CD Projekt's RED's The Witcher may have had its faults, but it was still a favorite in the PC crowd when it was released back in 2007. Flip forward to 2010 and the developer is showing off the sequel, for now a PC-only release scheduled for 2011. It's been mentioned that a console versions on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 might also be possible, but nothing's yet been confirmed or announced. The second game will, like the first, star the white-haired Geralt of Rivia, and this time the adventure will be built on a new engine developed at CD Projekt RED, instead of a modified version of the BioWare's Aurora engine that powered the original Neverwinter Nights.
It would seem CD Projekt RED is extremely confident in the product, as they're already calling it the best looking RPG of 2011. There's no doubt it does look very good, and I'm sure we can assume it'll look better once its further along in development. The character models and animations all look more natural and some open environments are especially impressive. The mechanics of the game will be similar to the original, so you can still expect a choice and consequence style of gameplay where your decisions will affect how the story develops. Shown off during the demo was a screenshot of the branching story paths throughout the game, and it looks like events can diverge quite a bit. There'll be 16 endings in all, but you won't have to wait until finale of the game to see how choice makes a difference.
To highlight this, the demo shown off at Gamescom featured the same mission played through on different machines. On each, the decisions Geralt had made leading up to the sequence differed, which changed the sequence of events moving forward. In both playthroughs, Geralt starts out chained in a prison cell with two guards sitting just outside the bars. Due to some circumstances that weren't shown, Geralt actually has the key to undo the ties that bind him, but can't risk simply unshackling himself with the door to his cell still locked, since the guards would then alert others and escape would be impossible. In order to get out of the cell and ultimately out of the castle in which he was trapped, Geralt could choose to taunt the guards into opening his cell door, then click out of his cuffs and start punching them in their faces.
And that's exactly what he did in the demo, in the process showing off the game's hand-to-hand combat system which looks pretty stylish this time around as Geralt does flying punches and knee strikes to disable enemies. With the two guards knocked out, he's able to pick up his sword and look for a way out of the place. This is where the two playthroughs started to diverge, as in one Geralt ran through the castle's dimly lit passageways slicing at everything with his sword, and in the other he used stealth to sneak by and silently disable foes.
The combo system is still being worked on, but what was present in the demo looked smoother and more fluid than the timed mouse clicking from the previous game. For using stealth, Geralt could extinguish the flames of torches, crouch, and post up against walls to see others coming. He could also drop down through hatch doors and hop up over low walls to access new areas, as well as pop enemies in the back of the head to swiftly take them down if he approached undetected. In the first playthrough, Geralt eventually came across a damsel in distress, a mother being held captive by a torturer. He didn't have to save her, but he did, chopping one enemy in the back of the next and then fighting the torturer. With both of the enemies dispatched he managed to free the woman, and we then found out that she had mixed feelings of gratitude because earlier in the game Geralt had killed her son.
In the second playthrough, Geralt eventually came across a cell containing that same son, who had obviously not been killed earlier. Geralt chose to help him escape in this case, forging ahead and clearing the guards out of the way. Since the son was weak, Geralt had to help him walk out, shuffling forward with the weight of the son leaning on his shoulder.
Once outside the castle's dungeon Geralt finds himself on the planks of a harbor under a brilliant blue sky. A gigantic city stretches to the edges of the visible landscape, complete with towering ramparts extending up from rocky cliffs jutting up on the other side of a sparkling body of water. The developers say all this will be explorable terrain, something they moved Geralt into as archers from walkways overhead rained arrows below, which ended that portion of the demo.
I'm pretty excited for this game because I played the first and really enjoyed it. If you have no idea what The Witcher is and you like RPGs, then you should definitely be paying attention to this game, since it looks like a lot has been improved. It also appears as through the scale of combat has been expanded, as the demo shifted to a huge battleground across which numerous pairs of ghost soldiers clashed in combat. The sky was thick with smoke and embers glowed in the ground that wasn't already on fire as Geralt crept forward. Eventually he encountered a towering fire monster clad in bits of rugged armor. As waves of fire arrows swept in from offscreen it looked fairly challenging to keep Geralt alive. The fire monster was slow but could turn into a tornado and rip through the environment, as well as call in fireballs from offscreen. It was exciting stuff, and makes it look like the studio is on its way to producing another excellent title.
