New RPG franchises with spooky premises usually arrive just Halloween. This year, The Witcher tells the tale of a medieval hitman in a quest to rid the world of supernatural creatures for a price. But The Witcher isn't a slasher movie for Halloween junkies, it's a tale backed by over three million books sold and translated into nearly a dozen languages.

Michal Madej, chief designer for the game at CD Projekt RED, the Poland-based developer of the PC game recently answered a few questions about the game, the story and whether it might come to consoles.

GameDaily Biz: While North Americans are used to horror stories from England, Ireland and tales of Transylvanian vampires, The Witcher story is unknown here. How hard is it to launch a great horror tale in North America without a major movie or book release?

Michal Madej: The Witcher is really quite well known worldwide -- even if you haven't realized it yet. The game is based on books by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, but his literature is international -- most of it is based on Arthur's myth, the Holy Grail and Celtic legends. So The Witcher's story should sound familiar to [North Americans], with what should be a fresh approach to fantasy.

Biz: How would you best summarize the tale for audiences who don't know about it?

Madej: It's a story about Geralt of Rivia, a legendary monster slayer -- a witcher, as they are called. However, there's a huge difference between Witchers and other monster slayers you remember from traditional fantasy books. First, he is not a human -- he is a mutant, artificially transformed into a perfect fighting machine, with supernatural powers and skills. Secondly -- witchers are not "do-gooders," but are instead more a kind of medieval hitman, hired to kill monsters for money. The story takes place in a fantasy setting, which bears resemblance to traditional Tolkien-like high fantasy, but negates the typical struggle between Good and Evil. So in the game, you play a mythical anti-hero whose quest is to recover stolen secrets and save the witchers' brotherhood. On your path, you encounter a number of difficult morally ambiguous choices, which will affect the whole plot and result in one of three different endings.

Biz: Any changes in the decision to get the game's name out there more by creating a demo?

Madej: We will be releasing a demo after the release date. However, we don't want to commit to a specific date or feature set. For role-playing games, it's really important to give players a sense of the story and the gameplay, and that's quite difficult to do in a demo.

Biz: Any hopes of bringing the game to consoles with Atari's help?

Madej: The Witcher was designed as an PC-only game, which makes it rather difficult to port to consoles, however it's a very promising market and we've definitely thought about it. If we decide to make a console version, it might take awhile, but if the PC version does well enough, a console version becomes more likely.

Biz: The game was first announced in 2004 so it took nearly three years to make... can players expect more content for the game series in less time?

Madej: We had to start talking about the game quite early, as we knew the world was almost unknown in much of the Western world. That's why we showed a demo a few months after development started -- which, thanks to the BioWare Aurora Engine, was possible. Also, in the beginning we planned to offer between 30 and 40 hours of gameplay, while now it's much closer to 100 hours; that's another factor that made development last longer. Finally, it's our first internally developed game -- we needed to learn how to cooperate, manage resources, and solve lots of other production problems. I'm sure that our future titles will offer an equally huge amount of content in much less time.

Biz: Did Andrzej Sapkowski work with the team at CDProjekt to help develop the game or give his approval to present a side of Geralt that fans had not previously known about?

Madej: He is a writer in his 60s, so he is not a big fan of video games, and he honestly said he is not interested in cooperation on the game, as we probably know better what to do. However, he is quite enthusiastic now, as he was advising us with character names, the glossary and details of the world map. He also accepted the story and most of the gameplay elements, which ensures that we don't spoil his original vision for the character and the world.

Biz: The book series is well known for being less about good and evil and more about a balance of gray. Given that most games rely on good vs. evil as a way to clarify roles, how difficult has it been to translate that "gray" to the gamer?

Madej: It was really hard -- first we had to change our own way of thinking, as "good vs. evil" is so typical and such an obvious choice for a fantasy role-playing game. Even if you design a story with shades of gray, morally ambiguous choices are hard to handle in an interactive medium -- people always try to avoid penalties and go for the biggest reward, which is easy because of the must-have save & load mechanism. We had to change the very moment of choice in the game so that instead of concentrating on rewards, players will think about actual choices. In The Witcher choices have same short-term results, which makes save & load pointless, instead they have different long-term results like "butterfly effect" -- small decisions might have big influence.

Biz: With the PC gaming market so focused on multiplayer, has there been any discussion around adding some level of multiplayer to the game?

Madej: You basically answered the question already -- everybody is focusing on multiplayer, but they blindly follow huge successful titles and may never be able to compete with them. We decided to offer a completely different experience, something that you won't find in any multiplayer game -- great story, a legendary hero, real-time combat and world-changing decisions. We are sure it's the only way to beat multiplayer tycoons.

Biz: While The Witcher releases on Halloween, we wondered what Halloween is like in Poland?

Madej: Yes, there is an All Saints' Day celebrated one day after Halloween, which is a common tradition for all northern Pagan cultures in Europe. However, in Poland it's a much more serious fest, without trick-or-treating and costumes. Instead there is an old Pagan tradition of divination, still alive in eastern part of Poland -- people visit graves of their families, bringing them food and candles, and trying to commune with spirits.

Biz: Thanks for answering our questions, Michal.