As part of the insanely ambitious
What Lies Unseen datamined development history of The Witcher 3, the project's creators made an amusing discovery: A script for an early version of the quest "Through Time and Space" where Geralt and Avallac'h teleport to Night City from Cyberpunk 2077.
Through Time and Space is one of my favorite quests in The Witcher 3: In order to reach the homeworld of the Wild Hunt, the Witcher and sage have to skip from world to world in a dimension-hopping chain of portals. They find themselves braving a desert planet that was once the bed of a sentient ocean, a toxic swamp, an underwater cave, and a world already ruined by the White Frost. It's this bracing, exciting, and surprising bit of high-concept sci-fi in The Witcher 3 that I just really dig.
The draft script for Through Time and Space is markedly different from the final one, with Geralt and Avallac'h finding their first portal in a Redanian garrison instead of Novigrad, and they get teleported to, among other places, the court of King Radovid but weeks in the past. The first jaunt, though, would send them to Night City, with Geralt and Avallac'h exchanging the following dialogue:
- Geralt: "What... What is this place? Is this the afterlife?"
- Avallac'h: "No. Just another of the realities the Spiral leads through... Technologically advanced, but broken. Dying."
- Geralt: "Disgusting. This stench, noise... How can you live here?!"
- Avallac'h: "You should know better. This world is inhabited by humans, not elves."
