The video you mentioned in the link is for CDPR's internal usage, not for end users (who are not supposed to see it).

So?

To Op: Yep, Aard have been nerfed to the point it's now the most useless magic. In TW1 and in this video, it seemed overpowered, but now, I don't see any point in investing in it. The features we see in the video would have been swell. But they obviously were too much to handle and must have caused tons of bugs.

Overall this video was just typical PR talk. It reminds me much of the propaganda around Oblivion's RadiantAI. And we know now what kind of fiasco this was.

Except you can push people (and monsters) off ledges.

You are not only one ;)

In this AlphaBuild was a lovely, gorgeous, delightful, excellent, breathtaking atmosphere!!!

The weather effects were the best I have ever seen in the games.

CDProjectRed, why did cut this atmosphere?

Please ad this features in next patches, or may be in extended edition of TW2 :)

Nope. Aard is still very useful. Stun for one hit kills, works pretty well and pretty much essential in one of the fights. Plus, if there is a cliff behind your enemy Aard will pretty much make them fly away to their death.

You pretty much answered this yourself: It's exactly that: Advertising. PR. In the beginning CDPR had to convince their investors. It was also a proof of concept.

Yes it looked fabulous. But you're right again: The much stronger Aars probably priduced many glitches. So it had to be nerfed, the amount of physical objects, too. The weather, while it looked nice, was way over the top. Why would there be a storm like this all the time? Plus in the end it seems that "winter" was simply not good for the scenario. How would they explain that going a few days up the river moves you from a lush jungle environment into a winter scenario? It's not in the hill and since the geography of the witcher-world is pretty much known as well you couldn't just transport the whole story near the polar region.

They changed things. It's natural. It happens for ALL and EVERY game. Normally though videos like this stay internal as they should. So there's your "so?". ;) Too bad I noticed this too late in the game. Only when I fought in the mine for the second time I was able to blast some guys from the underground-cliff. Had I known before I could've had my fun since the prologue. There are some cliffs there, too. Well...next time. :D

Quoted for emphasis.

I knocked someone off an edge just yesterday, and with a non-upgraded Aard, no less. No idea what OP is talking about.

Another thing for OP to ponder--can you imagine fighting 10 or more nekkers with the old combat style? That would cease to be fun after about 15 seconds.

I disagree. Fun would end after 2 seconds of group style slaughter with 10 or more nekkers lying butchered on the floor by clicking the mouse 3-4 times. ;)

@topic: You're right about the weather effects. They look great and convey a great deal of atmosphere. Although I guess they removed it for technical reasons: In the video, the tents aren't moving at all, which doesn't fit in the image with the flags flapping like crazy - animating them all would be hard to be done in a good-looking way and would eat up lots of resources. Also, what would the mist in front of the camp look like in a storm like that? And so on. With such a high level of detail, it's very hard to make a storm look impressive and realistic, I guess.

On the other hand, I'm glad they decided to make the game more colorful than alpha. 25-50 hours of constant blue filtering for dark atmosphere would probably be annoying. :)

Yeah, I rather miss the group fight style, too. On the other hand though this fighting style tended to equalize all enemies. Tough, quick, slow, fast? Doesn't matter, just use the group style and slaugther them. Especially for the heavily armored folks this felt a little bit odd.

In TW2 you have to use the right style / approach / tactic for the right enemy or group. Which I like.

Anyway, I'm currently enjoying the three fighting styles in The Witcher 1 and will enjoy the different fighting mechanic in The Witcher 2 just the same when I get back to it. Diversity is good! :)

As others have already made clear: This is meant as promotional material for their investors (and such); they never used this to market it to the players. Either way, the combat system we ended up getting in TW2 is far, far, far superior to the one we had in TW1 (and which is featured in this video). The only thing shown in the video that I wish they would've managed to keep in the final version, is the absolutely breathtaking weather effects.

I've knocked enemies off of ledges; a most useful tool on the walls of Vergen.

I think this has to do with the severe nerfing of the signs, and especialy the aard sign. You barely hit one enemy this time around, even with area affects; while in Alpha it's still Witcher1 uber signs, which obviously hurls many more enemies at the same time, far further.

Everybody is talking about Aard and the weather. Heck, what about the Princess who disappeared somewhere between the Alpha and Release? If that wasn't a "Save your Orens & not be broke" moment, I don't know what was. : )

I too would've preferred the darker, grittier atmosphere (the final game looked "too sunny") and the different combat styles a la W1, which looked much more improved in alpha, not to mention, looking at the animations, it looked like there was no thought of a gamepad in that build.

Yeah, I kinda missed the barrels too...

Wish we had more NPC reactions like that...