The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Preview

N4G community manager and ZTGameDomain Reviews Editor Cathlin Sentz sat down with PR man Tom Ohle for a showing of the Witcher 2: Assassins of King.

I appreciate their guardedness with the story, I don’t want any spoilers, and I don’t like any of you enough to beg for them! Importing your save from the first game does affect the story in Assassins of Kings, but if you didn’t play you won’t be lost, just perhaps a little less likely to pick up lore nuance. Major decisions will carry over, and the sequel’s story picks up where the first left off, with Geralt going to investigate assassinations. Very early on in the story there is a significant twist, and where the first game was in one kingdom the events of Witcher 2 are a bit more broad: there are whole nations to visit – or not – based on the choices made. Progressing in chapters you travel to different locations that, once the chapter is complete, you can’t return. This is an interesting story-telling technique that will have the player feeling like they are moving through a tale woven with smaller stories within each chapter. Lending emphasis and structure is Dandelion, Geralt’s BFF who, having a way with words, has written the journal in the game.

Absent from Witcher 2 are volumes of tiny side quests, opting instead for a smattering of those among meatier questing options. “In the first game there were a lot of quests where you ended up having to run back and forth between areas and you spent a lot of time like that, and then you say ‘Oh, yeah it was 80 hours of gameplay’. Well, a lot of that was spent kind of running around the same areas”, Ohle comments. “There’s a lot more focus on trying to get to the point and spend more time exploring the world or actually being in gameplay.” Behaving in a way that is more real, more human, is evidenced in little touches like the ability to interrupt dialogue if you prefer – rather than nodding along and giving an abrupt, albeit polite, “Goodbye” at obligatory conversation end.