During a press conference held on 26th January, CD Projekt Red S.A. has started the campaign promoting Xbox 360 version of the Witcher 2: Assasins of Kings. The main part of the promotion is animated intro directed by Tomek Bagiński and produced by Platige Image. The Xbox version of the game will premiere on 17th April 2012.

The film introducing the player to the game’s world, is a consecutive cooperation between CD Projekt Red S.A. and PI. It was made especially for this Xbox 360. The movie is available at www.gametrailers.com.

“We got first, sketch version of the script from CD Projekt couple years ago, right after the premiere of the The Witcher. It was so called “soft” version which for us was the basis we could use to work on. In spite of vast changes we made, the project went on hold for almost two years until it was brought back to life in Xbox 360 version.

As it turned out these two years gave both parties necessary perspective and once we started working on a script again we were able to create new, better, richer version in a very short time.

What was left from the original is the ship and main characters. All the rest has been changed. For example in the first version the assassination was made with the hornet’s nest and the ship was supposed to be very chaotic place full of people running and batting away. It would probably look like a group of electrocuted man people. Well…we got rid of ”the dance”, left the chaos and add a lot of steroids. It helped.” — says Tomek BagiÅ„ski, the director.

„It was one of the most demanding projects in Platige Image history. The script set up a very high standards. As for such a short movie there were a lot of main, detailed characters, difficult face close-ups, very dynamic action full of special effects: cloth and particles simulation and hard slowmotion shots.

The ship also became one of the main characters. First our graphic artists created a fantastic scenery and most of all great, very detailed sailing ship. Then the particles simulation team went rough with it. They created a vast interaction system covering the whole construction, later they covered it with ice and millions of ice crystals, and finally they smashed the whole thing.” — adds Maciek Jackiewicz (CG Supervisor).

The team of 40 graphic designers and animators was involved in the project for couple moths.

Chris Arrant

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