I had the game on my HDD for awhile and decided to try and finish it up before Witcher 3 is released...but for some reason after a few minutes, the game pauses while you can hear ambient noises. I had recently purchased a Nvidia GTX 970 and installed the most recent drivers. Any ideas on how to remedy this, thanks in advance!

It could be a driver issue. With the new GTX 970 you're bound to the newest drivers at the moment, but unfortunately they seem to have some problems. Freezing often happens when the card gets hotter and automatic throttling kicks in.

Try playing the game with low settings, just to see if the freezing persists. Also enable v-sync.

Hey thanks for replying, much appreciated! But unfortunately I have tried lowering the settings and enabling v sync, but it does the same thing. I will have to agree with you, I had the thought of it being a driver issue as well...looks like I'll have to wait it out then, because it's difficult to find anything with the new 900 series and the Witcher games (even though W1 ran perfectly fine). Still hoping it could be something else, but we'll see...thanks again! :)

Hmmm, I will definately try that.

**UPDATE** I finally (just got in from work) tried windowed mode and to my surprise, it actually worked! I wonder what could be the issue...