Atari - producer, publisher and distributor of video games - has confirmed the Gold status for The Witcher, the company's approach to traditional role-playing, blending a twisted plot in which the player's decisions can drastically alter the outcome of the game. Developed by CD Projekt RED, The Witcher is due out for the European market on October 26th, as an exclusive PC title.

Michal Kici�ski, CD Projekt Joint CEO said that "creating The Witcher was a huge challenge, but also an adventure. Our task was to create a game with an incredibly involving story and a credible world - a role-playing Game that we ourselves would like to play, We approached this task with no compromises. Thanks to that The Witcher is not just another RPG. It's a piece of work that in many respects changes and extends the typical canon of such games. It's quite a brave approach, however I believe that thanks to that attitude 'The Witcher' will bring much freshness into the genre and, of course, will give the players all around the world lots of joy and positive emotions," he added. "And we couldn't have asked for a better publishing partner than Atari. We're very happy that The Witcher will join Atari's stable of fantastic role-playing games."

The Witcher tells the story of Geralt, a man who becomes a "witcher" (a traveling monster hunter gifted with unnatural powers). The setting is that of a medieval world, implemented with tons of details from that time. The natural light during various phases of the day is realistically altered and the day and night transitions serve to enrich the game's ambience. For example: conditions can change rapidly from a light drizzle to a dark, stormy downpour accompanied by thunder and lightning.

A more impressive feature though (as mentioned in the introductory column), more gameplay-related, is that players will sometimes have to go on instinct to get further into the game and succeed. Basically, if you kill the wrong person you may not be getting an important item later on. However, not slaying someone at the right time may result in your death, as that someone will have planned to kill you later on, according to the storyline. For this feature alone, it may very well become the RPG of the year.

We've made available a bunch of key features below. Take a look:

- charismatic and unique character - Geralt is a mutant swordmaster and professional monster slayer
- 250 special abilities correlated to attributes, combat skills and magical powers to build the character in a way best suited to tactical needs and style of play
- game inspired by the writings of renowned Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, featuring adult themes, less fairy-tale than typical fantasy, with mature social issues like racism, political intrigue and genocide
- the storyline is full of turns, twists and ambiguous moral decisions which have real impact on the game's outcome
- complex yet intuitive real-time combat based on real medieval sword-fighting techniques.
- 600 spectacular and authentic in-game combat animations
- six combat styles, dozens of potions, complex alchemy system, modifiable weapons and powerful magic

Now remember: The Witcher has just gone gold, meaning that manufacturing plants are already burning the game on discs, set to hit European retailers on October 26th. Here's the game's official website.