The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Message Board older than one year ago

After floating the idea of a console version of The Witcher 2, CD Projekt has dropped the pretenses and confirmed what we suspected: The Witchter 2 arrives on Xbox 360 later this year.

Yep, later this year!

The news broke out of a pre-E3 event the company's holding this afternoon in California.

CD Project is calling the Xbox 360 version an "adaptation not a port" but wants to bring the "same experience as delivered to the PC players" for Xbox 360 owners, including many of the improvements the studio is incorporating into the PC version.

The Xbox 360 version will be at E3, too. I'm gonna have to track that one down. I've expressed my interest in playing The Witcher II, but I don't have a PC capable of playing it. No problem!

I saw more than a few people complaining on this here Internets last night about a crazy 9GB patch for CD Projekt's The Witcher 2. When exactly does a "patch" stop being a "patch"?

Turns out the whole thing is an error. CD Projekt's told me the patch is much more reasonable--less than 20MB--but an issue with Steam specifically forced users to basically download the whole game all over again. As far as CD Projekt can tell, it's only a Steam problem right now.

"We’re working with Steam to get the issue sorted by Monday morning," a company spokesperson said.

Darn. Gamers with digital pitchforks fighting over 9GB would've made a more interesting story.

After a brief delay, the much-ballyhooed first major patch for CDP’s rather well-received RPG landed last night, which means now’s the chance to see whether their claims of an up to 30% frame rate improvement are the truest facts or a case of too much optimism. V1.1 also slices all the DRM out of the game, so you can install away on as many PCs as you can lay those grubby wee hands on. The Troll Trouble free DLC is included in the patch, which I’m pretty glad of as the game’s launcher had been resolutely refusing to download it beforehand. Speaking of the launcher resolutely refusing to download things, v1.1 has made a bit of a mess in that respect…(more…)

Inbound at some point this evening is a v1.1 patch for The Witcher 2. Anything exciting in there? Ah, not really, it’s all bugfixes and performance upgrades. That said, the patch notes promise an “approximately 5% to 30% better framerate and faster game loading for many users, depending on their individual systems and game versions. Owners of retail versions can expect the biggest improvements.” So, mostly of interest to twitching luddites who insist on owning DVDs and any of you who bought the absurd Collector’s Edition, then.

v1.1 will also bring with it an option to invert the mouse, for those of you who think Geralt is an aeroplane. The developers are promising a second patch next week, and you’ll find the full patch notes after the jump.(more…)

Let it forever be known that there is absolutely such a thing as getting a little too cute with your E3 teases. I adore it when developers drop little hints about things they plan for the show, while maintaining a certain level of surprise-protecting secrecy in the process. It builds hype. It's fun. I like fun.

However, maintaining that Goldilocksian balance of "just right" for such teases is difficult, as evidenced by this recent bit of info dropped by a developer from CD Projekt, the studio behind the delightfully lurid Witcher RPG franchise. In speaking to Eurogamer, Senior Producer Tomasz Gop told the site that something Witcher-related is on the horizon for E3. Okay, so far so good. So, what delectable little hints can you drop for us, Tomasz?

"I can't say anything obviously for gazillions of reasons but it is a Witcher game, and I can say that console gamers might be interested in it."

Wow, okay, so that's a bit of an info dump. Not a tease, really. More of a, "Hey, we're doing a console Witcher thing." But hey, at least that leaves some info to chance. Could this be a console port of the studio's just released The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings? Or perhaps it's an announcement of a third Witcher game, which could also be coming to cons--

"No, I'm not going to lie to you, we haven't started work on The Witcher 3," he said. "But it's possible we might do it in the future."

SIGH. Fine. It's probably a console port of Witcher 2. Way to say pretty much everything by trying to say nothing, Tomasz. You've spoiled all my fun. I LIKE FUN.

On the plus side, hey! Now there's probably going to be a console version of The Witcher 2. Now maybe Patrick will quit all his infernal bellyachin'.

So. Finished. I even had a little time to play through some of the alternate storyline stuff. What do I think? Well, I don’t think I’ll be putting any spoilers in this review, so you can read my thoughts on the subject with some degree of safety. If something else needs go above the jump here, it should probably be this: The Witcher 2 is going end up being talked about for a very long time to come.

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Still not quite ready for the WIT, but I have some more thoughts on The Witcher 2, below. Share your impressions too, if you are playing!(more…)

What is downloadable content, anyway? These days, the term is ridiculously broad. Clothes, interface themes, trailers, new quests, additional worlds--it's impossible to tell, covering basically everything.

So when CD Projekt announced during a fan question-and-answer session on GameStop's Facebook page that all downloadable content for The Witcher 2 would be free and the developer would only charge for "expansion packs," I had to dig a little deeper.

In this case, the free downlodable content will encompass shorter and smaller additions, including "half-hour side quests, etc," according to a company spokesperson.

The first piece of free content available is an additional quest called "Troll Trouble," said to include as much as "90 minutes" of additional gameplay. Bigger pieces of content would move into "expansion pack" territory, harkening to when "expansion pack" meant hours of content and often a retail product.

"The implication is that if we’re going to go ahead and charge for something, it’ll be significant content akin to the expansion packs of yesteryear," the spokesperson continued.

(I'll also take this opportunity to ask CD Project to pleasepleaseplease release this on a console.)

So this is interesting: I’m in the middle of chapter one of The Witcher 2, which I’ve already completed in a preview build, but this time things have ground to a halt. The main quest line doesn’t seem to be unfolding, and at least one side-quest is completely broken. I’m sure there are plenty of people blasting through the game now, so let me know if anyone gets to the meeting with Loredo, right now I am stuck ahead of that. It looks like chapter one is not completable in this build, for me at least.

Good job we waited for that day zero patch, eh readers?

Why not? Well, I’m afraid our code only unlocked at midday yesterday, and I’m not going to rush this for anyone. We’d been told to expect to get the game last week, but CD Projekt later insisted that RPS, Eurogamer, and a number of other online outlets wait for their day zero patch, which they completed on Sunday. You will see some print magazine reviews go up today, these are based on early code which CDP described to us as “outdated”. We’ll be reviewing what you’ll actually be playing this week. I have some early thoughts below, and will follow with further impressions and then a full WIT later in the week.(more…)

Oh, this is just odd. Ahead of The Witcher 2′s release date tomorrow CD Projekt have released a total of four launch trailers across four different sites. Why don’t you watch them all (and rate them from best to worst, or something?) while I consult the video game handbook as to whether this is allowed. They’re all after the jump.(more…)

We can bring you news that Good Old Games definitely haven’t changed their geo-locating policies in order to get around the Australian banning of The Witcher 2. Under no circumstances have the changes announced last night, that mean customers’ IPs will are no longer tracked when making purchases, anything to do with letting Oz gamers get access to the game.

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