Mod It All: The Witcher 2 Receiving 'Combat Rebalance'

This may look like a blog post but it's actually a combination of confessional booth and news stand. Gather round and confess the mistakes of your past as I do the same, then pick up the evening papers on the way out. As the headline suggests, my sin relates to The Witcher 2. I've never finished it. Or started it for that matter. The reason I haven't started it is because I haven't finished the first Witcher game, so I should probably do that. But what's this? A small leaflet on the news stand informs us that Andrzej 'Flash' Kwiatkowski, an ex-modder and now 'Gameplay Designer' at CD Projekt, has returned to modding in an effort to rebalance the combat in Witcher 2. The file size is currently 8 gigabytes, which is too many floppy disks to consider, but should be smaller by release. Which should be very soon. Details below.

Here are the notes:

- overall purpose of the mod is to increase Geralt’s responsiveness and mobility
- Geralt can parry attacks while he’s walking and running (new animations)
- Geralt reacts faster to keyboard/gamepad buttons
- active block was replaced by active Quen
- during heavy battle Geralt uses pirouettes and focus (new animations)
- difficulty levels were rebalanced
- Geralt does not “bump” away from opponent’s swords when his attacks are parried which allows quick continuation of the attack sequence
- opponents explode when particular attacks are used, e.g. Igni causes opponent explosion, just like in The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition intro
- elixirs have negative influence

I don't know what 'active Quen' is but I like the idea of opponents exploding from time to time.

I'm very tempted to wait for this to release and then skip straight to the second game but I'm such a slave to continuity that the thought is making me slightly nauseous. Last week I accidentally skipped an episode of Adventure Time and even though I didn't notice until I checked the titles against an online list, as soon as I found out I felt like I might as well just give up on watching it ever again.

Final confession - I watched the entirety of the original Twilight Zone in broadcast order, even though every story stands on its own two feet. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Via Evil Avatar.