Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

The Witcher 1 Thread

Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,151
TW1's combat is more about the strategic element than the tactical one, things like proper preparation and toxicity management rather than just slowly clicking everything to death one fight at a time. The hardest difficulty level is pretty much mandatory in this regard, even though high-level Igni does break it near the endgame, and Aard kind of breaks it in the early parts of the game. The combat is nothing spectacular, but it generally gets the job done and works well in tandem with the other systems in the game (most importantly alchemy, of course). It's nowhere near as bad as the combat in Arcanum, and for ARPG combat I find it generally serviceable, not particularly great but not among the worst of the bunch either. I also kind of disagree about the high amount of combat — sure, the swamps can be a trash mob hell, but outside of them there's actually not that much combat, and the fights are generally pretty short. There are points in the game where I've spent hours in Vizima without engaging in a single fight, and the combat areas are generally compact enough to not overstay their welcome.

I think going for action combat was a natural move in a series where you control a legendary swordsman, but the problem with the sequels was that they didn't do action combat very well and threw all logic out of the window. TW2's combat system was a horribly unbalanced mess despite their numerous attempts to fix it, and it also ruined the alchemy system that played such an integral role in TW1. TW3's combat had similar issues plus a ton of additional nonsense, like all sorts of broken abilities and practically unlimited potions that could be consumed instantly even mid-fight. As far as mechanics go, TW1 is by far the best game in the series.

Exactly, TW1 combat is predicated on the assumption that if you start a fight stupidly, you should lose or at least be badly wounded. This would be absolutely lost if there was a "skill" part of the combat, like in TW2 where you can just calmly do the equivalent of circle-strafing the Cyberdemon from Doom and win without a scratch all the time.


What's the consensus on the Rise of the White Wolf Enhanced Edition mod? I was planning on giving it a go on my second Witcher playthrough.

As far as I can tell this is just a bunch of high-res textures or something? Some screenshots I can find just make it look worse.

I'd recommend playing FCR instead if you want an overhaul to make combat require more thought and preparation.
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
Almost every single element within the Witcher 1 was in service to the experience of being a Witcher hence they work in tandem to amplify the game even if some are weak.

Almost every single element in Witcher 2&3 was in service to make the game capitalize on current trends which says it all.
This is such a whiny bullshit
 

Carrion

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 30, 2011
Messages
3,648
Location
Lost in Necropolis
He's right, though. TW2 and TW3 are full of stuff that shouldn't really be there, from the not-dialogue-wheel conversation system (meaning that the actual responses are different from what is says on the screen) to the QTEs and from the super cool Awesome Button finishing animations to almost Ubisoft-like "points of interest". The games are still fun, but you get the impression that a lot of that stuff was included just because other new games have it, not because it'd be a particularly good fit for a witcher game (or any other game, for that matter).
 
Self-Ejected

Ludo Lense

Self-Ejected
Joined
Nov 28, 2014
Messages
936
Almost every single element within the Witcher 1 was in service to the experience of being a Witcher hence they work in tandem to amplify the game even if some are weak.

Almost every single element in Witcher 2&3 was in service to make the game capitalize on current trends which says it all.
This is such a whiny bullshit

Name one original systemic element in the Witcher 2&3.
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
Almost every single element within the Witcher 1 was in service to the experience of being a Witcher hence they work in tandem to amplify the game even if some are weak.

Almost every single element in Witcher 2&3 was in service to make the game capitalize on current trends which says it all.
This is such a whiny bullshit

Name one original systemic element in the Witcher 2&3.

Horse teleportation. Pretty original spell concept, especially for a game with an otherwise lackluster magic arsenal.
 
Self-Ejected

Ludo Lense

Self-Ejected
Joined
Nov 28, 2014
Messages
936
Almost every single element within the Witcher 1 was in service to the experience of being a Witcher hence they work in tandem to amplify the game even if some are weak.

Almost every single element in Witcher 2&3 was in service to make the game capitalize on current trends which says it all.
This is such a whiny bullshit

Name one original systemic element in the Witcher 2&3.

