On this day, exactly 15 years ago, the second part of the Witcher series was launched, which introduced Geralt to the audience on consoles for the first time.
Polish CD Projekt RED is considered big today developers. However, at the beginning of this decade, they did not even have the experience of making games for consoles. The continuation of the successful The Witcher was made precisely with that in mind, to break through the series on a wider market, outside of the native PC.
The Witcher 2: Assassin’s of Kings, which was released on this day in 2011, was initially exclusive to the PC platform, but its design showed that developed with consoles in mind. For example, it had controller support, and QTE sequences in gameplayu they were a design feature as seen in console action games. Furthermore, the different perspectives (cameras) from the first part were dropped from the sequel, and the game was played exclusively from the third person with the camera behind Geralt’s back.
Although the game was initially exclusive to PC, the design and controls were adapted to consoles.
The Witcher 2 was a pretty ambitious game for its time. At one point he gave the players a choice that dictated the next regionand along with her dozens this goes. In other words, you couldn’t see everything Witcher 2 has to offer in one pass. The depictions of large battles were also ambitious, something that not even the third part attempted on such a scale.
The Witcher 2 achieved solid sales fueled by good reviews. Just one month after the release of the PC version, a version for the Xbox 360 console was announced, which came out a year later. PC players got it improved edition in 2012, and for free, with 10 gigabytes of new content.
The interesting thing is that The Witcher 2 the then US President Barack Obama also received as a gift while he was visiting Poland. Even then, it was clear how much Poles appreciate the work of CD Projekt, and the third part confirmed that The Witcher series is the most profitable export product of the Republic of Poland.
Former US President Barack Obama also received Witcher 2 as a gift.
The second chapter of the Witcher never appeared on the PlayStation, but even without that it achieved good sales of several million copies. The version for Xbox 360 was subsequently improved for the Xbox One X console, and is compatible with current Xbox Series platforms.