TechRadar published an article yesterday in which they asked five of the key people that worked on The Witcher 3 what game most inspired them whilst working on said game:

As TechRadar’s PC Gaming Week is all about celebrating the wonderful world of playing games on our computers, we thought “what would be better than asking the staff of one of the most respected games developers in the world what their favorite PC games are?”

That’s exactly what we did, with CD Projekt Red, the team behind the acclaimed Witcher III, taking time out of developing its eagerly awaited follow up CyberPunk 2077 to tell us about the PC games that helped inspire its staff.

Konrad Tomaszkiewicz — the game director — went with Ultima 7:

First of all, it’s very hard to pick one favorite game. There’s so many kinds of awesome games — I mean, can you seriously compare Diablo with Dune 2 or The Secret of Monkey Island?

That’s why I decided to pick one of the first games that made me want to work in the industry and develop RPGs — Ultima VII: The Black Gate.

A fully-fledged RPG, with a really good plot (for the time), a good character development system, and a gigantic open world that you could traverse on horseback (or magic carpet, if you’re a magic carpet person).

Other RPGs that come to mind are Eye of the Beholder and Might and Magic VII, but Ultima VII’s “Avatar! Know that Britannia has entered into a new age of enlightenment!” is something that has been etched in my memory in a unique way.

Ultima, even a quarter century on, continues to inspire game developers!

(Hat tip: Infinitron Dragon)