the-witcher posts

The Witcher was an RPG in the classic PC style, and we loved that. The combat, however, felt a bit odd. Maybe it was because it was somewhere between action-focused murder and tactical thinking without being one or the other. This trailer for Witcher 2 goes into the intricacies of the combat system, and we are already liking what we see a lot more. Smooth combat, more varied moves, and a lot of information on how each skill tree affects your fighting. This is the definition of an excellent trailer.

Download the The Witcher 2 Combat Overview Trailer
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An important part of any game is exploration, and developers must keep exploration fresh by providing plenty of environments for the players. This developer diary for Witcher 2 examines the different art and architecture styles in CD Projekt's latest game, and it's both incredibly interesting and quite pretty to boot. It shows off the architecture for the dwarves and elves, and also explains the process around the building construction of different races. There are also some incredibly obtuse analogies which are oddly funny. This trailer is spoken entirely in Polish with English subtitles.

Download The Witcher 2 Developer Diary #4
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Some countries call December 26 Boxing Day; others simply call it, "A day to rest up after eating all that Christmas dinner." Whatever you call it the Steam PC game download site has a new batch of price cuts that will last until 1 pm Eastern time on Monday. Today's deals are all repeats of one day price cuts from Steam in the past week.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - $5.10
Wings of Prey - $5.99
Dead Rising 2 - $19.99
F.E.A.R. 1/2 - $9.99
Super Meat Boy - $3.75
Borderlands - Save 50 percent off original game and DLC
Assassin's Creed II - $14.99
The Witcher - $4.99
Mass Effect 1/2 - Save 50 percent off both games
Darksiders - $9.99
Battlefield Bad Company 2 - $6.80
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - $29.99

Atari is making a slight change in its executive ranks. The publisher announced today that its president Jim Wilson will now also take over the CEO spot at the company. Wilson succeeds Jeff Lapin who is leaving the company. Lapin came to Atari as its Chief Operating Officer in May 2009 and became CEO in December 2009.

Wilson, who was also deputy CEO at Atari before today, is heading up the company as it prepares for its 2011 slate of titles. That includes major retail releases like Test Drive Unlimited 2, The Witcher 2 and Neverwinter along with a large line-up of downloadable titles including remakes of Star Raiders and Yar's Revenge, a new Ghostbusters game and the just announced Dungeons and Dragons Daggerdale.

The Steam PC game download site continues its annual and massive holiday sale into its second day today. While there are a ton of price breaks for individual games, publisher bundles and other game collections, the following games are on sale for just one day only, until 1 pm Eastern time on Wednesday.

Defense Grid: The Awakening - $2
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - $5.10 or $3.60 if you own any Tomb Raider game
Burnout Paradise The Ultimate Box - $5
Gothic Bundle (all games in the Gothic series) - $34.99
Disciples III Renaissance - $7.50
Men of War Gold Edition - $8.75
The Witcher - $5
Resident Evil 5 - $10.50
BioShock 2 - $9.99
Aion - $10
Puzzle Quest - $1.50
The Polynomial - $2.50

The Witcher 2 is already one of the most anticipated PC games of 2011 but the upcoming fantasy RPG sequel from developer CD Projekt Red looks to also be one of the hardest games to play, at least according to how the game will set its highest end difficulty level.

There will be four difficulty levels in the game: easy, medium, hard and insane. How insane is the game's insane mode? Eurogamer reports that according to the lead gameplay designer Mateusz Kanik, "You can save the game, but when you die the saves are disabled." Yep, that means if you die at any point in the game you have to completely start over. And don't think you can simply avoid fighting your enemies in the game either. Kanik states, "We fixed that by giving all opponents special abilities which allow them to catch the Witcher,"

The Witcher 2 is prepping up for a release sometime in 2011 but the team at developer CD Projekt are already trying an interesting promotion for its upcoming fantasy RPG sequel. And it happens to be related to Halloween, oddly (or perhaps not so oddly) enough.

The game's official Facebook page has the details. Basically people are being ask to dressed in his or her favorite Witcher character, take a photo and email it to the dev team. The two best photos as picked by CD Projekt will have their faced put on in-game characters in The Witcher 2. The winners will also get a free copy of the game when its released.

The co-founders of the Poland-based game developer CD Projekt have decided to take an "extended leave" from the company. Gamesindustry.biz reports that Marcin Iwinski and Michal Kicinski, the director of business development and CEO, respectively, have resigned those positions at CD Projekt. However a spokesperson for the company insists that both remain with the company.

The spokesperson stated that Iwinski and Kicinski "simply decided to take a longer leave in order to restore energy and to avoid being burned out." There's no word on when the two will return to CD Projekt. The spokesperson said the departures will not affect the company's various projects which include developing the RPG sequel The Witcher 2 and the DRM-free PC game download site GoG.com.

The Witcher 2 is being gradually revealed as its release date approaches, and this latest trailer is one of the best we could've seen. As mentioned by the passed out drunk at the beginning, this trailer covers the non-linear narrative and tactics of Geralt's escape from prison, as narrated by people in a bar. The first story involves him breaking free one of his old friends, while the second involves rescuing a noblewoman. Each has different strategies and story, and it's definitely cool to see it framed as an actual drinking story. Also, this trailer is not safe for work, thanks to bare breasts.

Is it possible for a fantasy RPG to have too many endings? The team at CD Projekt is hoping the answer is "No". At a presentation at GamesCom last month, and reported by PC Games Hardware, the development team revealed that its upcoming RPG sequel The Witcher 2 will have a whopping 16 different endings. That compares to "just" three different endings in the original Witcher title.

The Witcher 2 will also have three different openings compared to the original's single opening and 150 minutes of cut scenes versus just 53 minutes for the first Witcher game. And while the first game had tons of loading screens, the development team says The Witcher 2 will feature just four loading screens. It's not quite an open world game but it's pretty close. The game is due out in spring 2011 via publisher Atari.