The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf First Look Preview

“The suspect is a tall video game character in dark clothing with long, white hair. He carries a long sword and he has a habit of using it to violently murder NPCs. The suspect was last seen heading West through RPG Land…”

Now, if you were a police officer answering this call, your first reaction might be to think, “Oh bugger! Sephiroth is back in town!” But he’s not – at least not in this game. The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf will instead see the return of Geralt of Rivia: an expert monster slayer, master swordsman, and star of one the best RPGs of 2007, and 2008.

Indeed, the original The Witcher is widely regarded as one of the finest PC RPGs of the past few years – so console-owning fans of the genre can now celebrate the fact that they too will be getting a slice of the pie. Rise of the White Wolf is no simple port, but rather a full-blooded remake that retains the core story and quest structure while completely rebuilding things like the game’s combat system and interface. It’s a bold move on the part of the Polish developers, CD Projekt Red – but if it works, they’ll have brought their adventure to a whole new audience.

What certainly won’t be changing is the game’s story. The Witcher is based upon the works of Andrzej Sapkowski, an author who subtly blends contemporary themes into his fantasy novels, alongside many references to Slavic mythology. The Witchers themselves are professional monster hunters, warriors who receive battle-training from an early age – alongside several mutating processes that alter their genetic make-up. As a result of these changes the Witchers are stronger, faster and more agile than normal humans; they are also completely sterile, so their numbers are comparatively limited.

In Sapkowski’s world, these differences cause friction within normal human society, who regard the Witchers with a certain degree of fear and uncertainty. Racism and intolerance are recurring themes within the author’s stories, so expect to see a lot of social tension as you play your way through Rise of the White Wolf. As Geralt, the most powerful of the Witchers, your adventures will bring you into contact with a variety of characters, human or otherwise. Your quests will often present you with moral dilemmas, but unlike many RPGs the decisions you face are intended to be several steps away from clear-cut Black and White, Good or Evil paths. CD Projekt Red says that you won’t fully appreciate the consequences of a choice you make until you reach a later point in the story, so a cheeky burst of save-reloading isn’t going to show you everything on offer. There are also three possible endings to the story, so hopefully the combination of these factors will significantly boost the game’s replay factor.

The developer itself certainly believes this to be the case, as it’s promising that the game will take around 40 hours to complete – with another 40 hours on top to see everything on offer. That sounds like a pretty tall claim to us, but it certainly looks like there’s going to be a lot to do. Perhaps the most important thing to note is that you won’t be able to upgrade your Geralt into a “do-anything” Witcher. There are six different fighting styles that can be used in Rise of the White Wolf, each with it’s own skills and moves to unlock, and a choice of weapons that includes both steel and silver blades (the latter being used to kill monsters). There are also several magical “signs” that can be used to supplement your attacks with special finishing moves and the like, and there are magic potions to give you the upper hand when facing a difficult foe.

This diversity should win some applause from players who like to play through adventures several times with different specialities and skills; in fact, this will be the only way to see Geralt’s full move set. Since the white-haired warrior is a fairly acrobatic chap, it’s quite understandable that you might want to try out everything that he can do. We’re told that the revamped combat controls are supposed to be intuitive and easy to pick-up while still demanding some skill on the part of the user. While we didn’t get to try the game for ourselves, we’re lead to believe that all your attacks will be carried out via the use of a single attack button. We say, “lead to believe” because the developer we spoke to was curiously tight-lipped on the matter; he seemed keen that we avoid drawing too many parallels with Fable II – another one-button-does-all-the-slashing RPG that drew a bit of flak from being too simplified. What he did say was that precise timing will be the key to unlocking the more spectacular attacks. This was the case with the original game’s mouse-based control, but whereas before all your defensive moves were handled automatically, now you’ll have to determine how and when you parry an incoming attack. If all goes as CD Projekt Red promise, it’ll be a system that welcomes beginners, but that takes time to master.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that Rise of the White Wolf is looking really rather nice. Thanks to the game’s new DaVinci engine, the console Witcher outing will benefit from normal mapping, which makes low polygon models look better, and dynamic weather changes – but it was the quality of the animation that caught our attention the most. Both Geralt and his enemies have been given a selection of new animations, with the bad guys also getting new moves and a boost to their A.I. Hopefully this will make for some interesting, dynamic swordplay. Geralt certainly looked pretty darn cool as he slickly despatched a small group of guards that had surrounded him – killing the last with a series of blows that ended with a slash across the back of the legs, dropping the poor sod to his knees before the final strike was delivered.

This brings us neatly to our last point, which is that Rise of the White Wolf is going to be an adult game for sensible grown-ups. In other words, it will be very violent with lots of swearing and the occasional set of boobies on display. Okay, that may sound a bit mocking – but the original game did contain quite a few sex scenes and it would have been easy for the developers to remove this content for the sake of appealing to the mass console market. As things stand, CD Projekt Red appears to have stood its ground, so more power to it. Like we said before, it’s arguably a brave move for the developer to change so much in a game that did so well, but we’re pretty confident that it won’t try to fix anything that wasn’t broken (nothing that would work fine on a console, at any rate). After the success of Geralt’s adventures on the PC, the studio must be hoping for similar success on the PS3 and Xbox 360. If the final game turns out as planned, perhaps it’ll get its wish. Fingers crossed.

The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf will be out on PS3 and Xbox 360 in the third quarter of 2009.