House of cards

The process of creating a new Gwent card is a highly collaborative and iterative one, Szamalek tells us. “Mateusz [Tomaszkiewicz, principal narrative designer] and I work together with the gameplay guys, who know what kind of card they need in terms of what the deck they’re working on is missing. We come up with suggestions of names and characters from the series lore that fit the bill, then write descriptions for the artists and animators.” But the cards are new territory for Szamalek: “The challenge for me as a writer was telling a story using different tools than the ones I’m used to. Working on the Witcher series, I could rely on cinematics. But in Thronebreaker, I can’t. Instead, I can use the narrator to describe characters’ thoughts, fears and hopes. That’s something we didn’t have in The Witcher III.”