). There are many valid ways to approach a remake, and every team must strike its own balance between preservation and reinvention. Even as a fan of open-world games in general, I believe The Witcher would benefit more from keeping its original structure intact—like Capcom smartly did with the modern Resident Evil remakes.

The Original Witcher Works Perfectly Without an Open World

For those unfamiliar with the 2007 original, its world is divided into distinct, self-contained areas—think a small village and its surroundings, or a densely layered section of Vizima (the game's version of Novigrad) filled with enterable buildings and branching sewers. These zones felt convincingly alive and relatively open, yet they were far more compact than even The Witcher 3's White Orchard map.

The hardware limitations of its era forced the developers to work within clear boundaries. Those constraints ultimately shaped the game's signature narrative style and progression. Modern technology (the remake is built in Unreal Engine 5) now lets them remove those limits and create a vast, seamless world, but like Ganszyniec, I'm not convinced that adopting The Witcher 3's open-world approach is the right move here.

Even as a fan of open-world games in general, I believe The Witcher would benefit more from keeping its original structure intact—like Capcom smartly did with the modern Resident Evil remakes.

Many of the original's core design choices, which define its identity, clash with the philosophy of a full open world. The game was built around smaller, meticulously curated areas, tightly controlled progression (including talent-based character building and very scarce gear), and a story that relied on players reaching specific places and characters at the right moment. Forcing these elements into a true open-world format, where you can go anywhere at any time, risks undermining the game's more linear, arc-based story, in which each chapter unfolds within its own dedicated region.

The thing is, the first Witcher isn't really an exploration-driven game. It has a distinct rhythm and gameplay loop deeply tied to its day-night cycle. What mattered most wasn't simply reaching a new area, but carefully planning your next steps: deciding which objectives to pursue and in what order. During the day, the world feels peaceful. It's the ideal time to talk to villagers, build relationships, and gather quests. At night, the atmosphere shifts dramatically—doors are locked, monsters roam the roads and wilderness, turning the land dangerous. This is the perfect window to explore dark caves and monster lairs and to hunt for trophies and rare alchemy ingredients. You know, do some witcher stuff.

The game's minimalistic equipment system further proves it wasn’t designed for open-world freedom. New armor and weapons were handed out on a strict schedule, keeping every combat encounter and boss fight tightly balanced. You always had just enough power and tools to face the next major roadblock, making fights tense, risky, and deeply satisfying when you prevailed.

Even with no witcher sense in sight yet, the original is far more investigation-focused than The Witcher 3. The story follows an amnesiac Geralt relentlessly pursuing the mysterious Salamandra organization, so most main quests revolve around talking to NPCs, gathering intel, and methodically closing in on your targets. While it shares some parallels with the grand search for Ciri in The Witcher 3, the key difference is scale and pacing, as Salamandra isn’t hidden somewhere in a vast open world. They're always one step ahead, but the trail stays hot.

The thing is, the first Witcher isn't really an exploration-driven game.

With a restrained environment, the developers maintained perfect control over the story's flow. They knew exactly when, where, and how players would meet key NPCs or discover vital clues to advance the narrative. In a seamless open world, preserving that tight pacing becomes much more difficult without disrupting major events or their intended order. It could force a significantly looser adaptation, requiring major tweaks, reworking almost every quest, or even the removal of entire sections.

One of the biggest challenges is traversal. Going open world would likely introduce horseback riding, swimming, and boats to the remake—features entirely absent from the original. These additions would dramatically alter both movement and level design. The look and feel of major areas would change significantly. The original featured many lakes and rivers that served as deliberate boundaries, forcing players to use a single bridge rather than take detours. It's difficult to imagine how many systems and encounters rely on these natural barriers, which were far more than mere terrain variety.

