I had the pleasure of catching up with Tomasz Gop (Senior Producer at CD Projekt Red) again, while at E3 for a demo of The Witcher 2: Assassin’s of Kings. Although most of it was already familiar to me, it was still great to get to see the demo being played right in front of my eyes. I was so excited I even wore my medallion (well… yeah, I wouldn’t go wearing my Abigail costume as some suggested, I’d be tripping all over the skirts!). Plus, I got hit with a jaw-dropping spoiler that I really wasn’t expecting, so word of advice: watch the videos at your own risk.
The Witcher was released back in October of 2007, becoming a gaming phenomenon on the PC, selling 1.5 million copies. Some called it a “dying genre on a dying platform” but the fact is, it did sell and it was a fantastic game. People still believe in and want to play hardcore RPGs, and the Witcher 2 is definitely a hardcore RPG.
The demo began by showing a part of Act 1 (the game has 5 chapters, including prologue and epilogue), and what we saw happens after the prologue. The scene takes place on the river bank, seeing how new locations look, what the team has done with their own engine (it’s no longer Bioware’s Aurora). The Witcher 2 has all the typical RPG features, and one of them is the dialog, which we saw next.
A conversation takes place between Iorveth and Vernon Roche, as the Witcher’s party approaches. There are some time-limited choices now and again throughout the story (a little time appears as the cursor is on the dialog choices), not every time there is a dialog choice though. Something to keep the player immersed. A fight breaks out between the elves and the three travelers. Triss manages to deflect the incoming arrows, but faints shortly after. The goal is to reach town while fending off groups of incoming enemies.
As we watched the combat sequence, we noticed some changes. There is a “range circle” centered on Geralt. We no longer have time-based clicking sequences; while they were pretty effective but required a lot of attention and precise timing (I could do with my eyes closed at the time by listening to the sword “swoosh”), if you missed a click you’d break the combo.
Now you can move and combine strikes in any way you want: strong strikes, fast strikes, magic signs. You can use them in any way you want, without breaking the combination. You can also block incoming opponent attacks, and if you do it at the right time, you will even manage to riposte. You can dodge/roll out of the way of incoming blows, position yourself behind your enemies and attack with magic or sword blows, without ever breaking your combo.
For beginner players or those who don’t care about the combat but want to just focus on and experience the story, the easy difficulty will be more suited for them, as it won’t be mandatory to enter advanced combat.
The old engine had several barriers, and one of them was the limiting number of characters in a dialog. Now people can join in, join out, your group will have discussions with another group, people will give their opinions and interact with each other. In the demo, the group encounters a guard who mentions some commotion in the town square, where a hanging is about to take place, so that’s where we should go next.
On the way, we can observe the town and its inhabitants. The new engine allows for creation of a live community. Townspeople each have names, they have their stories, they go about their lives, and a lot of them react to what you do at the moment and will remember your actions throughout the game later on. You must take into account what you do. One of the features of the game is the ability to import your game save from The Witcher, so the major choices that you have done in the first game will be reflected in the second one.
WARNING: This part of the demo contains plot spoilers. Watch at your own discretion!
One major difference this time around: there are no loading times; entering the market square area was a seamless, instant transition. The Witcher 2 has a fully open world, and any chapter will be free of loading.
In the market square, Dandelion and Zoltan are about to be hanged. It doesn’t matter what they’re being hanged for, they’re our friends, we are here to help them. The dialog choices available are more streamlined than they were in The Witcher, so what you get as options is just like a “summary” of what will come to pass. For example, asking for an explanation means a more diplomatic approach, while something else may lead to a violent outcome. Your choice can also gain or lose the support of the people watching you. Getting on the “good side” of villagers may open up the path to new dialogs, quests and items. Choices and consequences rather than just being good or bad.
The fist fight in the demo was a placeholder, so it won’t look like that in the final game. But the point is that you enter combat without a sword, but using your fists. The hangings begin, and if we want to save our friends, we must get up on the scaffold. As we do, a new character approaches, and we get more dialog choices to try to reason with him. Or not. From his actions, we may learn more about a monster that’s been seen around these parts and that will be an important part of the story.
The last part of the demo was a boss fight, nearing the end of Act 1. At this point, Geralt has learned about this monster, because it’s part of the game to research and learn about the best ways to defeat creatures. In this case we eventually find out that the Tentadrake is very old, it’s sick and has weak spots on its tentacles. Items will also be helpful as well as some characters (one of the sorceresses in the area will be helping Geralt with the fight by placing a magical barrier behind the monster so that it can’t back away). On the way, we get to see Geralt’s ability to climb up or jump down from platforms.
Charging the Tentadrake with a sword proves ineffective, the monster spits and knocks you back, so we have to change strategy. By placing a trap on the ground and allowing the tentacle to hit it, we pin it down it so we can slash it to pieces. Boss fights have different stages, and this is the first stage of the Tentadrake fight: disabling its tentacles. Once you disable the first tentacle, the monster obviously gets mad and hits a nearby ruin, which is an indication for the player to interact with it during the fight. You can keep on cutting tentacles, enrage the monster some more, and new options will open up.
Some of the monster attacks will engage you in quick time events; with the Tentadrake, you must repeatedly press a button to free yourself from the sticky slime attack. Another event happens when Geralt jumps onto one of the tentacles and stabs it repeatedly, attempting to drive the tentacles into the ruins, which will collapse and pin the Tentadrake down, allowing us to deliver the last blow.
I know QTEs turn off a lot of players (hell, I’ve put down my share of controllers during God of War because I usually suck at these events) but at least the entire fight doesn’t rely on them and lately I’ve had some practice from Heavy Rain, so maybe things won’t be as frustrating for me when the time comes!
I was really hoping to see the inventory screen, but unfortunately that wasn’t an option, however I was reassured that it looks about the same. In my other preview, I discovered that we would get an Alchemy mini-game where you mix and match ingredients; this task isn’t mandatory, but it does add more interactivity to the process.
For other last minute information (they had demos queued every 30 minutes, I had meetings to run to, so never got around to come back with follow-up questions), the skill tree doesn’t have any more passive skills, so to speak, so the character and combat customization relates more to skill increases instead of passive abilities (for example, becoming stronger in combat against groups of enemies, or a toxicity increase with can turn Geralt into a sort of a junkie).
That was the end of our time, unfortunately, but it was well worth it. Now, to wait for 2011…
Special thanks to Tomasz Gop, Karol Zajączkowski and Tom Ohle for their hospitality at E3!