CD Projekt has issued a more detailed press release about The Witcher 2 video that leaked last week, touching on the voice work, the game engine and the studio’s continuing desire to get the game on consoles.
The Witcher 2 video that appeared on YouTube last week generated a lot of interest among gamers but also some worry: The performance is choppy and the voice work is painfully bad. CD Projekt responded quickly with a press release acknowledging the authenticity of the trailer but saying little else; today, however, in response to a clamor from fans, the studio talked a bit more about what lies in store for the game.
First and foremost, the video was created using an “early alpha version” of the game, so performance is iffy at best and the voiceovers, as expected, are purely placeholders. “We’re proud that our team members can imitate native English actors so well that some people would even consider these VOs being part of the final product,” said Senior Producer Tom Gop. “However, we are not planning to change Red into the world’s first non-native recording studio for English movies and games by using non-native non-actors. Don’t worry, we’ll stay in our day jobs. The voices in the video are not in any way final, and were only created for the purposes of the video.”
No release date for the game has even been proposed at this point, and Gop warned fans not to expect anything soon. “The Witcher 2 is still deeply in the development stage and as it is huge and complex, there is still many, many hours of work in front of us,” he said.
The game is being developed by the same team that worked on the first Witcher, but will be built on all new software. BioWare’s Aurora engine, which powered the first game as well as the earlier Neverwinter Nights games, has been replaced by a new engine that was created specifically to avoid the “bottlenecks” that cropped up during the development of the first game.
And in spite of the fact that The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf remains in limbo and appears to be a dead issue, CD Projekt apparently hasn’t given up on bringing Geralt to consoles. The studio said that while The Witcher 2 will be developed for the PC, it also wants to release a console version and promised it would say more about platforms once it has officially announced the game.
So there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth. More information, including a proper launch trailer, will be released once a deal has been signed with a publisher; in the meantime, don’t worry so much about what you saw, or didn’t see, in the alpha trailer. “Despite the fact that we did not want to publish this video, we’re happy with the huge interest it gained,” Gop said. “As always, please let us do everything we can not to disappoint you.”
