NB. You might notice a few changes to the layout this time around. Well, we're streamlining the PWNCAST posts for you, while adding in more options for your listening pleasure. Now, you can simply click on the banner above to play in browser, or use the player below; but we've also got a dedicate feed up and running, a smattering of reader buttons at the bottom, and a link to the PWNCAST on iTunes if that floats your boat.

After Jon joypukes over Borderlands 2, and Carl spills the beans on Guild Wars 2, we set about looking at film tie-ins and franchised games this week. We ask if a Battle Royale game is even possible, argue over how on earth we could possibly make a Naked Gun game, and come to the conclusion that a new Blues Brothers game would be the best thing ever.

PWNCAST | Season 1: Episode 9, Recorded: April 6th, 2012

Some of the things that get covered this week:

• Borderlands 2
• Guild Wars 2
• Why We Love...CD Projekt
• Would Battle Royale: The Game work?
• Who would we get to develop The Naked Gun?
• Jon Lester: available for corporate events and birthday
• The industry's need for Blues Brothers: The Game
• Some games we'd like to blow up

...and much, much more.

Parental Advisory: We've tried to keep it as conversational and informal as possible and you should be warned that there may be quite a few instances of strong language.

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Want more? Check out the rest of our PWNCAST posts onsite, hit us up on iTunes, or subscribe to the PWNCAST Feed here.

One of The Witcher II's designers has spoken out about monetising DLC, suggesting that although charging fair money for expansive additional content is fine, consumers shouldn't be charged for small, individual items.

The Witcher 2 will be infinitely more than just a port when it arrives on the Xbox 360. Instead, the new optimised version is designed to feel like a dedicated Xbox 360 exclusive - and packs new content, quests and features on top of the expansive original storyline. CD Projekt Red have spilled the beans in a new developer diary, which you can see after the break.

Geralt will grace the Xbox 360 with his deadly, pasty presence on April 17th. We've got more details in our developer walkthrough.

Fancy nabbing The Witcher I and II for under £15 this Christmas? Well from noon on Thursday you'll be able to do just that over at GOG.com. Downloadable awesomeness, without any of that pesky DRM-stuff.

The Witcher II deal will run from noon on Thursday 8th until midnight on Saturday 10th.

The site will also be giving away a whole bunch of promo codes for their $5.99 and $9.99 games across Facebook and Twitter and onsite as well.

Finally, from Monday, GOG will be knocking 50% off of 'virtually their entire catalogue'. Yay!

Catch more details over at GOG, here.

It did all seem a little too good to be true, didn't it? The Witcher 2, on Xbox 360, this year? It'll happen, just not so soon it seems, as CD Projekt have today confirmed the Assassins of Kings 360 port won't be released until 2012. Originally scheduled for November of this year, CD Projekt's ongoing legal dispute with Namco Bandai over publishing rights appears to have thrown a mischievous spanner in the works.

It's retailer rumour time again, folks. After CD Projekt recently teased that The Witcher 2: Assassin Of Kings might be making an appearance on consoles - and stating that "it’s not going to look like crap" - two Polish online stores have listed the hit RPG sequel for an Xbox 360 release. Gram.pl, which was originally owned by CD Projekt, ostensibly has box art for the console port as well as a November 15th release date. There's no news on a PS3 version as yet, but we'll know the full picture by this time next week. [gram.pl via Eurogamer]

Dave awarded The Witcher 2 9/10 in his recent review, calling it "brilliant, brutal and bewitching."

Well, surprise, surprise! LA Noire's jumped straight in at Number 1 in this week's UK Games Charts and my guess is that it'll stay in the top three for at least the next couple of weeks. Rockstar's Detective saga is jam packed full of content and I had a wicked time investigating away and busting criminals over the weekend! That's not to say it's a perfect game by any means, there are a couple of areas that could do with a bit of polish, but it's wonderful to see the story unfold before your eyes.

Potential Port On Hold Until PC Version Hits

CD Projekt, the developer behind hit RPG The Witcher and upcoming sequel The Witcher 2: Assassin Of Kings, has suggested that work will begin on a long-rumoured console port once the PC version has successfully released. However, development has not yet begun on a home console edition, and the decision will be based on whether or not PC sales warrant it.

Oh, and apparently it won't "look like crap." Good to know.

• What: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
• Where: Gamestation
• Current Price: £24.99
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Price Comparison

I have to admit, it sucks being a console-only gamer sometimes. While the PC market isn't in a decline, it's not quite what it used to be. But still, when you have games like The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings to look forward to. If you're interested, Gamestation have the cheapest pre-order offer going, and their pretty reliable in terms of release date delivery. Assassins of Kings looks set to be a beautiful, sprawling adventure, replete with a cracking, adult story set in a fantastical medieval realm.

• What: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Premium Edition
• Where: GameStation
• Current Price: £24.99
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Preview
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Price Comparison

I was considerably disappointed when the console version of The Witcher was canceled. An old school RPG with next-gen visuals and a cracking story? Yes please. However, White Wolf was put on hiatus as CD Projekt opted to focus on the sequel, Assassins of Kings. And, well, wow. It looks fantastic. Running on a new engine with updated graphics, sound and combat, The Witcher 2 looks set to be an early contender for Game of the Year in 2011. We sat down with a couple of the developers to discuss how the game was coming along and what we could expect. Give it a read, then, if you're suitable impressed, GameStation have a cracking pre-order deal here for the Premium Edition, which comes packed with two additional DVDs, a Making Of and official soundtrack disc, not to mention a fancy world-map, pamphlet and 'cursed coin' to muck around with.

