The Witcher Revisited

[Tigranes]

So. I vowed that I wouldn't buy it until a patch or fan-patch was released to restore the dialogue, but I was bored and I succumbed. I finished the long tutorial area and looked about a little bit in the first town (Vizima?). I don't think we had a lot of post-play discussions about the Witcher, but surely some of us have played/finish it by now? No? Did I miss a ginormous thread somewhere? Well, impressions. Only ~5 hours in.

 

Story / Writing

A pretty standard beginning. The opening FMV was nice and the fight scene was a whole lot longer and more impressive than NWN series', they poured some gold into that one. They use the cinematic dialogue mode to tell most of the story, but since the voice-acting (so far) is quite good, the effect is nice. I obviously haven't uncovered much, but there are few unnatural parts, whether due to translation or bad writing, and the flow of the writing fits the quick pace of the gameplay as well as the darker and 'pragmatic' touch behind the setting. Promising so far.

 

Graphics / Visuals

Obsidianites should know by now my computer has more suck power than a possessed vacuum cleaner, so I'm playing everything on low. That said, it still looks alright. The characters are well-made up and look smoother and better-rounded, having lost the 'blocky' look the NWN series can have. It's inherited from the Aurora Engine the weirdity of characters running on the spot or gliding around, but the character animations are quite solid too. The art direction is generally spot on, and the game succeeds on looking like its own thing, not related to NWN, and looking pretty good at that. I imagine with high-end computers it will be even better. Oh, the GUI are pretty stylised and look good, too.

 

Combat

Hrm. It looks pretty solid, but simple. Sort of like Jade Empire actually. You have Group Stance, Fast Stance, Strong Stance; but whatever stance you use, its usually the matter of targeting an opponent, then clicking the mouse every couple of seconds to carry on the combos or parry/dodge. I imagine with a wider variety of Signs (magic) and potions coming up as the game goes by, the combat will get busier and more frenetic. Right now it looks good, like Jade Empire, but is a little dull, like Jade Empire. At least dead corpses don't drop glowing balls.

 

Character Development

You've got this, sort of a tree thing, one tree for each primary stat (Strength, etc), each fighting style, and so forth. It looks pretty solid, though I'm disappointed there doesn't seem to be any sort of special 'fighting moves' you can learn. It might be gimmicky but it would sure make the battle more fun. Still, there seem to be a lot of abilities to learn so we will see how that turns out. Oh, and you all know that you cant change your gender or whatever, right? If you don't, you clearly have Sand on ignore. Personally it doesn't really bother me at all, as long as I can play the character my own way. And so far, it seems I can to a limited degree (under the general personality setting provided for Geralt; I obviously can't go around saying things like "Oh goody goody gumdrops" in that setting). I'm happy with that, but some may not be, fair play to them.

 

Other Gameplay

Standard RPG stuff: go around and talk to people, get quests, do quests, get reward. There is an alchemy system that is actually fairly similar to the Elder Scrolls: you pick up ingredients including 'natural' ones, mix them through formulae you learn throughout the game, voila, potion. I haven't encountered a really interesting one yet, but like the Elder Scrolls there seem to be a big variety of such 'miscellaneous' items found in the game (e.g. X wine, Y wine). Personally I found Oblivion/Morrowind's massive range of such flavour items too cumbersome, but it is a nice touch, so we shall see.

There is a definite set of schedules by which people act: on a basic level people sleep and wake, move around a little, sometimes even eat food or whatnot. I have yet to see how extensive this is; probably similar to Oblivion, but it's still a nice thing, I think. Of course, I visited the Priest's house at 4am and woke him up to talk about a quest, and he seemed quite happy to jolt up and give a good rant about religion and morality. Hrrmm.

Regarding the sex stuff - the tutorial gives you an opportunity to hit the sack with your former lover (tried it: just a nothing-shown scene, infinitely better than Mass Effect's B-movie stuff, then the card), and then the first town has a maid who seems rather easy to seduce. I guess the rule of the RPG hero applies - everyone wants you, even if you have white hair and have scars all over. I wonder why TNO never got any.

 

Miscellaneous

The sound and music seems decent to good so far; nothing bad but nothing amazing, yet. The voiceovers are pretty good, I really really detest bad voiceovers so this is nice to see. I've also encountered no bugs so far. On my slow system the loading times are quite long, but not much longer than NWN2/MOTB.

 

So far I think it's definitely recommendable. It's not going to 'revolutionise RPGs and gaming', but what, you actually believed that? I think like other big RPGs in recent years, it will give a good solid romp, but its design lends itself to enjoyment for me more than Oblivion's somewhat family restaurant / straight up high fantasy stuff, so I think I will like it.

 

Now come on, I'm sure somebody here has already finished the game? I'm surprised how little we've talked about it.

[SteveThaiBinh]

I've downloaded it, but am saving it for Christmas. Reviews seem to range from good to excellent, so I'm really looking forward to it.

