Tomasz Gop tells me that The Witcher saves will impact The Witcher 2's story, characters, and more.
Jetpacks are the new Nolan North, but a more compelling mechanic outside of insta-flight is coming to more games, perhaps, as a result of how satisfying sci-fi RPG Mass Effect 2 managed to make it: save file importation. The Witcher 2 is a fine example of an RPG poised to accept data from its predecessor, and as I discovered, this data will have an impact on the follow-up's narrative, its characters, and even your loot bag.
"First, it's not obligatory," Tomasz Gop, senior producer at CD Projekt RED told me via e-mail, "the story will nicely shape itself at the beginning even if you haven't played the The Witcher. But if you have, just go ahead and grab the save you finished with."
"The most important thing is the storyline--the most important choices you've made will be reflected in The Witcher 2. People will behave differently or places will remind you of what you've done," Gop continued.
"There's also bits and pieces of other stuff: Witcher's swords, for example. They seemed to have been quite important for many players, so why not transfer those into The Witcher 2?"
In our conversation Gop listed Mass Effect and Batman: Arkham Asylum as influences on The Witcher 2's creation. But the impact of Mass Effect runs deeper than save file transfers. The Witcher 2 will feature a fresher, more filmic dialogue system reminiscent of Mass Effect's uncluttered, cinematic, and peppier system.
"Interactive, dynamic and visually attractive," Gop told me when I asked him to explain the dialogue system. "When you’re trying to introduce characters or unveil a plot in your game and you reach for means typical for a game, you’re fine. You will make it."
"But if you reach outside and use tricks found in movies, books or, I don’t know...advertisements, you’re definitely going to have player immersed longer and stronger."
"There were many things we couldn’t do in dialogues in the older Aurora engine, so now, after having rewritten our engine, we’re glad to be able to use means limited only by our imagination. Again, we want you to spend less time reading your dialogue lines and more time enjoying the story."
The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings is due out in 2011. The full interview between Gop and I will be published later this afternoon.
Jetpacks are the new Nolan North, but a more compelling mechanic outside of insta-flight is coming to more games, perhaps, as a result of how satisfying sci-fi RPG Mass Effect 2 managed to make it: save file importation. The Witcher 2 is a fine example of an RPG poised to accept data from its predecessor, and as I discovered, this data will have an impact on the follow-up's narrative, its characters, and even your loot bag.
"First, it's not obligatory," Tomasz Gop, senior producer at CD Projekt RED told me via e-mail, "the story will nicely shape itself at the beginning even if you haven't played the The Witcher. But if you have, just go ahead and grab the save you finished with."
"The most important thing is the storyline--the most important choices you've made will be reflected in The Witcher 2. People will behave differently or places will remind you of what you've done," Gop continued.
"There's also bits and pieces of other stuff: Witcher's swords, for example. They seemed to have been quite important for many players, so why not transfer those into The Witcher 2?"
In our conversation Gop listed Mass Effect and Batman: Arkham Asylum as influences on The Witcher 2's creation. But the impact of Mass Effect runs deeper than save file transfers. The Witcher 2 will feature a fresher, more filmic dialogue system reminiscent of Mass Effect's uncluttered, cinematic, and peppier system.
"Interactive, dynamic and visually attractive," Gop told me when I asked him to explain the dialogue system. "When you’re trying to introduce characters or unveil a plot in your game and you reach for means typical for a game, you’re fine. You will make it."
"But if you reach outside and use tricks found in movies, books or, I don’t know...advertisements, you’re definitely going to have player immersed longer and stronger."
"There were many things we couldn’t do in dialogues in the older Aurora engine, so now, after having rewritten our engine, we’re glad to be able to use means limited only by our imagination. Again, we want you to spend less time reading your dialogue lines and more time enjoying the story."
The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings is due out in 2011. The full interview between Gop and I will be published later this afternoon.
Could not have picked better insperations... The Witcher got mostly solid reviews, maybe they can hit this one out of the park. Here's to hopping they do make a console version this go round.
I deleted my first save like an idiot. I'll keep my second playthrough save if I ever finish my second playthrough. I've got a year, so I should be good.
So two articles for 1 interview... that sure is some quality journalism....
If Brad N. and Matt K. keep this quality up, I'll leave this site... You're both acting like a bunch of interns with your sims 3 coming to consoles soapbox as a news post and half piece of interview.
Might as well go to MTV.com for my videogame news.
