The Witcher 2 - Preview @ IGN, Ripten, Youtube Footage from VE3D
 

As the release of the Witcher 2 is approaching more previews see the light of day.
The first one is from IGN. The previewer states that
The next quote deals with the world itself:
And here's a quote about the combat:
The previewer also mentions relationships as well as the save system. There's some nice sreenshots as well. A bit of a warning, though: Some screenshots are not entirely safe for work (NSFW).
More screenshots from Ripten, some also nsfw (thanks Zohaib). Here's a quote:
Lastly, there's a video on Youtube showing 12 minutes of gameplay from The Witcher 2 - amazing, beautiful and as ever, a must see.
Thanks to WorstUsernameEver at the Obsidian forums for finding this.
More information.

GameTrailers has a new environments video (#3), too: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/ga…witcher/713657

The hype is reaching critical levels!

These guys are totally anal in a good way.

Oh and when I watched the video Gametrailers had an ad below it that said Judgement Day is coming May 21st. Hope I can finish TW2 in 4 days. :p

Far too many screenshots and videos flooding the web at this point. I'm forcing myself to ignore that stuff, as the previews alone contain enough spoilers.

All I got to say is, "WANT WANT WANT!!!"

@JDR oh come on spoil yourself for a change. You deserve it :P

Seriously though you might want to check out at least to see it in action. It's well worth the couple of spoilers you might encounter just to see how good it is.

Excerpt from the first review of the game:

http://www.cdaction.pl/news-19164-2/…a-swiecie.html

"Unhurried gameplay takes about 24 hours" quite small/short game.

Just the size of the main quest game imo . Skyrim main quest size is told to be 20 hours.


Developpers have to meet the expectations of a vast number of players who want to fly through the game as they play games to tell their buddies they play games.

It says "unhurried" gameplay, which should mean someone doing a bit of exploring, taking some side quests etc.

I think Skyrim will be quite a bit bigger (game world size + probably a lot more to do) + it's fully explorable and you can go back to any place you want. In Witcher 2 this is restricted since you can't for example take short cuts or explore where you want, climb or even back track to earlier stages of the game.

It's probably a good game though, just a bit on the short side (which i've always suspected, it would've taken them much longer to make a big game world with that attention to detail in the environments). How long did TW2 take to make, like 2 - 2.5 years, and they made a completely new engine too in that time? A typical Bethesda game is like twice that time + i'm guessing a lot more people involved.

Now it all depends on "a bit" size. 24 hours, that leaves four hours spare out of 20. Four spare hours that could be big enough to contain a large number of "a bit".

Skyrim main quest is told to be 20 hours long by the game developpers.

Due to the size of the world, players involved in unhurried gameplay should be able to complete the game in 30 hours.

Oblivion's main quest is said to be 15h i believe, and i easily spent 80h on that game the first playthrough. Skyrim is supposed to be as big as Oblivion. Not sure why we have to compare it to Skyrim though :p it's probably better to compare it with Dragon Age since TW2 is more similar to that game than a Bethesda RPG.

24h to complete one of the many paths the story can go i suppose , better than i expected .

20+ hours just for the main quest, which I am sure is what they mean, is about perfect if you ask me.

That´s debatable.
It could also mean just going through the main quest at leisurely pace ;).
They´ve played the whole game in CDProjekt´s office which alone makes the "unhurried" comment rather questionable.
Anyway, game journalists absolutely need to fucking learn that if they have to come up with guesstimates of time it takes to complete a game they also need to add relevant context.
On what difficulty they´ve played? What portion of side quests they´ve finished?
What were their guesstimates for other titles?
"Unhurried" just doesn´t cut it.

At any rate, the review is pretty weak all around. They keep comparing the game with Bioware titles ("CD Projekt had created an rpg the story and quality of which can only be matched by Mass Effect 2"), generally don´t go in-depth enough, omit alchemy altogether, etc.

The recent Gamebanshee´s preview is a lot more informative.

In the comments section of that Preview, one of the staff members clarifies that statement, saying that 24 hours is for the main quest only, if you do the side quests you could easily double that.

kind of stupid of the reviewer to say "Unhurried gameplay" since that would mean more than the main quest, maybe a translation error.

My assumption was meant to remember that in their game design must dos list, developpers have one to provide an opportunity to complete the game under 20 ~30 hours.

A short walkthrough is a requirement for many games as a mass of players do not want to spend more than 30 hours on the same game.

The short path in a game usually gives 20 to 30 hours. Either a studio loses customers as people dont buy a game they can not complete under the 30 hours bar.

Skyrim will last potentially longer than 30 hours but will offer the possibility to beat it under the 30 hours bar. As TW2 must and already does.

Morrowind's main quest is about 8 minutes long.

I'm half-tempted to actually go to a nearby Empik to obtain the actual review. Because you know, it was just an excerpt, translated from Polish and second-hand posted… print mag is the original source of the review, and I HIGHLY doubt it's anything LESS than a 10-page issue-maker with tons of infos.

It's the Witcher. We live and breathe that stuff here in Poland.

I saw a youtube clip recently of someone beating Gothic 2 in 6 minutes, so it's a whole 2 minutes more of gameplay in Morrowind :D

I know that.
I was basing my comment on translation posted here.