The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Preview

GameSpot has had a hands-on session with the Witcher 2 along with several other sites/magazines, and has published its preview. The author feels combat is edging towards “a little simple”, but was impressed by the intricacy of the plot of a single quest.

After blasting through a few more corpse-ridden rooms, we discovered the body we’d been sent to find. Peeling back the pale white sheet covering the body revealed a young man who had obviously died a violent death. Now, we were presented with a variety of options regarding what parts of the corpse we wished to examine. The arms showed deep gashes from a source we were unable to identify. When we checked his back, we uncovered some light scratch marks that were less violent in nature and more.passionate. We also recovered a battered book of poetry that, upon further examination, could only belong to our good friend Dandelion, the bard. After we finished our investigation of the body, we concluded that it certainly had several of the telltale signs of a succubus. However, as Geralt revealed, a succubus typically doesn’t slay its victims, and the violence on the body was certainly out of place. At any rate, Dandelion needed his book back, so we headed back to Vergen.

Things are just never that easy, though. No sooner had we set foot outside of the tomb than a hulking monstrosity came into view. It was the Arachas, which looked not unlike a giant crab covered in blue fungus. Our tried-and-true tactic of “hit it with a sword” quickly failed us against the beast’s hard carapace. Fireballs made it angry, but not much else. In a last-ditch effort, we reached for our stun grenades in preparation for making a speedy retreat. However, the blast ended up wrecking the creature’s day much more effectively than we could have hoped. With trepidation, we approached, took one final swing, and ended it right there. A little blip in our monster journal informed us that Geralt had noted that this item was very effective against these creatures.