Witcher 3 dev: too many features make for an "average, crappy game"

CD Projekt RED is prepared to cross a few things off its wishlist if it makes The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt a better game.

Speaking to GamesIndustry, executive producer John Mamais said the development team on The Witcher 3 isn't letting the power of nhext-gen consoles and a new engine go to their heads.

"When we started out, we had this massive backlog of features that we wanted to create, but you have to do an ROI [return on investment] analysis of your features, and that's what we did," he said.

"We're constantly going through the process to figure out which features are the most important, but take less time potentially. Those are the things we do first. Things that are really cool, but maybe they don't add as much value to the game? We have to cut them out. We have to make choices.

"I don't want to give you any specific details. There's still some stuff that we really want to do," he added.

"There's one awesome feature that we want to do, but we're starting to realize how much work it's going to take. The thing is, if you don't focus on a few features and you try to do too much, then you're going to end up with an average, crappy game. We've got to pick what's important to the game and do it right."

The rest of the interview includes some interesting discussion of how CD Projekt RED has ramped up its engineering team and how its approaching next-generation consoles.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is due on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2014.