The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Interview

The Witcher 2 senior producer Tomek Gop addresses quite a few questions about the RPG sequel in a new interview at Faceoff Games. The conversation covers quite a few topics, including the storyline, their plans to bring the game to consoles, how the voiceover work will be improved from the original game, and more:
F.O.G: The original Witcher featured a three style combat system, how much do you plan to expand this? In a recent leaked video, you said that fighting in the new game will be a lot more satisfying. Can you tell us more about this?

TG: We have changed the combat system in The Witcher 2 into a more dynamic one. It's a lot smoother now. For a person that sees it for the first time (especially not playing it) it looks action-pumped, but there's one important thing that we will be stressing in future presentations of the game, and that's that all the features that make up combat in The Witcher 2 have a lot fo RPG subsystems underneath. It means that for every fight you take there are mechanisms that you only feel if you take time to develop your character, see what skills you apply and try it out for yourself - most of the character abilities you have in The Witcher 2 actively change the gameplay, rather than passive ones like "Strength: +5".

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F.O.G: We've been told that the Witcher 2 will feature a save game importer - just how much of an impact will our decisions from the first game have?

TG: It's mainly about decisions actually. You will be able to import parts of your inventory (e.g. swords - though its yet to be decided), but the main reason for implementing the save import feature is the storyline. For most of the crucial choices the player took throughout The Witcher there will be something that will represents the outcome of their decisions. Oh and of course you don't need to have played The Witcher to be able to start the second game. There's a beginning for all those not importing a saved game.