UPDATE: The full preview and exclusive screenshots can be found here.
Note: I’ll be doing a full preview for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings for Strategy Informer, so as not to tread on their toes I’ll just be doing a few bullet-points of my short time in our most anticipated game of the year. I’ll link to the full preview when it’s up.
- The preview build I’m playing from is almost complete, but certainly not perfect and missing a few things – like most of the Options. It’s about 10 hours of the game – I don’t know if it’s from the start or not.
- The preview build already supports Witcher 1 saves, and it found all of my multiple ones already. I simply chose from a short list which one I wanted.
- First thing’s first: it’s great. In case there was any doubt.
- And now for the important stuff: there’s a naked woman in the first two minutes of the game. Absolutely full-on nudity that in games you would only usually see in crap German “erotic” titles. Earning your Mature rating there, CD Projekt!
- The opening sections are surprisingly linear. I know full well it’ll open out later though.
- Combat’s certainly taken some cues from Batman: Arkham Asylum, just with a sword and some magic. Finishing moves are particularly entertaining, if you can pull them off.
- It’s absolutely never boring. Just when you think something’s simple… it won’t be.
- It looks utterly gorgeous. See below (click to see the picture in full).
- While there is the occasional Quick-Time Event (mostly in fist-fights), you can turn them down to ‘easy’ on the Gameplay Options menu.
- You can turn the already unobtrusive HUD on or off by pressing ‘H’.
- The opening battle is incredible. It really feels like there’s a war on… but a puny war’s not enough for CD Projekt. No spoilers.
- Geralt is voiced by the same actor as in The Witcher. A few other characters from the first game appear, but I’m not sure if they have the same actors (I think so though).
- Either way, they’re all fine. The writing and the acting is even more believable than Bioware’s – and this has proper swearing in it.
- Speaking of voice acting, the characters in this early video have been recast. The cinematic’s the same, but the voices sound much better.
- There are animated comic-style cutscenes! These are used sparingly, and are pretty cool. Remind me of Thief in a way.
- There are a few minigames to play, such as fist-fighting and arm-wrestling.
- Choices, no matter how small, can either help you or bite you in the arse. A seemingly random throwaway chat actually rewarded me a few hours later. The Witcher 1 took the ball and now Witcher 2‘s running with it.
- It’s vastly vastly vastly better than Dragon Age 2 already, and I’ve only played a few hours of it. Your choices and the story affect the entire world. This is how you do epic fantasy. Is it better than Dragon Age: Origins or Baldur’s Gate? We’ll have to see…
That’s it for now, but the full preview should be up Monday (I’ll link it when it does) along with some in-depth details on the combat, Quick Menu and just how generally bloody cool it all is. All this is only from the first few hours, so I can’t wait to see what lies ahead… is it May yet?
Awesome info! Can’t wait. Great developers deserves support! Buy the game and don’t pirate it!
Agreed. This definitely deserves a purchase instead of that other crap.
Actually you can turn off quick time events it’s been confirmed
Good to hear – at the moment it’s either ‘difficult’ or ‘easy’. They’re not a problem on Easy.
Witcher is one of the best fantasy out there. But ofebre you jump to Blood of Elves and rest of the 5 piece epic story (hehe, epic), you should read most of short stories first. And BTW, I thought the Last Wish was actually the last book about Geralt.I can grant you that after diving into the series, it will feel like nothing else ofebre. And while the first three books are more or less traditional (and even include some cliches), the last two are totally unique and will leave a very deep feeling.TV series sucks. They are well, piece of shit. Stay away from them yes, you, the other readers of this post.And by the way, I’m from the Czechia. The only country where Sapkowski is more popular then in his homeland, Poland. It’s because of awesome translation of Dwarvish into a Moravian dialect of Czech. Too bad you can’t read that translation.
/Drool, move over DA2, looks like CDProjekt have a thoroughbred winner in the final furlong.
It should also be pointed out that all those pictures were from the very beginning of the game before I knocked the graphics up to High – they’re all just Medium detail.
Jeez! I hope my pc can handle it. Looks like a sweet ass game to spend hours and hours on. On a side note, funny that I don’t see any cattle BioDrones yet calling you out on bashing their favorite game. =)))
sweet bullet points help us a lot. i just got the game today and have not done most things just now starting to play i wanted to know if the “There are a few minigames to play, such as fist-fighting and arm-wrestling”. are any good? i was reading reviews on http://www.thewitcher2blog.com/ and they seams to be good small mini games is that true? i like role playing games that feature small mini games they help take away from the games same old same old and help allow you to take a brake from it from time to time while playing it. i loved them in ff.