The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is less than a month away now, so here’s another dev diary to hold you over. It covers a lot of the gameplay elements, such as the “witchery side of the game,” the different skill trees, and how mutagens allow you to mutate some skills in one skill tree to make up for not being able to put points into other skill trees.
The devs talk a bit about how Geralt will be able to wield more types of weapons than in The Witcher, how crafting and using items works, and how you can combine items with magical attacks like setting fire to bombs. The game will also feature a permadeath difficulty mode where Geralt’s death ends the game.
I wouldn’t recommend starting out on that difficulty setting, as I died plenty of times while learning the combat mechanics in the beginning of the game and then made some stupid mistakes later on. It’s cool that it’s included though, as it doesn’t exactly sound like the hardest thing to include for the more hardcore gamers. I wonder how it will work with quicksaves?
