CD Projekt defends Witcher 2 difficulty

While The Witcher 2 landed in stores last week to almost universal acclaim a number of users, and reviewers, raised concerns about the RPG's brutal learning curve.

Developer CD Projekt's response? Deal with it.

In Eurogamer's 9/10 review of the game last week, Quintin Smith complained that the game was "ungodly tough" at the start before becoming more manageable later on.

"Obviously we have been inspired by hardcore games, by difficult games, and maybe that might be the reason why it was not that obvious to us," answered senior producer Tomasz Gop.

"But we didn't want the game to be a piece of cake at the beginning like, you know, an interactive movie. That wasn't what we were aiming for. We definitely wanted to introduce at least some level of difficulty.

"I think the most common misunderstanding is that most people compare our 'normal difficulty' to other games' 'normal difficulty'," he continued.

"Since we are a hardcore game, we do require a hardcore approach on the 'normal' skill. The 'easy' skill is basically for the guys who want to take it light.

Gop also answered one other complaint that some users have had: glitches. He explained that the development is working hard on a "huge" patch which it hopes will be available in the next few days.

"Definitely, we are aiming toward this week," he said. "I don't know if it's going to happen today or tomorrow but we will release a full changelog so everybody knows what's going to be addressed and knows what's coming.

"It's going to be a huge one and we've taken this last week really seriously and we're trying to fix if not all then most of the important things. It will definitely satisfy a huge number of gamers who are angry out there."

Aside from these few niggles, Gop said that the team is very pleased with how the game has been received.

"We'd like to see more reviews because we've been working for four years and it's only a week now [since release] so we're still waiting and craving for anybody and everybody to let us know what they think. But the ones we have seen so far are really good.

"There are better and worse reviews but still, the average score is totally positive. We did not expect the game to be flawless but it's over 90% and that's great.

"There are reviews that are really, really low but we take down notes and write down everything that is bad or criticism. We never whine or complain to any of the editors or actually anywhere outside [the studio]. If it's a really unfair review – because these things happen – we still try to take out anything that's constructive."

As detailed earlier today, Gop also revealed that CD Projekt is getting ready to announce a new Witcher title at E3 next month.