The Witcher Interview

TotalVideoGames has published a three-page interview with CD Projekt’s Michal Kicinski and Michal Madej, in which the studio director and senior designer answer quite a few questions about their upcoming Aurora-powered RPG, The Witcher. An excerpt to follow:

Q: How detailed will the RPG aspects of the game be? What’s the progression and creation of the game’s hero going to look like in terms of skills, weapons and set-up?

A: In order to fully render the unique character of our hero, we had to develop our own RPG system, complete with character descriptions, development and fighting mechanisms. The hero is graded by three main attributes (Strength, Agility and Stamina) and two additional skills of Fighting and Magic. The main strength of the system, however, lies in the complex system of special abilities including well over twenty Witcher’s gestures and secret attacks (some employing magic). Character development is similar to most cRPGs – you gather experience points, get promoted to next levels and on each of them can ‘spend’ a number of development points on adding to your attributes or buying abilities.

As far as the hero’s weaponry is concerned – Witchers are swords-masters and as such use two exquisite blades, one forged out of meteorite, one out of silver. Although the weapons that the player has at his disposal at the beginning of the game have seen better times, they are still great blades that only need to be brought back to former glory.