So The Witcher 2’s video pitch to publishers was leaked last week, and we’ve all been asking a lot of questions. CD Projekt have now answered some of them. No, that’s not the final voice acting, and yes, it’s a new engine: “The game does not use the Aurora Engine anymore. We developed a brand new engine dedicated to creating games with the design and features we love. The new engine is fully scalable and, well… kicks ass.”
We contacted CD Projekt to ask even more questions, but they’ve declined to say any more at present. (Although RPS will be first in the queue, obviously.)
Related Stories:
What surprises me most is that CD Projekt didn’t find a publisher for part 2 yet. I wonder who’ll take them…
Anyone but Atari please, the first game is still locked in my region =(
Maybe they’re just holding out, creating some hype to get a better deal?
Can’t wait for this, the first was incredible, prefect bridge between RPG storytelling and action RPG combat.
Wot I want to know is who was stupid enough to believe that those voice overs were final?
Many many people I’m sad to say, just read through the RPS thread from when the video came out.
They would still be better than the original english voice work, so I believed they could be final.
Woo, Witcher 2! CD Projekt deserves a medal the size of the Moon, both for what RED is doing and for pulling off GOG.
The Witcher was pretty much the best CRPG since BG2, and I’m really looking forward to this second one.
Here's to hoping this one's as good out of the box as the EE made the original.
@ Schaulustiger: I suspect that it’s not so much that nobody’s willing to publish it, more the case that they’re negotiating with different publishers to get the deal that works best for them. In a situation like that it does well to be able to show off something that looks good and makes the publishers more interested.
Playing the first one now, and it’s fantastic. Hopefully the second can live up to it!
The first was published by Atari; I would think they would use them if they had to, but no one in their right mind would go with Atari if they had other options.
just ordered the extended edition part 1 off amazon, been meaning to do that for yeras, and now a see a far better looking version is comming out soon.
@subedii: Yeah, that’s true. Still surprising to see that CD Projekt seems to have such a strong financial cushion. The Witcher must have sold really well.
1.4+ million copies thus far, IIRC.
They should get Squeeinx to publish it! :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Projekt
the witcher is only a part of their history in the industry.
Woops, didn’t know that. I thought they were rather small, maybe because of their friendly “indie attitude” towards the community. I remember playing an early version of The Witcher during a Games Convention and talking to one of the developers for quite some time. I liked his passion when talking about the game and showing me all kinds of stuff from later in the game on one of the presentation PCs.
CD Projekt is over 15 years old. They’re the biggest software publisher in Central Europe.
CDProjekt kicks ass all around.Can’t wait for this.Also, The Witcher EE second playthrough is in my backlog, once I finish Planescape Torment and Dead Space.
The burning RPS question of course is ‘Will there be nudey card collectables this time around?’ ;)
New engine? Intriguing. I wonder what was wrong with the old one.
Most annoying stuff was reloading times whenever you entered a building. Since it took about 30 seconds in the original release it was a *major* annoyance.
Plus, the engine was made with NWN2 in mind (afaik) and therefore designed towards an easily moddable, “tile-set”-based, D&D-like gameplay with rather small square zones. I hope the new engine features a seemless open world and less artificial zone borders.
Aurora Engine was made for Neverwinter Nights 1. CD Projekt also probably wants something to make cross-platform friendly if they are looking to release on the consoles.
I think the MAJOR question is: is geralt going to have that gay hairdo all the way through?
Why does everyone keep slamming his hair? I actually thought the new look was pretty cool.
THANK YOU! I was also terribly upset by his hair. WTF, what were they thinking? That being said, I want to play this game yesterday
Hair+Face=dead
It sort of resembles the old Polish comic book look: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/witcher/images//thumb/7/75/Komiks_Geralt_okladka.jpg/250px-Komiks_Geralt_okladka.jpg
Yes but…
Is it the witchiest?
I’m looking forward to Witcher 2. The Witcher EE was great, but I’m wondering if 2 is going to need as much post-release work and improvement as The Witcher did, to get to that state.
Appreciating The Witcher took me a while, but the more I play, the more I love it (even voice acting stopped to annoy me – some dialogues are pure gold). Amazing they’re making the sequel.
The Witcher is hard to get into a first. But after awhile it really grows on you. this is my third attempt at finishing the game and i am definatly going to do it this time. The previos attempts i stopped at the second chapter. you have to give the game awhile before it gets good. Im in murky waters at the minute
I made the horrible mistake of taking a break after playing through the rather arduous acts I and II, so I went and played something else once I’d done Triss’ magical sonar quest.
Problem being I did something else for about six months. Every time I load my save, I stare dumbly at my journal and alchemy list thinking “I should really restart” before remembering how much of a chore the first two acts were. I still love the game to bits, but they could definitely have cut off a little content in places – it felt like MMO-level of using the same location sometimes.
Blatantly ignorant blurting:
Publisher schmublisher, “just” chuck it on Steam and Stardock’s wotchamacallit, Impulse.
Who needs boxes? Etcetera.
(Now for someone to explain to me why it isn’t this simple. :)
Warning Dissenting opinion ahead! Get ready your pitchforks and torches!
I like RPGs. I heard The Witcher was good. So I bought it. Could not get into it at all – first, an opening cutscene with some kickass action, but seemed to go on too long. Then, some shoddy performance issues. I had to turn all the graphics settings down. Then the gameplay itself. The combat felt like the mind-numbing grinding of MMORPGs, except that you have to click for each repetitive slash. What happened to the awesomeness of the opening cutscene? The interface had an overwhelming amount of menus and little help was offered to navigate them. The collectible sex cards – ugh. The bland dialogue and uninteresting, unengaging characters.
Overall, I couldn’t see anything worth slogging through for. Died in a cave to some ghouls and haven’t started up the game since.
@BlazerKnight.
you played the original version right? Play the EE with polish voice acting and subtitles. because dialogues are far from bland and uninteresting. one of the better one in video game, topping kotor2, BG1 and fallouts (one and two. not a challenge with number 3)
and you do not to sleep with anyone in the game so if you don’t like sex cards don’t have them. what is the big of a deal. it is jut an option.
@ Lukasz: I’m a big fan of the game, but the sex cards did strike me as very crude. Also, the contact is repitition incarnate, but I wasn’t too bothered about that. You are right that the Polish EE acting is brilliant though. I recommend that to Stick most definitely.