The Witcher Preview

CVG has kicked up a new preview of The Witcher, revealing a few more details about CD Projekt’s ambitious RPG.

Speaking of experience, RPG traditions levelling up and character development are very much a part of The Witcher. Levelling up rewards you with points that can been spent on various skills like animal skinning and herb gathering and boost the likes of melee combat and magical powers. While combat in the game is essentially real-time, it sits somewhere between Dark Messiah and, say Dungeon Siege. You left-click on an enemy to attack and then, depending on your melee combat abilities, can chain together up to five attacks in a sequence when you’re prompted to left-click again by the on-screen cursor. Or you can right-click to unleash a spell.

To spice up the combat, Geralt has six different fighting styles which are appropriate to certain situations. One style, for example, might be better when faced with multiple opponents, one against fast-attacking opponents while another best against slower, more heavily-armoured enemies. Sadly, in our eyes at least, it appears you only ever get to wield one of two types of sword in the game at any one time during fights so there’s not much variety there – and we’ve been told there’s very little magic loot in the game too – but alchemy will throw in some interesting options.