@ElectricSlime: As a PC user, I'm sure you know that crashing is something that you kind of have to get used to... The openness and complexity of the platform means there are more things that can go wrong and fuck things up. Patches (or super-patches like The Witcher Enhanced Edition) are the main remedy for games, but if you're a power user you could also go somewhere like TweakGuides and try to iron out all the little bugs, incompatibilities, etc. yourself.
First one always sounded kind silly (hey check it out we're DARK. As in, blood n' shit. Also, boob cards) but this one actually seems kinda cool. I really like the character designs.
@TheSmilingDude: Giant Bomb is meant for a more fun an laid back location for news. Every once in a while they get something new but it's for the fun of the videos and podcasts as well as the wiki based database. I go to Kotaku for my news, giantbomb to me is where I go when I want a less confined form of news. Besides E3 is a shotgun shell of information. It is amazingly hard to keep track of every bit of news and clean it up for the masses when you are getting about 20 stories a minute, and have like a crew of like 3 people uploading and cleaning them up.
" @TheSmilingDude: Giant Bomb is meant for a more fun an laid back location for news. Every once in a while they get something new but it's for the fun of the videos and podcasts as well as the wiki based database. I go to Kotaku for my news, giantbomb to me is where I go when I want a less confined form of news. Besides E3 is a shotgun shell of information. It is amazingly hard to keep track of every bit of news and clean it up for the masses when you are getting about 20 stories a minute, and have like a crew of like 3 people uploading and cleaning them up. "
Oh yeah, E3 is a free-ticket to fuck ups like all the other sites reporting on it.... wait.... No this was just a quick grab for a headline, and a poor one at that considering the writer couldn't get a full article and wrote a half one instead. Just because you settle for bad quality, like your nickname, doesn't mean I do.
I like the personality and the quirks of the site. But an article telling me the rest is coming later is nothing but pure bait, and I refuse to be treated like some kind of fucking fish. That you're ok with that tells more about you than me. E3 is -THE- time you show what kind of journalist you are. And Brad N. simply doesn't cut it. Especially when compared with the rest of the staff, including Vinny, who mostly does VIDEO.
In short: you're nothing but a fanboy who wants to feed the pride of the staff instead of giving them a genuine opinion. Make a guess at which one of us has the bigger chance of helping them out.
I gotta finish the first one. But I'm half way through Dragon Age right now and I'm afraid I'll get the stories confused somehow. I'll probably tackle it after Origins and before Awakenings.
While playing Arkham Asylum I was thinking about The Witcher and how much better the combat could have been. I'm glad CDProjekt was thinking the same.
I am going to play the first one in the next couple months. I read one of the books already, and I love the world! I only missed the first game when released because I was in grad school at the time. ;)
Great news, but I think I actually lost my save files! Haven't been able to play it on my newest PC due to some unknown hardware conflict, but getting a few new components next week and this would be a perfect motivation to play through it again.
@ElectricSlime said:
" First one crashed on me twice in the first hour so I gave up on it. So this is a no go for me. "
That's a shame. It's one of the best RPGs to come out over the last few years. It seems to be a fickle beast - it ran perfect on my old machine, but had some sort of graphical glitch (causing huge slowdown) on my newest PC, like I said above.
I was hoping Giant Bomb would post some impressions from the E3 demo, but from what I've read on Polish websites they didn't show anything new. Same stuff that was shown during the March conference in Warsaw. That's kinda sad and weird at the same time. One might think they've cooked up something else just for the mighty E3. I guess once they found out that the whole presentation will take place in a small booth on the show floor, they've made the decision with going with the same stuff and focus on simply continuing making the game instead and not bother with another demo. Oh, well. There still GDC 2010 in August. It'll take place in Germany, so logistically it will be easier(and cheaper) to make a proper presentation.
Wow, this comment wasn't supposed to be this long. That's what happens when you care about a game, apparently :)
" I was hoping Giant Bomb would post some impressions from the E3 demo, but from what I've read on Polish websites they didn't show anything new. Same stuff that was shown during the March conference in Warsaw. That's kinda sad and weird at the same time. One might think they've cooked up something else just for the mighty E3. I guess once they found out that the whole presentation will take place in a small booth on the show floor, they've made the decision with going with the same stuff and focus on simply continuing making the game instead and not bother with another demo.Oh, well. There still GDC 2010 in August. It'll take place in Germany, so logistically it will be easier(and cheaper) to make a proper presentation. Wow, this comment wasn't supposed to be this long. That's what happens when you care about a game, apparently :) "
Even if most people avoid it gamespot has some gameplay.
I wish they'd put this out on consoles. It'd be one of my most anticipated games this year. There's no way my PC could play this with the level of graphics shown in those screenshots.
59 Comments