Game to ship with cutscenes only confirmed.

^This. I am hoping this won't effect Witcher 3 much. However, it will probably, definitely affect Cyber Punk 2077 if good replacements aren't found.

Actualy designers of AAA games leave all the time, most likely they finished theyre parts on the Witcher 3 and decided to move ot a new project, that happens constantly on the gaming industry. For instance all 3 God of War games had diferent directors, and on the first 2 the director left Sony Santa Monica after the game released, ye this time around theyre leaving before realease, but with a probable launch scheduled for Witcher 3 somewhere halfway trough 2014 and with the game beeing in development for over 2 years Im pretty sure the gameplay is done by now.

This clearly means that The Witcher 3 is doomed.

I honestly hope this game gets canned. I played Witcher 2 on easy difficulty and it was anything BUT easy. Regular minions killed you in two hits. What?

It really depends on how you play.

I too died three or four times during the assault to the castle, but it had more to do with me rushing into the enemies rather than being smart and kill them once at a time.

i had so much hope for the game

Game developers are always leaving and moving onto other projects after their duties are over. This probably means the game is getting closer to completion than once though. The reason they are probably leaving is because of the fact that the trilogy is over and they are moving onto other things. Cyber Punk is the next big game for them.

at this stage the game assets,design choices and gameplay mechanics are more than likely all in place.