Horse teleportation. Pretty original spell concept, especially for a game with an otherwise lackluster magic arsenal.

latest
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
He's right, though. TW2 and TW3 are full of stuff that shouldn't really be there, from the not-dialogue-wheel conversation system (meaning that the actual responses are different from what is says on the screen) to the QTEs and from the super cool Awesome Button finishing animations to almost Ubisoft-like "points of interest". The games are still fun, but you get the impression that a lot of that stuff was included just because other new games have it, not because it'd be a particularly good fit for a witcher game (or any other game, for that matter).
Shortened dialogues are design choice in service of keeping the dialogue scenes faster paced. It is handled exceptionally well in Witcher games, there are only few rare instances when action does not reflect dialogue choice (shoving Dijkstra is a good example). I have no problem with this system when it is handled well, it serves the design goals of this series well.
QTEs have been a mistake, admitted by CDP who stopped doing them (and even in TW2 they were optional for the most part).
Finisher animations just make combat more visually pleasing to look at. I dont mind them.
Points of interest are optional stuff to discover while travelling. There is nothing wrong with them, but CDP fucked up by including the question marks by default. They should have been disabled.
 
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,103
This is just sad. People actually arguing that W1 combat was anything but complete shit.

Look, I enjoyed the preparation aspects of it, but the truth is, they were only needed (even on Hard difficulty which is how I completed the game) for a very small number of fights against boss-like enemies. The other 95-98% of fights (a shit-ton in other words) was just endless, pointless clicking without any semblance of either skill or strategy/tactics.

What makes it even more insulting, much like most terribad RPG combat, is how easy it is to produce halfway-decent action combat. All you need to do is have some reactive mechanics in play, ie the enemy does A, you have to do B quickly to counter, enemy does C, you have to react with D in real time. Just having to select the appropriate action out of some pool and perform it in time would already produce combat better than 99% of action RPGs out there. But instead, we get see prompt, click, see promt, click. Depressing...
 

Haplo

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
6,138
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Well, believe it or not, some people prefer games that don't require twitch real-time reactions.
Or only like them if they are done exceptionally well (think Dragons Dogma or Dark Souls).
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
This is just sad. People actually arguing that W1 combat was anything but complete shit.

Look, I enjoyed the preparation aspects of it, but the truth is, they were only needed (even on Hard difficulty which is how I completed the game) for a very small number of fights against boss-like enemies. The other 95-98% of fights (a shit-ton in other words) was just endless, pointless clicking without any semblance of either skill or strategy/tactics.

What makes it even more insulting, much like most terribad RPG combat, is how easy it is to produce halfway-decent action combat. All you need to do is have some reactive mechanics in play, ie the enemy does A, you have to do B quickly to counter, enemy does C, you have to react with D in real time. Just having to select the appropriate action out of some pool and perform it in time would already produce combat better than 99% of action RPGs out there. But instead, we get see prompt, click, see promt, click. Depressing...

People are harping about how stupid dodging is but TW 1 does not even need dodging you just chose your attack, fast, strong, group and mash the button in rythm which is easy to learn and just throw in the occasional sign, derp. There is little to no dodging needed and potions are usable easily in combat once you have Quen which does not take long.
 

Carrion

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 30, 2011
Messages
3,648
Location
Lost in Necropolis
Shortened dialogues are design choice in service of keeping the dialogue scenes faster paced. It is handled exceptionally well in Witcher games, there are only few rare instances when action does not reflect dialogue choice (shoving Dijkstra is a good example). I have no problem with this system when it is handled well, it serves the design goals of this series well.
It's not just about shortening the lines but altering the content just for the fun of it. In the very first dialogue choice of TW2 you can choose to say "very funny", and Geralt will say "fuck you" instead. It serves no purpose whatsoever, and the only reason it happens is because BioWare games do that too. TW3 is better in this regard for the most part, sometimes even displaying the whole response if possible, but it still has a number of critical choices that come off as needlessly vague because of this, for example

talking to Ciri after the battle of Kaer Morhen, or when wrecking Avallac'h's lab.

Finisher animations just make combat more visually pleasing to look at. I dont mind them.
The ones in TW3 are fine. TW2, on the other hand, had a literal awesome button in the form of adrenaline rush and the heliotrop sign: fill a meter, press a key, everything dies. It was just horrible and, like the QTEs and certain rather invasive cutscenes, another misguided attempt to make the game more cinematic like all of its competitors.

