The Witcher Q&A

Gamingnext has tossed up a new Q&A with CD Projekt’s Michal Madej, quizzing the producer about their ambitious Aurora-powered RPG, The Witcher.

Q: We’ve seen footage of The Witcher using blade weapons and what looks like spells. How will spell and ability improvements be handled in-game?

A: We’ve used a fairly unusual way to define the character, tailored to the exceptional characteristics of the hero, a witcher. Instead of a series of rather meaningless numbers, each feature or skill in our game is described by a ‘˜tree’, which lists all the Skills (such as Fast Blow, Advanced Dodge, etc). There are about 250 skills in total. Attributes include passive skills which are constantly present, like Strength, Ability, Stamina and Intelligence. The second type is active skills, which we have to complete certain tasks to obtain. They are grouped into 11 trees, which are divided into Battle Styles (six in total) and Witcher Signs (five magic powers). In practice, each action in the game (e.g. battle with the silver sword or casting the Quen sign) will have a whole tree of skills blows, bonuses and modifiers, which the player himself will be able to use to shape the hero’s special skills.