The Witcher 4 gameplay update is music to our ears

When it comes to issues with the RPG genre, fetch quests and escort quests are definitely up there.

Fetch quests do exactly what it says on the tin; task you with going to a location, grabbing an object and then coming all the way back to deliver it.

On the other hand, escort quests will see you have to walk at a certain speed behind a NPC who will be adamant on walking too fast for you to walk beside but too slow to run with.

These two game features have always been criticised by fans but back when The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released in 2015, CD Projekt RED proved that it was possible to create an epic RPG without having to rely on the dreaded fetch quests.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt had a strict “no fetch quest” policy and it seems as though CD Projekt RED will be continuing with this with the release of The Witcher 4.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, narrative director Philipp Weber spoke more about the studio’s plans for The Witcher 4 and what features they would take from one game to the next.

"We also know the things that The Witcher 3 was good at," Weber explained. "We can't break that. The stuff we want from a Witcher game, that people want from a Witcher game, we can't break that. We have to do that."

He continued, “A lot of the narrative lessons from The Witcher 3, we use them exactly the same way. A lot of the rules on how to do quests that we wrote down, for, as an example, new team members on The Witcher 4. Those are the rules from The Witcher 3. Sometimes we have new things for new features, but the core stuff, it's that same philosophy we wanted."

It is worth noting that The Witcher 3 did feature some versions of fetch quests but unlike some other games which offer no story to achieving such a goal, this game did.

Such as the infamous frying pan quest.

As one user pointed out, “Even this quest was tied in with the overarching narrative of the game. The soot that was scraped off of the pan was used as makeshift ink by a spy in order to send a message about the planned assassination of one of the kings.”

So that is how you do it if you want to incorporate fetch quests into the overall narrative of your RPG.

Hopefully the same can be said for The Witcher 4 when it releases some time in the future.