The Witcher 2 - Interview @ IGN

CD Projekt's Tomasz Gop chats with IGN about The Witcher 2, which has apparently just finished beta:

IGN: Can you tell us about the ability to slow down time, choose your options and use them in battle?

Tomasz Gop: That's one of the combat features, yes. It's different from The Witcher 1 because in that we actually had an active pause - you could pause totally and take an eternity to choose your tactical options and so on. In The Witcher 2, what we've done is when you open up the radial-menu for choosing your tactics, swords, magic and doing anything you might want to do, time now slows. So it gives you some time for a choice, but it's just not totally comfortable for everyone. You won't have an hour to make a choice. You might even want to make it quicker so you won't be bored by it!

IGN: (Laughs). So when should we expect it to be released?

Tomasz Gop: The game comes out worldwide on May 17, 2011 and we're just closing the beta stage of the game.

More information.

Too-shay CD Project ! The sad state that RPGs are in,this game can not come fast enough.

True, but don't rush something out when it is half finished. But i guess they learned that with the previous version .

Originally Posted by Minotic
True, but don't rush something out when it is half finished. But i guess they learned that with the previous version .

I dont think the game is half finished its been in production for 3-4 years already. There not blizzard who needs 5+ years to make a game. May can not come fast enough. I'm more interested in this game than dragonage 2.

Pretty stoked for this one. Nevertheless I will wait out a few reviews and hear the opinion here. I promised myself not to do preorders any more.

Minotic: How was "The Witcher" half finished. The game was pretty much complete from the beginning (except some unnecessary dialog in the English version) and the patch they came out with was entirely extras that weren't necessary for the enjoyment of the game.

PS. If you were talking about something totally different then what I interpreted what you said as I'm sorry.

If you have the watch the extras from the enhanced there is this error checking guy saying something like "when game was released engine gave us 2.000 errors" .
The patch wasn't only extras it cut down horrible load times.

I meant the load times and the repeated use of some models.
They fixed it in the enhanced edition.

Oh and i love the first witcher so i await the next one very eagerly.
Pre ordered at GoG.com when that was possible.

Guenthar. no offence taken

I am currently replaying the witcher, in prep for the 2nd one. Anyone else find the swamps a bit tedious? I think it has a bit to do with the trees getting in the way of control.

Originally Posted by rune_74
I am currently replaying the witcher, in prep for the 2nd one. Anyone else find the swamps a bit tedious? I think it has a bit to do with the trees getting in the way of control.

Yes. Pretty, but tedious! Seems to be more running back and forth in the same areas than I remember from earlier playthroughs as well!

Like I said extras and I never understood why people complained about the load times. I never had a problem with the load times and there are games that have much worse load times then "The Witcher" had before the patch.

Originally Posted by rune_74
I am currently replaying the witcher, in prep for the 2nd one. Anyone else find the swamps a bit tedious? I think it has a bit to do with the trees getting in the way of control.

The only problem I had with the swamps was how that area killed my framerate for some reason.

Originally Posted by JDR13
The only problem I had with the swamps was how that area killed my framerate for some reason.

I have played to this point in the game 3 times now and each time I have trouble continuing after this. The performance is fine, granted I am way above specs for it.

The swamp part was very tedious for me the first playthrough. After you know what's going to happen and where you need to go you can consolidate the running around a lot more.

I'm almost finished re-playing the game in preps for the sequel. The only issues I'm having with frame rates is that they are too good. Sometimes Geralt runs faster than normal and the mouse can be twitchy.

It really livens things up if you run some mods on your repeat play throughs!

I would strongly recommend The Witcher Texturen mod, which sharpens up the scenery textures and while it's a subtle improvement, you would be surprised how much better it makes the game look.

I'm also running another mod which does the same thing for characters.

There's also a "Darker Geralt" mod, which doesn't change him from being an albino, it just makes his gear look more menacing.

There's also a "Perfect Rain" mod which makes the rain look much more realistic, and a "perfect blood" mod which helps with combat feedback.

I'm also running the "Witcher Inferno" edition, which re-vamps the colors of the interface. I wouldn't say it looks better, but is a nice change-up.

And finally the Scabbard mod, which adds all of the scabbards originally designed for the game back into it, which was a personal peeve of mine that the game didn't include them to begin with. *Note, if you have a problem with clipping issues (when Geralt draws his sword and/or replaces it) don't get this one.

Where did you get most of the mods?

Originally Posted by guenthar
Like I said extras and I never understood why people complained about the load times. I never had a problem with the load times and there are games that have much worse load times then "The Witcher" had before the patch.

It wasn't just the load times the game crashed constantly till it got patched. Still enjoyable but I hated when a loading screen popped up and then boom crash to desktop.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
It wasn't just the load times the game crashed constantly till it got patched. Still enjoyable but I hated when a loading screen popped up and then boom crash to desktop.

That sounds like it was more of an issue with your system than anything. I never heard of CTDs being a widespread problem with any release of The Witcher.

Originally Posted by JDR13
That sounds like it was more of an issue with your system than anything. I never heard of CTDs being a widespread problem with any release of The Witcher.

I heard a lot of the same thing actually - crash during load times (or cut scene loads). That was about the only weak point of the game technically though, the rest was quite solid. NWN2 suffered from almost exactly the same symptoms so it was probably indicative of a weakness in Aurora more than anything else.

Originally Posted by kalniel
I heard a lot of the same thing actually - crash during load times (or cut scene loads). That was about the only weak point of the game technically though, the rest was quite solid.

Well I would say the English translation was also sort of weak as well. Of course that was improved dramatically in the EE version, along with the load times.

Originally Posted by rune_74
Where did you get most of the mods?

http://www.moddb.com/games/the-witcher/mods

Enjoy!