Sunday May 14, 2006 E3 Hands-On with The Witcher: A Small RPG Looking to Make it Big
There’s a quiet hall tucked away underneath the glitz and glamour, the lights and sound, of the main South Hall filled with all the big developers. Kentia Hall it’s called, and it holds some of the best, and also some of the worst, games at E3. It has become known as the “indie” developer hall and contains a wide variety of young companies looking to get their game out into the world. The infamous Guitar Hero game was one example of a game that has since reached acclaimed status by starting down in Kentia. It is a haven for finding some of the best kept secrets in the gaming realm.
A developer studio named CD Project working out of Poland has created an enticing new fantasy Role-Playing Game that may just sweep the show floor. It’s called The Witcher, and the demo I was given Thursday afternoon was certainly something the CD Project guys were proud to show off. This fantasy RPG is set in a dark time where through centuries of sickness and destruction a number of mysterious monsters have emerged from the darkness. There is a group of powerful men known as the witchers and you take on the role of one known as Geralt. Not only is he a master sword fighter, trained from birth, but a powerful sorcerer as well.
An epic Witcher poster.
The Witcher booth at E3 2006.
The world is an immersive environment that is incredibly detailed. An expansive fantasy world filled with castles, abandoned towns, monsters, and more. The graphics have been designed on the BioWare Aurora engine and have been advanced by the CD Project developers to a much higher level. Specular lighting to reflect the light sources is standard as well as a 24-hour time system with beautiful sunsets and sunrises. Another great looking graphical demo we were shown was the dynamic water in rivers. On top of just looking great, the flowing water would react to your presence and movement in the water. Although this idea has been seen before, the detail level that The Witcher has implement is pretty astounding.
During the introduction the presenter questioned (the audience) as to the specifics of what makes a good RPG and used this to emphasize the method that CD Project has taken to develop the game. They’ve worked quite long on the fighting and combat, environmental and graphics, and the story and role-playing elements. As a dedicated team they have put all of their resources together to work on these key areas to truly develop a great RPG game. Another very intriguing part of the game that was demoed was the story’s impact upon the entire world. In a conversation important to the story, a number of decisions could be made at one point that would reflect outcomes not only directly at that moment and near future, but also much further down the storyline in a very drastic way. Someone may be killed and never met throughout the entire game if in the very first decision you let a captive go who will eventually be the one who goes off and kills that person.
The fighting system animation has been based off of more than 200 authentic motion-captured moves. It runs quite smooth, although it feels like it lacks a bit of complexity and customization. The movement and fighting style is quite similar to Diablo in that is just a mouse click to move and attack. There is the ability to choose from three different fighting styles: strong, swift, and group. Although there are not that many choices, these styles are quite interesting. They allow you to implement particular attacks to take advantage over certain monsters and their weaknesses. The demo we were shown with the different fighting styles did run very well and seem quite promising. There are also just a few magical spells and special blows that add to the combat system.
My impressions were quite positive from what they presented. I was unsure of whether this game could live up to the likes of Oblivion or other much more established RPGs; however I think it has promise. They stated that it was still about a year out in its development and this would allow them much more time to continue to tweak and improve the system. They were very responsive to the input of the community and press who had the chance to check out the game and were looking forward to building a game that had a strong following and was supported to the fullest extent by the developers.
The Witcher certainly does have promise and it’ll be interesting to see where it goes over the next 6 to 12 months in its development. In the meantime they will be signing with a producer and distributor and will be tweaking it based on the input from the gamers who stopped by their booth at E3. I hope to be one of the few members of the press who had the chance to check out this game to actually provide some response to what I saw. I was impressed by this development team and could actually see this game making quite a dramatic stand in the RPG world.
- Written by Alex Billington
