Today, in the year 2025, we know and have known for a decade the name of the game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It has been almost a measuring stick for all RPGs in the years that have followed, a game that people champion, adore, and still frequently snag copies of, with the recent whopping 60 million sold threshold being a firm confirmation of that. But, there was a world where the game wasn't known as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Speaking with Eurogamer, CD Projekt Red's vice-president of communication and PR, Michal Platkow-Gilewski, revealed that the title was once very, very different... and that it almost stuck too, before the developer decided it was a bit too lengthy.
"I liked Northern Lights. For a moment there was The Witcher 3: Northern Lights. It never made it into even a logo design but on the whiteboard, for a while, it was there."
He then noted that the frontrunning name was actually A Time of Axe and Sword, and that this was once regarded as "the one" before ultimately settling on something much more familiar today.
"Yes! That's why it died pretty fast. But I remember I created a doc with the final name and that was the final name, and with some colleagues we were betting how long it would last. It didn't last long. So we were toying with the name but the moment we found Wild Hunt..."
It's hard to see the game as anything other than The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, so clearly the correct decision was made in the end.