The good people at CD Projekt Red had a special treat for those willing to hang around on the last day of E3: a special preview of their planned console port of The Witcher 2 for the Xbox 360 (as well as some candy drugs). Myself, Amanda and Art managed to get in on the show, and were treated to a live demo played by a couple members of the development team.

Those of you who have fears of the 360 port being "dumbed down" compared to the PC version, you can already put those fears to bed. As we saw firsthand, the game will be exactly the same as the origial. That means the same non-linearity will be present, the graphics will still be awesome, and you will get your ass handed to you if you try to run into an encounter blindly flailing your sword around.

Oh, and there will also be boobs, so, Australia will most likely still be out of luck in getting a version for their region.

Anyway, our demo sesssion took us across two different play experiences through one of the introductory stages. One player took our protagonist through a more stealthy approach, putting out the torches that lined the hallways to make sneaking around a bit easier. He also took an alternate path that led to him freeing a female prisoner, and finally escaping the dungeons, being greeted with a perfect shot of the outside world, showing off the game's visuals. The other player took a more aggressive approach, taking out any guards he encountered using evasive tactics and utilizing spells to set up traps, to show the combat options one has available to them. He also went a completely separate route, fighting his way towards a different part of the area, where he needed to rescue a different prisoner. This friendly character shows a hidden passage, which our player took full advantage of to leave the dank underbelly of the castle and into the same outside area as in the first area. One stage, two different ways to go through it, plenty of chances for replayability, and you can expect a lot more similar cases to still exist in the port.

The 360 version is set to be released during Q4 of this year, so keep an eye out for it. If you haven't gotten the PC version yet because you're concerned about whether your computer can run it or not, it may also be fruitful to hold off for the 360 release.