Jesse Goes to Cdprojekt - Witcher 2 - Enhanced edition inside look

[Singing] Jesse's traveling the world, whats he gonna do? Hit up CDProjekt and play some Witcher 2...Enhanced Edition [Singing] Head to CDProjekt and play some Witcher 2...Enhanced Edition Yeaaghh...wait, hold on Hey there everybody, its Jesse and I'm at CDProjekt in the heart of Warsaw, Poland Gyaahh, sword in your face [Music] So you're probably thinking, Jesse, what are you doing in Poland and why did CDProjekt invite you there Well the answer to both, my friends, is the same thing The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition Releasing today, the enhanced edition is an updated, optimized revamped version of one of my favorite PC games of 2011 And now, as of today, for Xbox 360 as well And of course I was extremely lucky not only to have access to the game a week early but to be part of a press conference featuring the new Xbox 360 features and I also had a chance to sit down and talk to the developers about all the aspects of the game But that's not all Since GOG.com is located there as well I managed to learn about all their upcoming new DRM free games and the changes to the site as well But we'll save that for tomorrow Oh, oh, and did someone say Witcher interactive Ipad game? Yeah, that just happened But I digress, lets talk Witcher 2 When you see the words Enhanced Edition you immediately want to know what is so enhanced about it Well for fans of the original Witcher you know it too had an enhanced edition which, by the way, was recently released on Steam for Macs as well as PC And what made the Witcher 1 Enhanced Edition so important was that it took the games graphics, gameplay and story to a whole new level based on fan input about the initial release [Marcin]So Witcher 1, we finished the game, it was our first game and we got a lot of feedback, and we felt that we should correct this and that, add this and that and we've been working on it a year and we released the Enhanced Edition It's a real dream come true edition, at the same time it gave all this content away for free for all those who bought the game originally I think that was kind of cool and then of course we released a new version to the market and we actually sold a lot because I think people liked it and told their friends that it's a good deal and a fair approach With Witcher 2, in the case of the PC version it's similar, but this time we decided to bring the console, Xbox 360, version to the market actually that's the only available edition of Witcher 2 and that's, again, the most definite and ultimate version of Witcher 2 with bells and whistles, totally polished actually and built from the ground up for Xbox 360 with additional content in comparison to the original Witcher 2 PC release which was last year So four hours of totally new gameplay two new big quests over 30 minutes of new cinematics and big CGI intro as well, and outro and over 100 fixes So that's pretty much what enhanced edition is I would call it the ultimate edition as well [Jessie]Yeah, you heard correctly now included with the original Witcher 2 are four more hours of gameplay two new major quest lines 30 minutes of additional cut scenes seamlessly woven into the story and a new intro and outro as well as other changes addressing most of the other concerns the players had [Marcin]The major thing we were unhappy with and because we're releasing the Enhanced Edition I can be very honest about it right now I couldn't say this before, this openly but it was the balance of the game So when initially when we released the game the game was way too difficult at the beginning and then it was a bit too easy towards the end But that's what we've done in a patch and then in a major update version, 2.0 What we corrected, or actually what we enhanced, in the Enhanced Edition is the end of the game I played through several times and the third act and then the afterlogue They were lacking a little bit of context So there's some flashbacks, there are cutscenes explaining the story better and giving a little more to think about to the gamer and then of course there's a beautiful intro and outro, which we didn't do might find something that has been addressed or that he or she would have changed because we have actually taken a lot of comments from the forums from the emails we got and we addressed quite a few of them and of course our internal tests and we read all of the reviews that were out there as long as we were able to understand them Google translate is doing a hell of a job here So its all in the Enhanced Edition [Jessie] Uh, did I hear improvements to chapter three? Sounds like someone has been watching my playthrough [Devs]Well we decided for the Enhanced Edition we needed some new, capturing stories for chapter three so that they will become some sort of a conclusion for some of the previous plots and some of the previous threads which were somehow started earlier but they needed some sort of a conclusion We added new characters but also we used characters from previous quests and also we added new locations [Jessie]This, as you can imagine, being a sucker for a good story had my interest piqued If you remember during my original playthrough I commented on how the game never really babied the player when it came to the plot There was zero handholding for those players who never really beat the Witcher 1 And the plot just sort of moved at a breakneck pace While i love the fact they didn't waste time explaining things any sensible player could just Google I knew it would be an issue for some people who were unfamiliar with the series [Devs] Well first of all I think there's always problems with sequels and such part two of something that on one hand you have to give very basic repeat very basic plots from the previous part and on the other hand you don't want to get too repetitive in order not to bore experienced players and fans of Sikorski or fans of the previous Witcher game So we had to balance things out to give both new stuff and repeat something from the previous version I think those new movies about Witchers, what the Witchers are We tried to show it in an interesting, perhaps innovative way and not to get directly repetitive We did not want to recapture the story directly because I think it, we think that it