Sword of Suzuran X The Witcher 3: Memorial Interview

XD released Sword of Suzuliana, a tactical RPG for iOS, Android, and PC, to Western audiences in August 2024 (about a year after the game launched in East Asia). Heavily influenced by Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, the game captivated fans with its elaborate war story and highly strategic battles, as well as its beautiful soundtrack.

Just over a year after its release, a truly major collaboration between Suzuli Sword: For a Peaceful World and CD PROJEKT RED’s open-world role-playing game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been fully realized and delivered to gamers. Geralt, Yennefer, Triss and Ciri now appear as playable characters in The Sword of Suzuli;Allows players to enjoy cooperative stories and quests centered around the King of the Forest from another world.

CD PROJEKT RED Franchise Creative Director Bartosz Sztybor explains his thoughts on the collaboration and how it came about: “At CD PROJEKT RED, storytelling is at the core of everything we do, and we take a hands-on approach even when working with external partners. In working with Suzulily Sword, our franchise creative team worked closely with developer XD International It’s always a privilege to work closely with partners who share our passion for The Witcher to create a story that captures the essence of The Witcher world, and we’re excited about the results. We look forward to sharing the results of this collaboration with the community and can’t wait to see their response!”

CD PROJEKT RED’s Japan Country Manager Satoru Homma further introduced their partnership with XD Games: “For the collaboration between Sword of Suzuli and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I am responsible for project management on behalf of CD PROJEKT RED. I am personally a big fan of Sword of Suzuli, and I would very much like to see the characters from The Witcher 3 (presented in beautiful pixel art) in a tactical RPG With the Sword of the Suzu team's love and understanding of The Witcher 3, and with the help of our in-house story experts under our thorough supervision, we are able to deliver solid and authentic storytelling in the co-op missions, and I sincerely hope that The Witcher 3 players who may be new to tactical RPGs will take the time to enjoy this content filled with a deep appreciation for the world and its characters.

Sword of Suzuran director Guo Lei (XD Games) spoke in more detail about the collaboration and the circumstances that made it possible.

inspired by Tactical OgreAfter playing the game in high school, Guo always wanted to be a game creator. He is also a fan of The Witcher 3his favorite characters are Geralt and Yennefer.

Mr. Guo talks about the first anniversary of the Western release of “The Sword of Suzuli” and his feelings looking back on the past year:

Sword of Suzuliana had a successful start, but for a while we were looking in the right direction. However, thanks to the support of our fans, we were able to turn things around and successfully celebrate our first anniversary. Going forward, we will continue to develop the game with confidence and enjoyment and bring fun to the fans who are looking forward to it.

In terms of game content, the global version released Ilia, and on the first anniversary of the game, the story of her entering the other world was depicted. In the future, “Sword of Suzuliana” will enter the 2.0 story line, leading players to embark on an adventure beyond Ilia, and unfold the story of players protecting peace. We hope you are looking forward to it.

— On how collaboration on The Witcher 3 works:

Guo: From the beginning, our team has been familiar with the CDPR China team. In a casual conversation, we mentioned that it would be exciting if we could one day develop a title based on Sword of the Suzuli and The Witcher 3 together.

Later, we had the opportunity to meet the CDPR Japan team in person at Tokyo Game Show 2024. During our discussion, I shared with them my personal love for The Witcher 3 and my interest in exploring whether we could create something together. They encouraged us to submit a formal proposal to initiate the collaboration. The Witcher 3 is a hugely popular game around the world, so I was ecstatic when he actively considered our proposal to work together. After many efforts, this cooperation was officially approved. Since then, both teams have devoted nearly a full year to development, culminating in the collaboration in the form you see today.

what is this about The Witcher 3 This is particularly attractive to him:

First of all, it's such a realistic immersion. You'll feel like you're immersed in this world in a way you can't experience in other games. Plus, it’s a story element. The great thing about it is that it depicts a lot of stories that you can relate to. It's very unique because you make painful choices that change the outcome of the story. I was overwhelmed by the active role the charming characters played in the story.

The way the story was designed, its core themes and the creative collaboration behind it

We want to create this worldview The Witcher 3 within the world lily of the valley sword. However, being involved in a conflict between nations goes against Geralt's beliefs, and indeed, if we were to depict a conflict involving The Witcher 3we felt like figuring out how to solve it would be a pretty high hurdle. For this reason, we decided to aim for a down-to-earth story.

The story revolves around Leshen The Witcher 3 Appearing and causing trouble, Geralt and his friends join forces with the leader to defeat it. Behind the story, people's malicious intentions are also depicted. For example, when a problem occurs, people assume that it is caused by someone with a different background than their own and blame them. The theme of the story raises a moral question, and Geralt and Yennefer step in to try to resolve it.

In The Witcher 3, Geralt and Yennefer are portrayed as unusual characters who are different from ordinary people. Of course, they have different personalities and ways of doing things. We prioritize carefully expressing all aspects of these characters in collaborative stories.

We ensure close communication with CD PROJEKT RED. We create shared documents, edit those documents, and receive feedback, all of which allows us to develop carefully and efficiently. This makes for a unique and fun development experience.

How they reimagined characters from The Witcher 3 into the pixelated world of Sword of Suzuli:

The Witcher 3 has a realistic 3D visual style, but when translating it into pixel art, our first priority was thinking about how to express the action in a way that would satisfy players.

However, the designers also liked “The Witcher 3”, so they designed it very carefully, such as clarifying the difference between silver swords and steel swords. As a result, my impression is that the visuals went smoothly.

Main cooperation target areas:

worldwide. “Sword of Suzuran” is available in four languages: Chinese, Japanese, English and Korean. Like The Witcher 3, we have a global perspective and hope that game fans around the world can enjoy the Sword of Suzuli IP. Therefore, every region is important to us.

If I had to say, we are particularly interested in English-speaking countries. We consider the English-speaking world to be a region where we still want to gain more fans for Suzuran Sword. Needless to say, The Witcher 3 has already won many English-speaking fans, so we hope this collaboration will help us further attract the English-speaking world.

In this cooperation, his particularly outstanding aspects are:

I think it's a real collaboration. Having both sides working together in the same direction is something I've never felt before, and it's fun. This was a wonderful experience for us. Therefore, this time we were able to communicate directly with CDPR, which was not only very efficient, but we also felt that everyone gained something from this project.

The part of the collaboration that symbolized its success, or that he was particularly proud to be a part of:

What you need when collaborating with other artists is a love for the work. I believe that only when we have a strong love for our work can we create something that satisfies our collaborators. We ourselves have always wanted to work with The Witcher 3, but thanks to CDPR we were able to do so. We are really happy. We also have skins for Geralt, Yennefer and Triss. We created the skin based on the most touching scenes while playing The Witcher 3. Geralt usually wears armor, but for this skin we created a skin that truly represents the love between father and daughter when Ciri visits Geralt.

As for Triss, in “The Witcher 3”, Triss and Geralt attended a ball. However, the two of them were not very interested in the dance, so they sneaked out and had a date in the garden. We recreated that atmosphere with the skin.

Every skin is made with love, so I hope all players will check it out.

He sent a message to the players of “Sword of Suzuliana” who are looking forward to cooperation:

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all my fans. Thanks to everyone, Suzuran Sword has grown so much over the past year or so that we can safely reach our first anniversary. Thank you so much! Thanks to your support, we are able to work with The Witcher 3. What role will Geralt and his friends play in the world of Suzuli Sword? We hope that not only leaders, but also fans of The Witcher 3 will enjoy this event.

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