the-witcher posts

If Steam can do a big summer sale, why can't GamersGate? The PC game download site has just launched a month long summer sale of various titles, with each week focusing on a game genre. For the first week of the sale, the site is cutting prices on a number of role-playing games.

Among the deals you can get this week are the first two Deus Ex titles which can be purchased and downloaded for just $3.39 each. All of the Gothic games are on sale this week for between 50 and 75 percent off their normal prices. Other games on sale this week include The Witcher for $6.78, Mount and Blade for $10.78, its expansion Mount and Blade Warband for $20.06, and Freedom Force Versus the Third Reich for a mere $1.34.

CD Projekt took several years to make the first version of The Witcher but it was quickly acclaimed as a solid fantasy RPG when it was finally released in 2007. It got even more fans when a revamped version was released a year later. Now the developer is working hard on the sequel, The Witcher 2, that's due out in 2011.

Big Download got the game's senior producer Tomasz Gop to give us the lowdown on the sequel including how save games from The Witcher will work in The Witcher 2, whether US audiences will get the full "adult" treatment out of the box and more.

If you own the first game in developer CD Projekt's The Witcher series and made it to one of the fantasy RPG's many endings, you might want to keep your save files from the time. In a new video dev diary for the upcoming sequel The Witcher 2 on IGN it's revealed that there will be a way to import those save files from the original game into the sequel.

According to the video, the imported save files will affect how some of The Witcher 2's characters deal with your lead character depending on how you completed the original game. Hopefully we will learn more about how this will work at E3 later this month. In the meantime you can check out the full video after the jump.

Earlier this week one of the worst kept secrets in PC gaming was finally admitted as developer CD Projekt announced their fantasy RPG sequel The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. This week the developer released a couple of new videos promoting the game. One of the videos is an example of an in-game engine cut scene from the trailer that shows off some of the game's storyline and a couple of its monsters.

The other video, which you can see after the jump, is the first developer's diary for The Witcher 2 as the dev team (speaking in their native Polish but with English subtitles) go over their goals in the making of the game.

Download HD The Witcher 2 Real-time Cutscene (152 MB)
Download HD The Witcher 2 Developer Diary (197 MB)
Check out all The Witcher 2 downloads

If you blinked, you missed it. Actually even if you didn't blink you likely missed the one frame message in the new trailer announcing the fantasy RPG The Witcher 2. You can see the message above if you don't care to comb through lots and lots of video to see it for yourself.

What does it say? Basically it's all about hype for the upcoming CD Projekt-developed game. It's also a thank you letter to the original game's hardcore fans. The Witcher sold over 1.5 million copies on the PC and the dev team wanted to push themselves to make the sequel look even better. They were also honest about the reception the original game got and plan to put lots of improvements for the second title. Check out the trailer to see the full message if you can.

Download HD The Witcher 2 Trailer (162 MB)
Download The Witcher Demo (1.97 GB)

It's a bit anti-climatic at this point but today developer CD Projekt finally and officially announced they were indeed developing The Witcher 2. The sequel to their hit fantasy RPG is currently scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2011. The developer has already admitted it was working on the game after a video showing the game's development leaked on the net several months ago.

The press release reveals that The Witcher 2 has already signed a number of publishing agreements including Atari for the North American market. The press release hypes up the sequel's new graphics engine which CD Projekt developed from scratch this time (the original Witcher game used BioWare's Aurora engine as its basis), The first English preview of the game can be read at GameSpot (be aware there are some story spoilers in the preview).

While as of the posting of this article the official Witcher web site still has that number "2" and nothing else, the folks at GameTrailers managed to jump ahead of everyone else and get access to the first true teaser trailer for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

The trailer for developer CD Project's next game in the mature fantasy RPG series certainly looks a lot better than its predecessor. In addition to lots of bloody battles there's more than a hint of some sexual content in this trailer as well. There's no word yet on a release date for the game. You can check out the full version after the jump:

Update: A post on the game's message board by CD Projekt's PR head stated they are looking for a first quarter 2011 release timeline for The Witcher 2.

When an entire web site for a fantasy RPG title goes dark except for its forum and its front page showing just a stylized "2" on it, there's just two things that might be happening. One is that all of us are receiving a two dollar bill or that the game is getting a sequel.

In this case we think its the latter for the official web site to The Witcher 2, the sequel to developer CD Projekt's hit game that they have already admitted is in the works. However specific details about the sequel have been few and far between which would mean that an announcement on those details, including perhaps a publisher and release date, is getting very close.

Direct2Drive's latest sales promotion gives folks a chance to grab a PC game from their download service every day for a much smaller price. On the second day of their 24 Days of Christmas sales event they have put CD Projekt's The Witcher on the price chopping block.

From now until 1 pm Eastern time on Thursday you can download the "M" rated fantasy RPG for just $19.99. That's a 50 percent discount from its usual Direct2Drive price. Since the game was first released in the US in 2009, CD Projekt has been updating it with new content and bug fixes. The latest such update put back in the nudity that was previously removed from the US version but was present in international versions of the game.

"Our prices are so low, they are scary!" Hey it was too good to resist. Actually that's just what the Direct2Drive web site is doing right now as it has cut the prices on a number of their horror-themed (and other M-rated) PC games for download. Some of the games have been cut down to as low as $4.95. The sale prices end on Sunday:

The games priced at $4.95 include Stubbs The Zombie, The Path, Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, Cold Fear and Downfall. In addition, BioShock, Damnnation and Far Cry 2 are priced at $9.95 and The Witcher and Dead Space get a price cut down to $19.95