The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Preview

A few bits and pieces of new information about The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings can be gleaned from a new two-page preview over at Games Radar. Along with some storyline details, the author covers a couple of the gameplay changes and additions we’ll see in comparison to the first game:

While you might not be returning to familiar locales, you will be meeting up with some old friends. Wily witch Triss Merrigold will be about, as will the bumbling bard Dandelion and Zoltan the dwarf. The rest of Temeria’s populace will be much more reactive to how you carry out your Witcher duties, but it’s not going to be a binary thing; it’s more about the general attitude you display in conversations. Obviously, the bigger decisions will have more of an effect on things and CD Projekt will be certain to make a big deal out of these game-changing events.

That you could make decisions at an early point in the game that changed the way things happened much later, but not always in an obvious way, was one of the major selling points of the original. This time around, there’ll be more decisions and the consequences will run much deeper. Some places will be dramatically different depending on the choices you make earlier on.

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One thing that is definitely remaining is the distinctive stances fast, group and heavy. In The Witcher 2, they won’t be as separate as before. CD Projekt are aiming to allow for players to mix them together to produce a better flow to the combat.

Potion creation will be made less fiddly this time more a matter of just making sure you have the right ingredients without having to go through the whole meditation and bubbling cauldron thing. In fact, the whole issue of character inventory and progression has been addressed. While not a major issue last time, your inventory could get cluttered up easily, so there are moves afoot to make sure this doesn’t happen so much.