 

In related news, as you noted the sometimes unnatural dialogue, someone over at RPG codex has unlocked the original English dialogue in the game (apparently, somewhere between translation from Polish and voice-recording, a lot was cut, resulting in the unnatural bits you've found). Anyway, it appears from the discussion in the thread that it isn't really workable quite yet, because the game scripts are now out of sync with the dialogue, but they're optimistic that a modding effort will be able to fix this and make it work in the future).

[Pop]

So how do you get this game in the States, then?

[Pidesco]

At a store?

[Hallowed_be_thy_name]

Interesting read

 

I'll probably get it to kill time during the Christmas break. Hope its as good as Gothic 3...

[kumquatq3]

The games freaking fantastic. It's a little rough around the edges and the "translation" can be rough at time, but it's just a joy to play. I want a Witcher 2 much more than I want beth's Fallout 3 right now.

[Tigranes]

I'm a few more hours in and it is a very enjoyable game, even at like 10fps and low graphics. I looked around a little with grass and things on and the game is very beautiful. In art direction and game design actually, its quite a lot like Gothic 3.

 

I haven't found any of those 'lesser of two evils' moments yet, but then the story has hardly even begun and I've just been running errands. This game is worth playing though.

[Meshugger]

I am currently playing it as well. Without going into too much detail, i can honestly say that this is my RPG of the year (MotB doesn't count, since it was an expansion), and also my favorite candidate for GOTY. I am playing on max settings @1280x1024 with smooth framerate. Choices and consequences work really well, beautiful artwork, great atmosphere and a setting that is way more mature than any other D&D-games.

[Musopticon?]

I have to agree with the people here. It's really something. Even in measly 10 fps(rrrragh) with almost everything in low(argghh spit grrr). Seeing the Vizima gates in sunset for the first time was unforgettable and, on an entirely graphically unrelated note(lol, hedge) this is one of the few games that actually has an interesting and useful alchemy minigame. I also dig the rest features and the constantly updating lore sections of the journals.

 

My only gripe is with the ridiculous amount of damage you can take(on normal). And regenerative items are easy to come by. It's not a breeze, but it is on the easier side of things.

Edited December 12, 2007 by Musopticon?

[Xard]

The demo was released in polish some time ago, I guess it's not too long 'till english one...

 

 

I sall test it and if I like it, as I suspect, I'm going to get this game

[Musopticon?]

I hope the demo is not just Kaer Morhen(tutorial castle), because that place doesn't really show off the game. Though the cinematics are nice and quests are solid.

[Xard]

IIRC it's supposed to be prologue and Act I

[Musopticon?]

Woh, that's long!

[Pop]

I remember the Deus Ex demo that consisted of everything up until Hong Kong. I was a bit pissed, since if they were going to include half the damn game why not include the rest? But it got me to buy the game outright, so I suppose it was unusually successful.

[Tigranes]

IIRC it's supposed to be prologue and Act I

 

That's *too* long if that's true. Half of Act 1 would be sufficient for demo purposes, why put up for free nearly a quarter of the game? But then, if that's what they want to do..

 

Maybe it's not selling quite so well.

[SteveThaiBinh]

If it's the kind of game that sucks you in slowly, then it makes sense to have a reasonably long demo. The only down-side I can see is that the file must be huge, but then, surely most of that would be the engine, and making the demo shorter wouldn't make the file a whole lot smaller?

[Xard]

Yeah, demo will be big

 

IIRC it's supposed to be prologue and Act I

 

That's *too* long if that's true. Half of Act 1 would be sufficient for demo purposes, why put up for free nearly a quarter of the game? But then, if that's what they want to do..

 

Maybe it's not selling quite so well.

 

Actually, I'm not entirely sure if it was half of the Act I or whole Act I but I'm inclined to latter no matter how crazy it sounds

[Xard]

The demo contains most of the prologue and Act I.

 

[taks]

i think you are correct, stevethaibinh. even the relatively short bioshock demo was a huge file.

 

am i correct in what i've read that the demo is in polish?

 

taks

[Xard]

So far only in polish

 

English version should be coming too though

[Xard]

The English version of the demo of CD Projekt's The Witcher has been released online. The demo contains most of the Prologue and Act I of the game. A list of mirrors can be found here. Note that the loading times in the demo are improved over the ones in the actual game, and are said by CD Projekt to be improved even more in the upcoming 1.2 patch.

 

Downloading now

[jaguars4ever]

Word of advise when playing Witcher: Don't alt-tab.

 

You've been warned.

[Meshugger]

Word of advise when playing Witcher: Don't alt-tab.

 

You've been warned.

 

Ah, i just had to try it

 

I got a "Just-In-Time"-error and Visual Studio booted up, trying to debug Witcher.exe. This consumed 2.5 gig of my 4 gig of RAM and crashed the explorer.

 

What did you got?

[Tigranes]

Odd, despite my hideously crap computer I can still alt-tab. It lags a lot, but it can do it.

 

The Witcher's had zero bugs so far, except for a couple of random crashes. In Act 3 now and the game is still going strong.

[Tale]

I'm in the final chapter. Should finish tomorrow. I could probably finish today, but I want to do something else and not rush it.