The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Interview

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings senior producer Tomasz Gop has been busy answering questions about the RPG sequel lately, with the latest batch appearing over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

RPS: But stuff like the combat system. is that the same?

Gop: Hmm. I’m not going to say we have precisely the same combat system, but we’re also not ready to give a dedicated presentation, maybe in a few months. We need to explain to people exactly how the presentation works, and right now I have to get people to take my word for it that the combat is not hack ‘˜n’ slash action. It’s not action gamer way of doing it, but we want to give people the feel of how the Witcher really moves. We wanted to get rid of the static elements the sequences of strikes in The Witcher 1 were good, but you would have to carry that out to the very end to get the most out of it, but now we can combine any kinds of strike and they still build up to the same thing. There are no fixed stances and so on. We have done a lot of mo cap to show all this, because we want to show Geralt moving really incredibly fast. That is the goal for changing the combat it looks faster, and it more dynamic. It’s smoother, and I think hands-on demonstrations will show that.

…

RPS: Oh, what I meant to ask are you going to fix alchemy?

Gop: Yes, yes, we have made many changes based on feedback from the first game. For example, you can meditate anywhere in The Witcher 2. These small adjustments are important to the whole, tweaks for the original game. Other things have been entirely redone. So the manual processing of potions is entirely different. Brewing potions isn’t obligatory, of course, but you can create more useful potions if you spend the time in what I guess is a mini-game. Also potions must be drunk before combat, not during combat. They are now preparational.