CD Projekt: Witcher 2 intro cinematic “the most expensive asset we ever created”

That very lovely Witcher 2 intro cinematic – the one with the bloke on the boat and the blood – was the “most expensive asset we ever created”, developer CD Projekt Red told Eurogamer.

Said studio managing director Adam Badowski: “It was a huge budget. But we probably can’t tell how big.”

Pretending we didn’t hear, we pressed him. Half as much as the Xbox 360 project cost – a full year’s wage for a full team of developers?

“No, no!” denied Badowski. “But it was a significant part.”

“For sure that was the most expensive asset we ever created,” chimed head of marketing Michal Platkow-Gilewski.

CD Projekt Red press-released the lavish cinematic, and was quick to announce that more than one million people had watched it.

It created a lot of buzz.

“Oh. My. Gawd,” wrote Eurogamer reader Ostinato after watching the trailer.

“Maybe I won’t trade my 360 in after all,” added dadrester.

Fellow Polish developer, Techland, created a deafening buzz with a CGI trailer for Dead Island – a flawed but very popular RPG survival-horror.

Did CD Projekt Red take a leaf out of Techland’s book when approaching the console audience and attempt to ‘woo them with a video’?

“We started working on our intro before Techland made the Dead Island trailers,” Michal Platkow-Gilewski told Eurogamer. “We admire what they did, it was great work, but it’s not the case that we saw that and said, ‘Wow we have to do the same.’ Especially as, you know, killing people in our CGI – if it played from the end to the beginning in reverse order that wouldn’t look so cool.”

Badowski said the video was commissioned for “the fans” to fill in a story blank and show the first assassination that the game’s Assassins of Kings subtitle refers to.

“It was of course a great asset for the console game,” Badowski said, “but in terms of the storyline.”

And, he added: “This movie is around four minutes. It’s too long as a regular trailer.”