Part two of our interview with Tomasz Gop and Marek Ziemak from CD Projekt Red. Not checked out Part One? Click here to travel back in time and read it as if it were yesterday!

GR: You’ve said before that some of the decisions you’ve made in the first game will affect the second game, similar to the Bioware titles; what would you say differentiates The Witcher 2 from, say, Dragon Age, or another high-fantasy RPG?

TG: Oh, that is tough. I mean, um…

GR: Because, obviously, they’re very well-regarded games, and you will naturally want yours to be even better.

TG: I want to start off with a sidenote: we’re not afraid of competition or drawing inspiration, because there are not too many RPGs on the market. It’s not like the shooter market, where everyone fights with everyone to get better guns or whatever, no. If someone likes RPGs, he will buy all of them. I mean, there’s like one or two deep RPGs coming out every year, so seriously, this is not an issue for us.

But, we are different in many aspects, for example, because we don’t have a generic fantasy world. Our world has been described in books; Andrzej Sapkowski is a writer who spent a huge part of his life inventing the world, and that makes this a comfortable situation for us because we can draw from that world. A lot of things that happen in the game are really ‘easier’ this way: easier for people who read the books, and also for the ones that didn’t. Also, for our designers who are working on the game, because they can think “Ok, let’s introduce someone from Nilfgaard, a bad guy”. In a generic fantasy world, four designers will be sitting around and one of them will think “Ok, this will be a guy on a horse”, another will think “This will be a guy with wings, on a dragon”, and so on. In our world, that doesn’t happen because Nilfgaard is a clear situation, and everyone knows what Nilfgaard is. So it’s easier for us to implement the game, and we have a more solid, more consistent view of everything. If you read the books, there’s even an added value which is cool but, of course, it’s not obligatory to read the books to be able to play through the game, which we're definitely mindful of.

Did that answer your question?

GR: Yes.

TG: That’s good, I almost got lost! *Laughs*

Click here to read the final part of our interview with CD Projekt Red...

Last Friday I got to sit down alongside GameRant's Phillipe Bosher in the press lounge at the Eurogamer Expo, and between us we fired a barrage of questions at CD Projekt Red's Tomasz Gop and Marek Ziemak to learn a little bit more about The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings...

Dealspwn: In relation to the first game, what did you want to do with The Witcher 2? How did you want to step it up?

Tomasz Gop: It’s really important to start off with a few important facts: we’re not doing a totally different game here. Seriously, we’re really happy that a lot of people liked The Witcher 1, so we’re really sticking topretty much the same principles. I mean, the story is going to be at least as deep as it was in The Witcher — we’re still basing the game on the story - it’s the main feature of the game. We’re going to be telling a mature, non-linear, engrossing story. But in regards to the things we’ve changed: we’ve looked at improving the things that people liked, and deeply changing the things that people complained about. So, the emphasis on the story is definitely still going to be around; it’s going to be the story of a morally questionable world where you never know what’s going to happen, where you have to think about what you would do, and not about what you would do if you wanted the game to recognise you as a good or bad player. And we’ve changed combat, for example, because some people thought it might’ve been too hardcore in The Witcher. We’ve done a lot to keep the same level of complexity, but not everything is obligatory.

Ultimately what I want to say is that it’s the same kind of game. It will be the same kind of game.

Marek Ziemak: And, remember, there’s totally different technology in the background right? So…

DP: Right, because [The Witcher] had Aurora, and now this is a new engine.

TG: The first one had the Aurora Engine, yeah. After doing the first game, we thought “Ok, if we want to progress with the game further, if we want to implement new ideas, Aurora won’t do this time.” Ok, there are things that we want to change deeply and there are things that we only want to improve, but even for these smaller improvements, it still was not enough to use Aurora. That’s why we just sat down and implemented our engine, it took a year or a year and a half for prototyping things and so on. We started doing this right after the release of the first game, and after eighteen months, this is when The Witcher 2 started on the new engine.

Game Rant: So, you say that it’s going to be quite similar to The Witcher; if this is the first time someone had seen The Witcher series, why would they want to start with The Witcher 2? What is compelling about this game, when compared to the first one?

TG: Just like The Witcher, this is still a standalone game: it’s a totally separate chapter. I mean, you don’t have to play The Witcher to know what’s going on in The Witcher 2, and besides that, the game still introduces everything that’s important to you, without telling the whole story of the first game. In case you don’t know, or don’t care, whatever’s the case, you don’t have to play The Witcher.

MZ: But we still encourage players to go and play it!

TG: It would be great! *Laughs* Yeah, it would be perfect if people played the first game. But why would people want to play The Witcher 2? Well...we’re developers that have played a lot of RPGs ‘back in the day’, and that’s what we wanted to do; we wanted to do the game that way. This is why we sat down to make these games - both The Witcher 1 and 2 - because, as long time genre fans, we think this is how RPGs should be made.

Click here to read the rest of Part One of our interview with CD Projekt Red...