The Witcher 2 - Preview at N4G

Cathlin Sentz, N4G Community Manager, talked with Tom Ohle, CD Project's PR man. During their talk, she was shown a preview of Witcher 2: Assasins of Kings. Screenshots included. 

Here's two snips from the preview. First one about gameplay:

Visiting an area of the game, one that Ohle describes as "a town that, depending on the choices you made before this, you might actually not see at all", we pick up a quest to follow up on some missing young men. Definitely suspicious, and as the Witcher we mostly suspect monsters. While traveling to the destination, we come across guards fighting demons and have the option to sort of skirt the battle and let them continue to fight it out, or dive in. Since the games enemies do not scale there will be times to embrace the flight response, instead of fight.

Second about quests and story:

Absent from Witcher 2 are volumes of tiny side quests, opting instead for a smattering of those among meatier questing options. "In the first game there were a lot of quests where you ended up having to run back and forth between areas and you spent a lot of time like that, and then you say 'Oh, yeah it was 80 hours of gameplay'. Well, a lot of that was spent kind of running around the same areas", Ohle comments. "There's a lot more focus on trying to get to the point and spend more time exploring the world or actually being in gameplay."