The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Dev Diary

Another developer diary for The Witcher 2 is online, with subtitles. This one discusses character development and when Producer Tomasz Gop says “I could talk about it for hours” he’s not kidding.

Gop will talk your ear off about The Witcher. Terribly nice fellow, though.

In fact it’s easy to root for a group like CD Projekt. I recall the first time I saw The Witcher. It was at E3 when I was freelancing for GameSpy and Dave “Fargo” Kosak and I had an appointment to see the game inside the Staples Center — which is weird because E3 isn’t in the Staples Center it’s inside the Convention Center. So obviously we got lost.

Showing up 15 minutes late didn’t dampen the team’s spirits at all and they had their own room with this big projector and you could just tell that these guys loved what they were doing and wanted to share it with anyone who would listen which at that time wasn’t very many people. Think about it — unknown developer (to us anyway) based off fantasy novels which we had never heard of (again, Americans!) and they didn’t even have a booth inside convention center. The nerve.

After the presentation Fargo had to leave and I had an hour to kill and it was the team’s final meeting of the day so we just sat down, in this room decked out with wolf’s head pentagrams and posters of half naked women (if you played The Witcher this will all make sense, sort of) and we just talked shop for about 45 minutes. We spoke about rpg design, about the PC as a platform, on The Witcher’s development, and so on. I think they offered me vodka but don’t hold me to that. I became a fan of CD at that moment.

We’re human, after all. We can’t be jaded all the time and when you talk to developers who are that enthusiastic it rubs off on you. So I’m hoping — and expecting — big things from The Witcher 2.