The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is celebrating its 15-year anniversary at the moment, Might 17, 2026. Beneath, we study how its launch displays a selected time in gaming historical past, making it one-of-a-kind.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was a standout RPG when it launched fifteen years in the past, but it surely’s the type of sport you possibly can by no means make now.
Every of the three video games within the Witcher sequence marks an necessary second for developer CD Projekt Purple. The Witcher was the second the group went from being a studio that principally translated video games from different territories to being a developer of recent video games. The Witcher 3 was the second CD Projekt Purple turned a family title amongst avid gamers, because it set a high-water mark for open-world RPGs that related video games are nonetheless in contrast in opposition to.
However The Witcher 2 was a second of true ambition for the studio. It was the primary time the studio reached for technical excellence, creating its personal graphics engine to maneuver the Witcher sequence from being a clumsy re-engineering of another person’s engine to one thing of CD Projekt’s personal. It additionally marked the second when the studio started attempting to push the bounds of storytelling in video video games.
The concept that decisions matter in an RPG is one thing CD Projekt has chased throughout all of its video games. The Bloody Baron questline in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has Geralt investigating a lacking individuals case, solely to find a painful household historical past. He has to make a tough alternative to finish a curse. In Cyberpunk 2077, V is employed by a mayoral candidate named Jefferson Peralez, who believes there’s extra to the previous mayor’s demise than a easy assassination. Through the investigation, V discovers that Peralez’ beliefs are appropriate, however go a lot deeper than he expects. V has to determine whether or not to mislead him and let him reside a contented however false life, or to inform him the chilly reality and presumably destroy his life. These quests each provide tough choices, however the course of the primary story stays largely unchanged no matter your alternative.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
The Witcher 2 maybe places essentially the most drastic determination to gamers. On the finish of the primary act, you may be introduced with a alternative: Aspect with the insurgent resisters of the Scoia’tael or the Temerian particular army group known as the Blue Stripes.
Whereas this can be a severe philosophical determination within the context of The Witcher, it additionally has maybe the best affect of any single determination in a contemporary sport. If Geralt sides with the Scoia’tael, you may head to the Dwarven city of Vergen with Scoia’tael chief Iorveth. If Geralt sides with the Blue Stripes, you find yourself on the Kaedweni army camp with Blue Stripes commander Vernon Roche.
Which aspect you select determines the place you may spend the second act of the sport; when you select, the entire quests, characters, and places of the opposite path are lower off. It’s a must to miss 1 / 4 of the sport’s content material.
And that simply would not occur in a sport made at the moment, for a bunch of causes.
Even on the time of launch, The Witcher 2 sat firmly within the so-called double-An area of gaming–not an indie sport, not a blockbuster geared toward an enormous viewers, however fairly a sport made with excessive manufacturing values for a selected viewers. Within the time for the reason that sport’s 2011 launch, sport publishers have develop into an increasing number of risk-averse, and meaning they’re searching for one thing that is both very low-risk, or a game-changing success. The video games within the center are typically reasonably dangerous and reasonably successful–all whereas nonetheless being an extended anticipate return on funding.
Video games additionally merely take extra money and time to create. To make use of CD Projekt for example of rising growth time, the Witcher video games had been launched in 2007, 2011, and 2015, with the fourth sport releasing in 2027 on the earliest. With Cyberpunk 2077 releasing in 2020, that is nonetheless at the very least a seven-year cycle from manufacturing to release–nearly twice so long as the sooner video games. Growing an enormous part of the sport that half of your viewers will not see is a giant gamble. Gamers typically do not play video games like these greater than as soon as, so the individuals spending cash on growth will likely be tempted to have a look at one thing like The Witcher 2’s second act as growth finances being wasted on sport content material that will not be performed.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
Another necessary component to think about is the course taken for a lot of role-playing video games. There’s an expectation that so many of those will likely be open-world video games, and slicing out an enormous chunk of content material is tough to justify just by the character of open-world video games the place the expectation is which you can journey wherever at any time.
Even ignoring all of this, there weren’t many video games like this even on the time it was made. Fallout 3’s Megaton, which you’ll blow sky-high, is one instance of a sport the place you possibly can change the map in a big approach, though even in that case, the sport goes out of its technique to be sure you do not lose out on important content material by making that decision–the necessary quest-givers nonetheless survive.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings represents a time when these AA-size video games had been nonetheless commonplace, and the dangers concerned with a mid-size sport had been nonetheless acceptable, whether or not that was for a giant sport writer or for CD Projekt (which self-published The Witcher). With budgets being tighter and prices being larger, that leeway to take bizarre swings is more durable to seek out, and most frequently higher suited to smaller tasks or to small sections of larger video games. Gaming software program lately is often increase and bust or so small in scale that it is solely notable when a sport catches on sufficient that the better gaming public takes discover, like Peak, Slay the Spire, or Balatro. The center is simply more durable to seek out, and the dangers are too nice to spend money and time on one thing so substantial.