bores players, and they don't really want that [Jessie] The Enhanced Edition not only adds new scenes to explain what a Witcher is but more importantly any plot points from the first game that might have been confusing and then there's new quests at the end to help wrap up any storylines that us, the fans, wants to know more about [Dev] It's a modern type of story telling you mix genres, you mix ideas, issues and you put many things on many different levels for many different people If you want ***, it's what's there If you want hack and slash adventure, it's there If you want to assasinate kings, or make somebody a king its also in there so you've got different levels, you've got, like an RPG [Jessie] But it does all of that without compromising the storytelling that made the initial release so much fun [Devs] The truth is that we hate stupid games and we work here because we are allowed to make games that are not stupid and we make games we want to play, so [Jessie] And that's what made the Witcher 2 one of my favorite games of 2011 and my must replay for 2012 It was, in my humble opinion, the first RPG to make a solid go at being a game for adults there are no signs of dumbing it down I'm sure a lot of you at this point are like I'm sure a lot of you at this point are like Jessie, the story is nice and all but what about the 360 version, what about the graphics its not some crappy port, is it? [Dev] Well I think the idea of going from keyboard to controller is dumbing down is incorrect Yes, you have to kind of distill the essence of what it is, to compress it but then a lot of creative things actually benefit from having constraints so who says its not better improved, any game by putting these kinds of limits on it I know where their fears are coming from, because its a very common approach if you look at the games developer getting an existing game to a new platform purely from a financial perspective probably the best way to do it is to just port it like whatever doesn't fit doesn't fit, and lets simplify it lets get it out and make some revenue But we're looking at it from the other side I mean totally opposite We believe that if the game is great, and people enjoy it on their hardware, whether it is PC or it is 360 they will spread the word and ultimately more and more people will buy the game So the quality is the most important factor as well as the feel for the target platform The Xbox 360 version of the game was built from the ground up so we touched practically every single asset we did a lot of work on the engineering side because obviously Xbox 360 is not as strong as brand new PCs I think we delivered the really ultimate SKU for the console having in mind the system preferences but you also have to look at it from a different angle Xbox 360 is a different platform because of the paths, because of how people play and also because they are not using, usually, a monitor but most of them are using an HDTV So the game looks very different in some moments There are some comparisons in that already but people say wow, the Xbox 360 game looks great and I'm sure that when they have a chance to sit down and play it they will say hey, it plays really, really well So what we want to deliver is the right PC experience for the PC gamer and the right console experience for the Xbox 360 gamer and the console experience is a very vast definition but you have the role like I mentioned, the controls, how the camera works how the game looks itself on my TV People are used to certain things and we are not trying to go against it but understand it, and include it in the development process So the Enhanced Edition is obviously bringing the game to a new platform, Xbox 360 and that means that we had to remake some of the levels a little bit to make them stream a little bit faster to make it a little bit easier for us to include stuff because Xbox 360 has a little bit less power than the PC and we really wanted the game to look as good as possible so we had to highly optimize all the content to be able to squeeze everything we had in the PC version to the Xbox and we actually managed to do it. Like you said, there's some areas we had to modify the enviroment to make it more streamable, like streaming friendly without getting too technical Maybe if you're a PC player, and your experience of the PC version and you play through the game if you play the Xbox game, you probably will notice some small differences like oh, there's an extra door here or it changed a little bit here but its very, very small changes really and it doesn't impact the gameplay at all its just to make it smoother streaming times and stuff just for enhancing the gameplay experience really Well there's been a lot of work put into revamping the controls to make it more suited for a gamepad I mean I remember playing the PC version and I think it's come a long way in that respect to just focus primarily on, of course, using the gamepad and the user interface is also changed to adapt to that as well I mean its not the hugest interface change but I think what needed to be changed to make it playable on the gamepad has been done So in terms of graphics you won't get the ultra from the PC but the Xbox is somewhere in between the middle and high from the PC because our artists worked a lot on redoing some of the assets to make them look better and also a lot of environment changes like the lighting and stuff like that So its not like the ultra from the PC but its pretty close to the high from the PC Absolutely we really think this is one of the best looking games on the Xbox You can always make something better, in my opinion you only stop working maybe due to time constraint You make something, you go yeah, it looks awesome but you maybe look at it six months later you go actually, wouldn't it be cool, or this and this and change it I mean I know there was one thing that always bothered me a little bit and Marek fixed that, it was the the wheel yeah, exactly It was this closed cut scene in the end of the game and this wheel, I don't know what its called really and it looked ok, but Marek made it look awesome I was like oh, god yes, it's been fixed So yeah, anything you want to add? So we remade some of the assets we fixed some of the minor problems we found while playing the game but that's