CD Projekt made waves throughout the gaming industry with their highly popular, uniquely designed action-RPG The Witcher, which was based on a series of short stories and novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The game didn’t just set a landmark within the industry for ushering in a different kind of medieval-fantasy universe, but it did so for also giving gamers a morally divisive set of situations and circumstances that challenged the traditional “black and white” “good and bad guy” moral complexities offered up in other games. This set a high standard for what gamers would be expecting from CD Projekt’s long awaited sequel. This Witcher 2 preview irons out some the details and changes made to the upcoming game.

One of the other unique features of The Witcher was the dynamic combat system where instead of swinging weapons around carelessly, each swing with each weapon is technically crafted with dynamic motion capturing. The game’s multiple fighting styles and large variety of usable weapons will also be making a return in the Witcher 2, including new styles and additional weapons that round out the already impressive combat mechanics from the original game.

One of the major changes for the new game is in the advancement of the game engine. The developers are no longer settling for what they were using with the modified Aurora Engine from BioWare, they’ve decided to upgrade their standards in order to facilitate more functionality out of the design tools, which in turn allows for more immersive gameplay and performance.

For instance, the light sourcing has been heavily modified so it’s now all in realtime as opposed to lighting nodes being attached to specific points within the environment. The team has also made advancements to get away from the “white room” environment mapping and instead designed the world from the ground up using their own innovative creativity as opposed to recycling a lot of structures and props in pre-designed maps.

If you thought all the multiple choices, branching narratives and morally divisive scenarios in the original game had your head spinning, well things get even more complex and dire for lead character Geralt as he deals with a brand new threat. The story picks up after the end of the first game, and a small faction within the Elven community are on the surge of revolt, aiming to assassinate select kings to get their point across.

The game will place gamers in the midst of the uprising, either being neutral, siding with or siding against the various factions and groups throughout the game that will ultimately determine what the end-game will be like.