Points of interest are optional stuff to discover while travelling. There is nothing wrong with them, but CDP fucked up by including the question marks by default. They should have been disabled.
There's lots of wrong with them. They make the world seem a lot less cohesive when you're constantly running into treasure chests guarded by monsters, or dead people carrying notes that lead you to a treasure chest, or treasure chests floating in the water guarded by identical packs of drowners or sirens... They're just a poor addition to a game which otherwise is full of unique content and gorgeous environments with an immense amount of thought and detail put into them. The points of interest feel like a last-minute addition, like CDPR weren't sure whether their world had enough things to do in it, so they added some generic content to fill all that space. The expansions improved this aspect a bit by making the POIs more unique, but they're still by far the weakest piecs of content of the game and somewhat out of place.

All of these are fairly minor things in isolation, but they're just random examples. There's also stuff like the crafting system (which I actually like to some extent, by the way, despite all of the dumb things associated with it), the Witcher vision, excessive quest markers, the BioWare story structure of TW3, the fact that the last game has an open world to begin with... These are all things that have more or less become the industry standard, but they don't always suit the game(s) as well as they could, sometimes even clashing with other existing mechanics (e.g. while the story is structured like a BioWare game, technically allowing you to do stuff in whichever order you wish to, the leveling system pretty much negates that aspect). The end result is a bit disjointed to say the least, sort of an uneasy mix between your average AAA game and the more unconventional but focused TW1.
 
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,103
Well, believe it or not, some people prefer games that don't require twitch real-time reactions.
Or only like them if they are done exceptionally well (think Dragons Dogma or Dark Souls).

See, no offense but that's a retarded way to think about it. It's like if I said, hey, there are people who prefer not to think in games, so let's make tactical combat without any thought required. Do you see my point now?

There are different types of combat, you are free to choose whichever one you want, but once you start implementing it, do it well. If you are doing tactical combat, make it in-depth and require thought, if you are doing action combat, make it twitchy (in an intelligent way), otherwise, what's the point?
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
It is not that I have an aversion to action combat, or find Witcher 1's combat to be objectively good. Rather I make the argument that W2 and W3s vanilla combat is so bad (this is especially true for W2) that somehow, Witcher 1's combat and gameplay in general remains the best in the series.

Is combat of W2 and W3 less tedious than in W1? Sure. But it is broken in so many places.

Every fight in W2 is the same: quen, dodge roll behind enemy, stab them in the back. As they turn around, dodge roll behind them again, stab them in the back. Oh shit, you got hit because you weren't pressing buttons fast enough? Roll away, recast quen, dodge roll behind enemy, stab them in the back, rinse and repeat. This is the definition of popamole.

W3's combat is less shit but suffers from fundamental design issues. For example, light attacks will always out-DPS strong attacks. What the fuck is this: the main character has two main attacks pre-rend/whirl, and one of them is completely superfluous. Reminds me of how it was possible to hit the armour value cap in Skyrim in orc armour, making all the high-end armours completely worthless because Bethesda can't into game design.

(If anyone is interested, a mod that basically fixes W3's combat is Better Combat Evolved 3.0)

Now don't get me wrong, Witcher 1 also has its share of balance issues. As someone has mentioned already, a "mage build" involves spamming igni and watching everything die. But while the entire series has bad-mediocre gameplay, I'd choose the one with functional alchemy and a combat system that doesn't involve me furiously slapping the space bar with my cock .
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,624
See, no offense but that's a retarded way to think about it. It's like if I said, hey, there are people who prefer not to think in games, so let's make tactical combat without any thought required. Do you see my point now?

There are different types of combat, you are free to choose whichever one you want, but once you start implementing it, do it well. If you are doing tactical combat, make it in-depth and require thought, if you are doing action combat, make it twitchy (in an intelligent way), otherwise, what's the point?

Agree.

You can easily solve that "twitch real-time reactions" problems by giving the player an adjustable slider for reactions, that way both grandpas and people in their twenties can have a good time. In fact, you could make it so that there's an optional feature for the game to get progressively easier or difficult if it feels you are owning everything in it or you are getting your ass handed by every enemy in the game. Which wouldn't be "scaling", but it would the game saying "this is the right level of difficulty for you at this moment, not impossible but not easy either". That way you would always have a challenging combat experience. It's basically what the Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA series do whenever you play the game for the first time: it tests how you play, and then recommends a difficulty.

