The character designs are top-notch and are beautifully executed in 3D. The costume/armour designs are elegantly thoughtful and detailed, the texture work is solid and compliments the shaders to produce heavily stylised and somewhat realistic materials.
The environments are unreal and lush with foliage. The populated areas look lived in and weathered to give a sense of believablity that a world exists inside the game and it becons for exploration.
I personally can’t wait to get my hands on this game.
Some of the visual features of The Witcher 2 include:
- Cinematic style cameras for cut-scenes
- Atmospheric effects (fog, rain, lightning, debris from wind, dust motes, light shafts, etc)
- Day/night cycles
- Dynamic lighting and shadows
- Depth of field
I was blown away by this in-game alpha build preview below, demonstrating some of the visual enhancements the team have made to the engine and artwork.
The Witcher 2 is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2011.
The Witcher 2 Official Website.
The CD Projekt RED team claim that The Witcher 2 is the best looking game in the RPG genre. As artists, what are your thoughts on that claim?
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Their forest and terrain are quite impressive. Scrub that, ALL of their artwork is impressive
must…..have….game…
I'd seen boxes of the original way back when it first came out and never really bothered with the game. But after seeing the art of the new one I picked up the first one on Steam to check it out.
Just from screenshots alone, I'm impressed with the sheer amount of visual improvement from an already impressive looking game.
The last time I had this happen was for God of War on the PS2 only to have God of War II raise the bar significantly higher (to this day, I still think it's the prettiest game for that generation of console).
That second image totally makes me think of Adam's evil genius UDK scene, but darker.
Yeah, good to have a mature fantasy environment for a change, if they stay faithful to the novels story should be as good as these awesome visuals.
You're missing out, Emil. Alongside Planescape: Torment and Anachronox, The Witcher is my favourite RPG, vast, vast distances ahead of anything released by Bethesda and slightly less vast distances beyond Bioware.
A grim fantasy with genuinely grey morality.
AWE-SOME are they still using Aurora?
Jackablade: your putting the witcher 1 above Mass Effect, and dragon age? madness!!
They're using a new engine of their own making, not an improved Aurora as they were previously. They had one frame in the trailer that talked about it, I believe. (as a 'gift' to those who comb through trailers frame by frame, hoping to find something
)
I don't understand why they changed the faces for the main characters. Those in the first witcher were almost perfect.
The new ones are lacking personality.
As a fan of the first game I still hope they'll change the withcer/triss as they were.
I'd suggest that's just the screenshot. The website shows both concept and model art for Triss, Dandelion and Zoltan and they're looking rather nice indeed. I will agree that they might have tried to make Geralt a little too "handsome".
http://tw2.thewitcher.com/#characters
And Fletch, as far as I'm concerned, Dragon Age never comes close to being as good as the Witcher. Mass Effect 2 sits pretty close to the same level in my enjoyable RPGs list though.
Odd, I've always though that DO:A was way better than both ME and ME2. Along with The Witcher, DO:A is my favourite RPG this generation (not that we had many good RPG's lately). Neither of them has anything on BGII so I guess that's fair.
Awesome screenshots. That foliage looks sweet. The improvement over the first game is amazing.