about it when it comes to levels because we focused on optimizing and streaming stuff to make it work really smooth But we added lots of stuff like in different parts of the game we added a lot of new movies for example We have all the transitional movies between acts to actually keep you entertained while you wait until the game loads another act and then you can learn more about the storyline, which is really, really great On the other hand, we felt that act three could be a little bit longer and that's why we added those new occasions, new quests new adventures, new characters, new dialogues to expand it a little bit even more and we added extra cut-scenes in different places in the game also in act three, to show you the consequences of your decisions a little bit more So yeah, we had a lot of ideas actually how to make things better than we did the first time and that's one of the reasons why the Enhanced Edition is actually being built to make the game even better [Jessie] So having played the 360 version hands on I can say they're pretty much right on the money While it is easy to compare the 360 version to the PC version in a side by side due to the limitations of the 360 if you were, let's say, to go play the 360 version at a friends house and then go home and play it on your PC I am totally convinced you probably won't notice any differences at all and considering most people couldn't even play the Witcher 2 on anything above high chances are the 360 version might be the best bet for any of you out there who don't want to spend a fortune on a new PC This is also why you shouldn't be afraid of terms like enhanced or optimized as a PC user due to the release of the 360 version they had to rework everything for the new edition of the game work even better on your PC now than before while still looking just as beautiful When it comes to controls, the game actually feels a bit smoother on the 360 sure it takes a while to get used to not having keys that do different commands but when it comes to the movement and combat I actually kind of prefer the controller over the mouse and keyboard I know, heresy But going back to the keyboard and mouse while acknowledging the relase on the 360 is nice some PC gamers out there who already own the Witcher 2 and probably wrote in the comments before getting to this part are asking one question how much is the new content for those who already own a copy is it that typical 14.99 DLC price? Oh ye of little faith Once again proving they are increasingly becoming one of my favorite companies in the world CDProjekt is making every last ounce of the new content free for players that own the game already [Dev] It's like a goosebump reaction to me right now because it was really devaluated over time DLC means selling you small stuff for a lot of money and Enhanced Edition, its a huge improvement to the game we've got a lot of content in it I can't call it expansion, but I'll say I probably prefer this word and the thought process is very simple we believe that gamers don't have to buy our game and they might want to buy our game and we want to encourage them to go and buy it because a lot of them, especially on the PC for example they can go and download it from torrents, so why buy it Of course it's the conscience, if they want to play legally or not but especially here where we come from, Eastern Europe Poland in particular, the piracy is huge originally for years, when we were working here we were mostly on the market competing not with other companies, but with pirates So our thinking process is very simple give the best value to the gamer and if they like it then they'll buy the game and tell their friends that it's a good deal and that's what our enhanced proposition is about We also think this is the way to treat people and we would like to be treated this way and we're really pissed when we're ripped off on some DLC so we're going against it and I don't want to be a saint here I think it's a very good business proposition because I think we've proven it works on the Witcher 1 it sold over two million units to date so thanks a lot to all you guys who went out and bought the game so as long as we are here making great games we will be following this path and trying to give you additional smaller content for free I said numerous times that yes, if the time comes and we'll decide to make an expansion it will be several big hours of content and we'll probably put a price tag on it but if it's smaller stuff, if there are enhancements, if there are corrections I don't see any reason why should we charge anyone For me, if I go and buy a game and I pay the full price for it for me its more like I'm building a relationship with the company and then I see how they treat me, how is the sort of after sale customer service If for every single small thing they reach out their hand and ask me for money I'm like hmmm, am I really happy with this relationship am I getting good value and unfortunately the answer very often is no, I feel ripped off and usually I'm not buying again games from this company It's as simple as that [Jessie] And that's what makes the Enhanced Edition worth a look if you own the game already, you get new free content and if you don't own it, you not only have a chance to pick it up on a console system now but you also get a ton of new stuff to go along with it and that to me makes the Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition one of this years best gaming buys and entirely the reason for my promotion of it I love this game and if you watched my playthrough of it last year I barely even scratched the surface of what it has to offer Buy it, play it, and trust me you will love it Anyway guys, that's it, but before I go, I have to ask can I get a voice in the Witcher series? [Devs] No....no...there's no money that really is going to....no, no There's always Triss I said that Yeah, exactly I think we will have to ask Marcin We can switch places, for a moment Actually I really like this idea, so we'll send you some lines to record and then we'll release a patch to actually have you as a voice in the game So I think it's a done deal I'm really glad that you proposed this please await an email with lines to be recorded and you will be in the game, no problem [Jessie] Wait...really?