ANYTHING that makes the combat more engaging is a good thing. The Witcher just doesn't have engaging combat.
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
It's not just about shortening the lines but altering the content just for the fun of it. In the very first dialogue choice of TW2 you can choose to say "very funny", and Geralt will say "fuck you" instead. It serves no purpose whatsoever, and the only reason it happens is because BioWare games do that too. TW3 is better in this regard for the most part, sometimes even displaying the whole response if possible, but it still has a number of critical choices that come off as needlessly vague because of this, for example

talking to Ciri after the battle of Kaer Morhen, or when wrecking Avallac'h's lab.
"the only reason it happens is because BioWare games do that too"

No. It happens because it speeds up pace of the dialogue scenes. The "fuck you" scene is another of the rare examples that CDP fucked it up. But overall this fits the type of game CDP were making. Now I don't particularly care either way, I liked dialogues in TW1 non-shortened and I liked them in TW2/3 shortened. But I get why CDP wanted to do it this way. They want to have their cinematic cake, and I am fine with that. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it is objectively wrong/misguided/whatever.

The ones in TW3 are fine. TW2, on the other hand, had a literal awesome button in the form of adrenaline rush and the heliotrop sign: fill a meter, press a key, everything dies. It was just horrible and, like the QTEs and certain rather invasive cutscenes, another misguided attempt to make the game more cinematic like all of its competitors.
With this I somewhat agree, the finishers in TW2 looked cool, but their disconnection from gameplay was badly implemented. TW1 and TW3 both had it much better.

There's lots of wrong with them. They make the world seem a lot less cohesive when you're constantly running into treasure chests guarded by monsters, or dead people carrying notes that lead you to a treasure chest, or treasure chests floating in the water guarded by identical packs of drowners or sirens... They're just a poor addition to a game which otherwise is full of unique content and gorgeous environments with an immense amount of thought and detail put into them. The points of interest feel like a last-minute addition, like CDPR weren't sure whether their world had enough things to do in it, so they added some generic content to fill all that space. The expansions improved this aspect a bit by making the POIs more unique, but they're still by far the weakest piecs of content of the game and somewhat out of place.

Again, if the map markers were disabled by default, and there was no OCD connected with them, there would be no problem at all. I played like that and I definitely wasn't constantly running into treasure chests and all that. I just encountered it sometimes when exploring or travelling. Felt great. Would it be nice if each were even more unique? Sure, but with the amount of already existing actual quests and their quality, I am not gonna complain. Resources are finite.
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,624
I believe it's unethical to show the player an incomplete sentence and ask them to decide what to choose. Kant says we cannot be free unless we know all the variables and what we want to do.
 

Dux

Arcane
Joined
May 26, 2016
Messages
635
Location
Sweden
So there's that, played The Witcher all the way to its rather lacklustre ending.

Yeah, the ending could have been better. Too much retardation and too much nonsense. If you're going to ask the player to respond emotionally to something you have to earn it. The game basically just showed me a bunch of characters I'd met before - awkwardly inserted into the context - and then acted like they were significant in some way. They weren't. I don't give a shit about side characters who were just as disjointed as everything else in this game - with their motivations made to be something grander than what they actually were. There was no real mystery or subtlety to this game. The antagonist's wearying expositions - just like any banal ass villain - bored me sufficiently that I basically just skipped most of his dialogue at the end. That was the first time I ever did so. I just couldn't take it anymore. I just didn't give the slightest shit about his views on the world, time and space, destiny and morality and fucking whatever. The villain was just a stranger preaching at me. What exactly was I supposed to get out of that? I don't know. I swear I'm so tired of RPG villains spouting their trite bullshit at me before I can finally sheathe my blade in their eye socket.

