The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Interview

Foreign website Cyberludus has kicked up a lengthy interview with The Witcher 2 senior producer Tomek Gop, and luckily the second page of the Q&A contains a full English translation. An excerpt, as usual:

CL: If you should do a console version of The Witcher 2, would you change the gameplay someway? It is known that PC players are tendentially more skilled and (hardcore) than console players, so they wouldn’t want you to sacrifice some gameplay profundity in consoles favor: how are you going to manage this?

TG: Once again if we’ll do console version of the sequel, we’re not dumbing anything down. Don’t count on it. You could say that statistic PC gamer is more hardcore, but on the other hand he uses mouse and keyboard maybe those are just more hardcore tools, allowing better aim and more customization? Anyways, to cut the long story short we intend to give everyone the same game. Same story, same characters, same gameplay and same interface. Controls of course will differ but that’s not our choice.

CL: Assassins of Kings will have a completely new combat system. Would you tell us more about it? How much it will be influenced by players’ choices and the growth of Geralt’s skills?

TG: Totally. First, we’ve tried to get rid of most (passive) skills and abilities that you learn throughout the game, so instead of stats-oriented (Strength +5) kind of skills, you will most likely learn ones that really give you tactical possibilities. I mean, raising stats gives the player boost, but it won’t necessarily modify the experience we’d rather think of skills that unlock new moves, strikes, combinations, etc. Second thing the ecosystem that you could discover throughout monster-populated territories. It’s all about Geralt’s monster knowledge on monsters the more you learn about monsters in The Witcher 2, the deeper you get into extermination; more effective, more loot, more fun!

I’m not sure what he means by “Controls of course will differ but that’s not our choice” – is a new control scheme a publisher demand?