How Elden Ring’s open-world innovations could shape the next Witcher game’s design philosophy and player experience
The Catalyst: A Developer’s Revelation
When a veteran developer from one of gaming’s most celebrated studios starts publicly dissecting a competitor’s masterpiece, the industry pays attention. Miles Tost, CD Projekt Red’s senior level designer and a key architect behind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s expansive world, recently turned his analytical gaze toward FromSoftware’s Elden Ring. This isn’t casual gaming commentary—it’s a professional deconstruction with potentially significant implications for the studio’s next major project, widely believed to be the next chapter in The Witcher saga.
Miles Tost’s examination of Elden Ring’s open-world framework represents more than personal curiosity; it signals a potential paradigm shift in how CD Projekt Red approaches environmental design and player navigation.
With credits on both The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077, Tost brings considerable experience crafting immersive game worlds. His current role likely involves shaping the environmental design of CD Projekt Red’s upcoming Witcher title, making his public analysis of Elden Ring particularly noteworthy. When developers at this level engage publicly with competing designs, they’re often conducting preliminary research for their own projects.
Tost’s social media activity reveals extensive engagement with FromSoftware’s latest title, suggesting he’s moved beyond casual playthroughs into systematic analysis. His public commentary focuses specifically on what makes Elden Ring’s open world compelling—a clear indication that he’s evaluating its design principles for professional application rather than mere appreciation.
The developer’s public query about open-world design fundamentals serves dual purposes: it gathers valuable player feedback while simultaneously signaling CD Projekt Red’s renewed focus on environmental innovation. This transparent approach to design research contrasts with typical studio secrecy, suggesting confidence in their ability to synthesize external inspiration while maintaining distinct creative identity.
Deconstructing Elden Ring’s Open-World Mastery
Elden Ring represents a watershed moment in open-world design precisely because it challenges fundamental conventions that have dominated the genre for decades. Where most RPGs guide players through carefully orchestrated progression paths, FromSoftware’s masterpiece embraces ambiguity as a feature rather than a flaw. This philosophical shift from directive design to exploratory empowerment offers valuable lessons for any studio crafting expansive game worlds.
The game’s navigation philosophy represents its most radical innovation. By eliminating traditional waypoints and quest markers, Elden Ring forces players to engage with environmental storytelling and intuitive spatial awareness. This design choice transforms exploration from a checklist activity into an organic discovery process, creating what many players describe as genuine wonder rather than guided tourism.
While The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild pioneered similar principles, Elden Ring refined them within a dark fantasy context, proving the approach works across genres. The key distinction lies in how Elden Ring balances freedom with subtle guidance—through landmark visibility, enemy placement, and environmental gradients—without resorting to explicit instructions.
Since Elden Ring I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a good open world.
There’s so many takes on this, especially once you start looking outside the RPG genre (Outer Wilds, hello!) and it’s made me curious:
What do you fine folks actually seek in an open world game? 👀
— Miles Tost (@tostspender) April 15, 2022
Tost’s specific mention of Outer Wilds alongside Elden Ring reveals his analytical breadth. Obsidian’s space exploration game demonstrates how open-world design can thrive without combat or traditional progression systems, focusing instead on knowledge-based advancement. This cross-genre analysis suggests CD Projekt Red might be considering more radical departures from RPG conventions than previously anticipated.
Common design mistake: Many studios attempting to emulate Elden Ring’s freedom create vast, empty spaces without sufficient environmental narrative or discovery density. The brilliance of FromSoftware’s approach lies not in the absence of guidance, but in replacing explicit markers with implicit environmental storytelling that rewards observational skills.
Practical Design Implications for The Witcher 4
Translating Elden Ring’s design principles to The Witcher universe requires careful adaptation rather than direct imitation. The Witcher series has built its reputation on narrative depth and character-driven quests, elements that could potentially conflict with completely non-linear exploration. However, several strategic implementations could bridge these design philosophies effectively.
Practical implementation strategy: Instead of eliminating quest markers entirely, CD Projekt Red could implement a multi-layered guidance system. Players could choose between traditional navigation for story-critical paths while discovering side content through environmental clues alone. This hybrid approach respects both narrative urgency and exploratory freedom.
Advanced world-building technique: Create environmental narratives that function independently of main quest progression. A ruined village might tell a complete story through placement of bodies, defensive preparations, and scattered journals—discoverable in any order yet coherent when pieced together. This maintains The Witcher’s narrative strength while embracing non-linear discovery.
Optimization tip for developers: When designing open-world regions, establish visual hierarchies through elevation changes, distinctive landmarks, and lighting cues before populating them with content. Elden Ring demonstrates that players naturally navigate toward visible points of interest—a principle that reduces reliance on artificial waypoints while maintaining discoverability.
Critical balance consideration: The Witcher’s contract-based gameplay structure could beautifully integrate with organic discovery. Rather than receiving monster hunt locations from notice boards, players might encounter environmental evidence—strange tracks, missing livestock reports carved into village posts, or unusual weather patterns—that lead them to investigate emerging threats naturally.
Common pitfall avoidance: Studios often mistake emptiness for mystery. Elden Ring’s world feels mysterious yet densely layered with micro-narratives, hidden interactions, and environmental storytelling. The Witcher 4 must ensure that any move toward greater exploration freedom doesn’t come at the cost of the series’ signature narrative density.
The Community Dialogue and Future Speculation
Tost’s public engagement with players about open-world preferences represents a significant shift in how major studios approach pre-production research. By directly soliciting community input, CD Projekt Red acknowledges that player expectations have evolved substantially since The Witcher 3’s 2015 release. The responses to his query reveal several emerging trends that could shape the next Witcher game’s design direction.
Analysis of community feedback patterns reveals players increasingly value: meaningful discovery over checklist completion, environmental coherence over sheer scale, and emergent narratives over strictly scripted sequences. These preferences align closely with Elden Ring’s design strengths while challenging traditional RPG conventions that The Witcher series has previously embraced.
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The historical design relationship between these franchises adds fascinating context. Elden Ring itself borrowed extensively from The Witcher 3 when developing its open-world framework—particularly in creating lived-in environments with complex NPC routines and multi-layered quest structures. Now, CD Projekt Red appears positioned to complete this creative circle by integrating FromSoftware’s exploratory innovations into their next Witcher installment.
Final assessment: While Tost never explicitly mentioned The Witcher in his analysis, the professional context makes the connection unmistakable. The true question isn’t whether Elden Ring will influence the next Witcher game—it’s how selectively CD Projekt Red will adapt its principles while preserving the narrative depth, character relationships, and moral complexity that define the series. The optimal approach likely involves embracing exploratory freedom for side content while maintaining structured narrative progression for main questlines, creating a world that feels simultaneously boundless and purposefully crafted.
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