CD Projeckt’s Senior Designer Jakub Styliński has thrown out a few titbits on the upcoming PlayStation 3 version of The Witcher, subtitled The Rise of the White Wolf.
Given the trigger-happy (or should that be "sword-hilt-happy"?) console gamer approach to life, the developer is anxious to make The Witcher’s combat more fluid and move-intensive. "We’ve completely redesigned the combat system to be more in-line with players’ expectations on consoles," Styliński commented to Gamercyte. "We’ve gone back and motion-captured a lot more combat animations for the new combat actions, like parries, counter-attacks, enhanced evasion, special attacks, etc.
"We’re also enhancing the enemy AI to make them more aggressive and perform a wide range of offensive and defensive actions to make the combat a bit more action-oriented."
While you could perform a number of attacks in real-time on the PC by clicking the mouse, most defensive moves were calculated automatically. For the PS3 remake, CD Projeckt has given the player complete control.
"We wanted to meet console users’ expectations, so we’re giving them full control of Geralt during combat," Styliński went on. "They’ll determine how and when Geralt parries enemy blows, ripostes, evades them, makes lunging attacks, and which foes he attacks. In general, combat will be more dynamic and will give players more potential for combat mastery through practice."
The game’s down for release sometime in Fall 2009.