Can't wait to here some behind the scenes stuff for this. This game is so underrated!
It was TW2 what introduced me to the World of Geralt. Unforgettable game
Won't be able to join live, unfortunately, but will be interesting to catch the VOD later.
Can't believe that TW2 came out over 10 years ago now - how time flies... Hell, even TW3 was 7 years ago - when did that happen? To put that into perspective: Baldur's Gate 2 was as old as TW2 is today when TW2 came out.
I remember getting a new PC for TW2 (and Dragon Age 2, they came out within a few months of each other - the less said about DA2 though, the better) and being blown away by the visuals. They hold up even today! I also bought/read all the witcher books in anticipation for the release. I wanted to dive into them even earlier, after playing through the first game back in 2008, but all the translations weren't out yet, so I could only really read the short stories then.
Still the most ambitious game in terms of choices & consequences that CDPR has made. Bit of a different tone compared to TW1 and TW3, with its focus on politics, which ended up being a nice change of pace, but you still had Geralt there to ground the story and give the player a more personal tale/goal to follow. And it did all of that while also acting as the setup for the events to come in TW3 and introducing Letho, the best antagonist CDPR has created so far.
Can't believe that TW2 came out over 10 years ago now - how time flies... Hell, even TW3 was 7 years ago - when did that happen? To put that into perspective: Baldur's Gate 2 was as old as TW2 is today when TW2 came out.
I remember getting a new PC for TW2 (and Dragon Age 2, they came out within a few months of each other - the less said about DA2 though, the better) and being blown away by the visuals. They hold up even today! I also bought/read all the witcher books in anticipation for the release. I wanted to dive into them even earlier, after playing through the first game back in 2008, but all the translations weren't out yet, so I could only really read the short stories then.
Still the most ambitious game in terms of choices & consequences that CDPR has made. Bit of a different tone compared to TW1 and TW3, with its focus on politics, which ended up being a nice change of pace, but you still had Geralt there to ground the story and give the player a more personal tale/goal to follow. And it did all of that while also acting as the setup for the events to come in TW3 and introducing Letho, the best antagonist CDPR has created so far.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings stream is live! Join us on twitch.tv/cdprojektred
It is insane to me that somehow The Witcher 3 only took about four years to develop... and the two expansions were out within a year'ish of the release of that game. Even more insane given that Blood and Wine was so massive it was like its own standalone game.
It is especially hard to wrap one's head around when you look at some of the development struggles with Cyberpunk 2077 and the upcoming expansion.
That's because the development of BaW began in 2013 or 14. CDPR Cracow was working on it while the main (Warsaw) studio worked on the main game.
I remember when TW3 was supposed to drop in early 2014, with CP2077 planned to come out in 2016. Good times...
3-4 years is about right for the scope of the game, judging by other releases. CP2077 took about the same amount of time - 2016 to 2020. Witcher 3 just needed less time to get patched up, which is why the expansions and free DLC came out on time.
Ehh, as much as development on CP began in 2012. Pretty much everyone got moved to TW3 main game in 2014/2015 as the game kept getting delayed. Also, if I recall correctly, CPDR were initially planning to release some smaller games alongside TW3 and CP2077, and this is what the Krakow studio was supposed to work on back when they opened it in 2013. They did move on to work on the expansion, but that was later on, I believe.
Anyway, managed to catch the VOD, some cool tidbits in there. The move to in-house handling of the localisation really did have a big impact. The improvement from TW1 to TW2 in that regard was quite noticeable. To the point that, were they to try and remake the original game, CDPR would pretty much need to re-write and re-record everything again in all different languages (except for the Polish version, which was already handled in-house). Really, a fantastic effort by the localisation team ever since TW2 - one of the best (if not the best) in the business.