That said, this doesn't mean the remake shouldn't be bold enough to try and should simply copy the original beat for beat. It absolutely needs modernization and improvements, such as eliminating frequent loading screens when entering buildings, along with meaningful updates to rhythm-based swordplay and a nearly non-existent gear system. Hopefully, not just by directly transplanting The Witcher 3 mechanics. Ultimately, it's hard to ignore the concern that making The Witcher fully open world creates more problems than it solves and may not be the smartest way to modernize it. After all, excellent non-open-world RPGs arrive every year. Why couldn’t this remake be one of them?

Resident Evil Remakes Offer a Masterclass in Preserving the Right Balance

While it remains to be seen how successfully The Witcher will handle such a drastic shift, I personally wouldn't mind if the devs kept the game's smaller scope and condensed structure closer to the original. This brings us to Capcom's Resident Evil remakes, starting with the 2019 RE2, which demonstrate how to blend the new and the familiar effectively. I know, at first glance, comparing these two series may seem like a stretch, but hear me out.

Ultimately, it's hard to ignore the concern that making The Witcher fully open world creates more problems than it solves and may not be the smartest way to modernize it.

Capcom could have taken a far more radical approach—discarding the classic structure entirely, overhauling the "outdated" puzzle-driven design, and removing elements that might feel too artificial or silly for modern audiences. Instead, with relatively restrained changes, such as brand-new visuals, controls, combat, and some tweaks to level design while preserving the core layout, the remakes feel remarkably faithful to the originals that fans loved yet still like modern games.

Resident Evil 4 is a particularly strong example of such treatment. Unlike the original's semi-open but largely self-contained areas, the remake expands the world while making excellent use of interconnected exploration and backtracking for side objectives, such as the Merchant's requests. This open-ended design complements the original structure beautifully. It adds genuine tension, even for longtime fans, who can no longer be sure what awaits them when revisiting familiar areas.

The result? Critical and commercial acclaim for the RE2, RE3 (slightly less so), and RE4 remakes, with RE Veronica likely following suit next year. One can only wonder how different the series might be today if Capcom had chosen to fully reimagine them.

Yet even masters can stumble when trying to offer more flexibility in mission design, as seen in the series' most recent release. This year's Resident Evil Requiem is not open world by any means, yet its Raccoon City section, where players, as Leon S. Kennedy, navigate a large destroyed city area with the vague goal of clearing a path forward, stands out as the weakest part. Trading strictly curated zones and precise pacing for a more open, free-form approach diluted the signature gameplay flow that defines the series. Many players found it the least engaging segment of an otherwise excellent game.

If this comparison feels somewhat forced when applied to The Witcher, that's fine. We simply don't have many examples yet of non-open-world games being remade as fully open-world titles (with the Final Fantasy 7 trilogy perhaps being the closest). The Witcher appears to be one of the first, making it all the more fascinating to watch. Success here could open the door to bolder remakes in the future—imagine something like Dragon Age: Origins expanded across the vast environments of Inquisition, for instance.

Too Many Open-World Witcher Games Coming—Can the Remake Still Stand Out?

As it stands, turning the Witcher remake into a full open-world game risks making it feel like an entirely different title, and I'm still not convinced it's the right choice. With The Witcher 4 (and the planned Ciri trilogy) plus The Witcher 3's upcoming expansion Songs of the Past, we're already getting plenty of large-scale open-world Witcher experiences.

Success here could open the door to bolder remakes in the future—imagine something like Dragon Age: Origins expanded across the vast environments of Inquisition, for instance.

The remake had a real opportunity to stand out by embracing the original's more condensed, curated design and clever workarounds. That approach could have delivered something fresh for newcomers while feeling reassuringly familiar to longtime fans like myself. Instead, I worry its unique, tightly structured identity may be lost, leaving it with too few distinct qualities to shine against the new chapters in the Witcher saga.

Of course, it might still be too early to judge. The developers could find a smart way to blend both worlds. Perhaps that's the real ambition behind this remake: not just a technological update we grew to expect, but a fundamental rethinking of the project, and making its world, story, and quests far more flexible. A big swing no doubt, and in a sense, it would bring CD Projekt Red full circle: taking their very first game and applying everything the studio has learned from building The Witcher 3—still one of the greatest open-world RPGs ever made.