Incredible Combat Animations, Atmosphere in New Witcher 2 Footage

By Lo-Ping - Sun Mar 06, 12:22 am

Preview by: Ben C.

CD Projekt RED’s latest project, The Witcher 2, is set for a May 2011 release. The hype for it couldn’t be stronger amongst RPG-lovers in the PC Gaming community. They recently released around 10 minutes of in-game Pre-Beta footage of the game. Not only does it look beautiful, but it seems to play beautifully as well. Never have I seen swordplay so smooth and well choreographed.

Every animation is terrifyingly convincing. Imagine these combat moves mixed with L.A. Noire’s facial animations.

The phenomenal motion capture work aside, the Polish developing team has nailed the atmosphere. While we don’t see any fortresses in this particular series of footage clips, we do see what looks like a Dwarven encampment or market. The Witcher 1 was littered with some of the most convincing castles and cities. The very first location you explore, Kaer Morhen, looks far more realistic than the castles in any other game I’ve played. Europe being littered with castles to explore, one would expect a Polish company to already have a feel for the architecture and layout of these places. The Witcher 2 should not disappoint in that regard. Not only this, but the forests look more like forests than in any fantasy RPG to date. Skyrim may offer some incredible landscapes, but if Bethesda follows their same (or a similar) algorithm for terrain generation, we may end up seeing the same evenly spaced trees we did in Oblivion. The crowded, lush feel of the forests in this trailer, combined with the mountain encampment and the fluid combat motions, suggest that this game will have one hell of an atmosphere to provide.

I look forward to getting sucked into it.