The Witcher

The Witcher, on the other hand, is almost on the complete opposite end of the RPG scales (Final Fantasy and other Japanese-style linear RPGs would be the actual opposite end). Running a heavily modified Neverwinter Nights Aurora engine, the Witcher is quite possibly the most engrossing traditional RPG we've ever seen. Though many questions remain unanswered, the developers, CDProjekt of Poland, certainly have some fascinating ideas in mind.

The most tantalizing, something that's been hard to find outside the long-gone Fallout games, is that of ambiguous morality. There's no clear-cut good and evil. It's not necessarily always particularly well obscured, but often the decisions are much more complicated than they seem. An example from the demo was that a king sends the player out to hunt down a monster in the sewers beneath his castle before granting him an audience. The player hunts his way through various minor monsters, encounters the final beast itself only to learn that it can talk and used to be a human being. OK, standard-enough fantasy fare, right? Well, the problem is that the player needs this monster's head before he can see the king, and to make matters even more complicated, the monster was actually someone that many of the townsfolk are glad to be rid of - because when he was a human being he wasn't exactly the nicest guy in town.

Story quests can also move on by themselves. Going back to the king example, after the player has the monster's head he arrives at the castle only to find out that there's been some sort of disturbance within, perhaps assassins. He can rush in and try to save the king, or let the guards handle it. If you chose to spare the monster, perhaps it's best to let the assassins do their job. Depending on player actions, not only will quests be affected, but the game will end one of three ways - and it counts cumulative actions, not just one final choice at the end.

The game engine has really been updated, with spectacular weather and background effects. The tile-based nature of NWN has been replaced with a standard mesh and 3D objects, making it more like Gothic than Neverwinter Nights. The outdoor environments are truly haunting, especially at night time or when a storm passes through. NPCs have schedules, which helps make the environments even more realiastic.


Character leveling and customization is skill-oriented. The player can not only improve the level of many of his skills, but also add customization qualities to those skills. An example would be from sword combat, where improving the level of the skill chains together more moves, but the customized attributes can add special abilities to a certain move in the combo, like extra damage or a stun.

The Witcher looks like it could be the best traditional RPG to hit the PC since Baldur's Gate 2, if it lives up to the promise.