PAX East 2017: CD Projekt Red Panel Delves into the Premium Cards Featured In Gwent

CD Projekt came to PAX East this year to discuss the Gwent standalone game that was officially announced this past E3. While it had a panel to talk about Gwent last year as well, it expertly side-stepped any questions about a standalone project – and there were quite a few people that asked, too. It was free to discuss the title this year, however, and treated those in attendance to the process of how it makes premium cards – Gwent's version of rares – for the standalone strategy card game.

Those on the panel – Gwent's Art Director and Senior Animator – talked about how they settled on the approach to take with their special cards. The way other card games – such as Pokémon and the like – approach this were said to be a major influence on what CD Projekt Red wanted to do, and it ended up going with elaborately – and gorgeously – animated cards as it wanted to do something unique. Some of these are already available to see in the game's beta, though it's only on Xbox One and PC. PlayStation fans needn't worry though, as the game will be releasing proper sometime this year.

The weirdest thing we found out at the panel, though, is just what led to animation being the approach to take. Kasia Redesiuk, the game's Art Director, talked about how the inspiration stemmed from, of all places, a parallaxing GIF of a cat. From there, the actual process of getting these cards animated was laid out in detail, which included sketching, colouring, cleanup, rigging, audio work – the premium cards have a brief audio sting as well – and looping. When all is said and done, each premium card takes the team 720 man-hours per card. That's right: each card takes the team a month. And it was stated that CD Projekt Red is hoping to do a premium version of every single card in the game, and there are currently already 250 cards. In other words, don't expect to be hearing anything about Cyberpunk 2077 anytime soon!

Honestly, though, all this effort is really worth it. A few unreleased premium cards were shown off, including one absolutely amazing one that played into Geralt's horse Roach being, erm, not the brightest. All things considered, this is a monumental undertaking for the team at CD Projekt Red, but when we look at all the studio put into The Witcher III, can we really say we're surprised? One thing's for sure, though, anyone interested in The Witcher needs to give this a look once it hits the PS4, because it looks ace.