Friday, the makers of critically acclaimed fantasy RPG The Witcher sent fans on a hunt, hunting for clues about one of the three games currently in development at creator CD Projekt. By all accounts, however, this was a wild goose chase which led right back to the official Witcher website... where a wall, composed entirely of Flash animation, awaited.
Today, with a few clicks of your mouse, that wall will crumble -- and behind it, you can see confirmation of what many have known since Saturday evening: The Witcher is being enhanced and optimized yet again for home consoles in Fall 2009.
So, what's getting improved, and what does it look like on console? Find out after the jump.
According to Adam Kicinski, CEO of CD Projekt RED, there's very little that isn't being changed in some way or another. "The only thing we’re taking directly from The Witcher is the story," he said. "Everything else is being created from scratch or significantly reworked to get us to our end goal of delivering the ultimate console RPG."
While details on that "everything else" are rather sketchy so far, a press release confirms that the game will be built on a brand-new engine -- rather than the antiquated BioWare Aurora that powered the original -- and feature an new "dynamic action-based" combat system... while a video interview leaked at GameTrailers suggests numerous graphical and gameplay improvements ranging from new mocapping and increased polygon counts in character models, to dynamic lighting and normal mapping in the environments... to new, aggressive AI and actions for enemy NPCs.
Achievements, trophies and SIXAXIS support were also mentioned in the video, which a CD Projekt representative confirmed to be legitimate -- it apparently comes from the cover disc of German magazine GamePro.
Press release:
NEW YORK, NY – December 2, 2008 – At the ATARI LIVE showcase event in London today, Atari and CD Projekt RED announced plans for the global release of The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf on PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft in autumn 2009.
Based on the story of multi award-winning million-selling PC role-playing game The Witcher and completely rebuilt pixel by pixel for the new generation of consoles, The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf brings the unrivalled RPG experience to Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3 with a brand new combat system for thrilling dynamic action, and a new engine delivering matchless state-of-the-art visuals. The game is underpinned with the evocative and enthralling story which helped secure the original game’s status as PC role-playing game of 2007, based on the mature and compelling universe created by renowned Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski.
“The creative vision and dedication to the quality of the player experience that CD Projekt RED bring to the Witcher games is extraordinary, and it’s great to be working with them to bring the Witcher universe to console gamers,” said Phil Harrison, President of Infogrames Entertainment, the parent company of Atari. “Taking this brilliantly realised world to PLAYSTATION 3 and Xbox 360 gamers for the first time is a breakthrough in the development of this important franchise.”
“We’re thrilled to continue our great relationship with Atari, whose refreshing focus on quality fits squarely with our own, to bring Geralt and the Witcher franchise to an even larger audience – fans who expressed to us very clearly that The Witcher would be a natural fit on consoles,” said Adam Kiciński, CEO, CD Projekt RED. “Console gamers’ tastes are maturing; they’re looking for deeper story-driven experiences that are very hard to find in today’s console market. We’re developing this remake based upon the compelling narrative that helped The Witcher on PC sell more than a million copies and win more than 100 awards, building everything else from the ground up to be the definitive console RPG.”
Based on the universe created by best-selling Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf puts players in the role of Geralt, a professional monster slayer who exists on the fringes of a complex society troubled by the kind of problems more commonly found on the front pages of newspapers than in a fantasy universe. Taken as a child, mutated, and trained in the arcane ways of the witchers, Geralt is a reluctant hero, who nonetheless finds himself all too frequently in the heat of battles that are not his own. In this world there is no right or wrong, only decisions and consequences.
With The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf, the best PC RPG in recent years is being completely remade as the ultimate console RPG. The title is being developed by a core team from CD Projekt RED working alongside France-based Widescreen Games who provide their cross-platform DaVinci engine technology. For more information about The Witcher visit www.thewitcher.com and for more details about Atari’s entire product line up visit www.atari.com.
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Awesome. Not enough people played The Witcher, so hopefully this will make up for that.
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:46 pm
It would be nice if some of the improvements found their way to the PC version with another content update.
The combat changes and all that stuff likely happened to make it more action based, what with the consoles being unsuitable for a point & click interface, and I don't really care to have that on PC, but it would be good to get the extra mo-cap animations, the improved engine, better visuals and what not.
The PC version was pretty horrible in regards to how optimised it was so, any engine updates done would be good, even though I still consider it the definitive version of the game thanks to the tools available (a neat fan campaign was released a couple months ago).