I'm not saying The Witcher is a bad game, however. It had some interesting quests, a vivid backdrop and beautiful music. I don't regret playing it at all. It's about the journey, after all.
 

oldmanpaco

Master of Siestas
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
13,609
Location
Winter
The antagonist's wearying expositions - just like any banal ass villain - bored me sufficiently that I basically just skipped most of his dialogue at the end. That was the first time I ever did so. I just couldn't take it anymore. I just didn't give the slightest shit about his views on the world, time and space, destiny and morality and fucking whatever. The villain was just a stranger preaching at me.

Shit man why you got to be so hard on Alvin? The kid had a rough life.
 

naossano

Cipher
Joined
Aug 26, 2014
Messages
1,232
Location
Marseilles, France
. I swear I'm so tired of RPG villains spouting their trite bullshit at me before I can finally sheathe my blade in their eye socket
l.

It is expected for a random mook, but the climax of a story driven game without a meaningful conversation with the main antagonist can be a bit underwhelming. ( of course, in any case, it depends more on HOW they do it than what they do)
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
So there's that, played The Witcher all the way to its rather lacklustre ending.

Yeah, the ending could have been better. Too much retardation and too much nonsense. If you're going to ask the player to respond emotionally to something you have to earn it. The game basically just showed me a bunch of characters I'd met before - awkwardly inserted into the context - and then acted like they were significant in some way. They weren't. I don't give a shit about side characters who were just as disjointed as everything else in this game - with their motivations made to be something grander than what they actually were. There was no real mystery or subtlety to this game. The antagonist's wearying expositions - just like any banal ass villain - bored me sufficiently that I basically just skipped most of his dialogue at the end. That was the first time I ever did so. I just couldn't take it anymore. I just didn't give the slightest shit about his views on the world, time and space, destiny and morality and fucking whatever. The villain was just a stranger preaching at me. What exactly was I supposed to get out of that? I don't know. I swear I'm so tired of RPG villains spouting their trite bullshit at me before I can finally sheathe my blade in their eye socket.

I'm not saying The Witcher is a bad game, however. It had some interesting quests, a vivid backdrop and beautiful music. I don't regret playing it at all. It's about the journey, after all.

Agreed, I liked the Wither until the last act, there they lost me and my interest in the game. And fuck Alvin.
 

Haplo

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
6,138
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
I was particularly fond of Prologue and Act IV. Truely masterpieces of game ambience and atmosphere for me.
Vizim did greatly impress me as an atmospheric and realistic town and some characters were great, but I was fed up with running back and forth like a headless chicken in Acts 2 and 3.
 

Frozen

Arcane
Joined
Jan 1, 2014
Messages
8,303
So there's that, played The Witcher all the way to its rather lacklustre ending.

Yeah, the ending could have been better. Too much retardation and too much nonsense. If you're going to ask the player to respond emotionally to something you have to earn it. The game basically just showed me a bunch of characters I'd met before - awkwardly inserted into the context - and then acted like they were significant in some way. They weren't. I don't give a shit about side characters who were just as disjointed as everything else in this game - with their motivations made to be something grander than what they actually were. There was no real mystery or subtlety to this game. The antagonist's wearying expositions - just like any banal ass villain - bored me sufficiently that I basically just skipped most of his dialogue at the end. That was the first time I ever did so. I just couldn't take it anymore. I just didn't give the slightest shit about his views on the world, time and space, destiny and morality and fucking whatever. The villain was just a stranger preaching at me. What exactly was I supposed to get out of that? I don't know. I swear I'm so tired of RPG villains spouting their trite bullshit at me before I can finally sheathe my blade in their eye socket.

I'm not saying The Witcher is a bad game, however. It had some interesting quests, a vivid backdrop and beautiful music. I don't regret playing it at all. It's about the journey, after all.

Its not always the point to "care" about characters, that is a cliché on its own.
You shouldn't care about them, game was trying at the end to show you consequences of your actions in a form of reflections. It is ham-fisted and could be more subtle same thing with Aldersberg/ Alvin.
The end point about his rant is deterministic fatalism- he twists all bs you said to him as a kid during the game into his crazy interpretation. No mater what you do he ends up "evil", cant escape fate, no free will or is there or something more...etc. Game at least at times flirts with these questions.
Geralt in TW1 is just an asshole trying to survive, not some boring superhero he ends up in TW3 and that is why its more grown up game then others, people you meet are (mostly) not friends you don't care about them you care about your personal value system and how it reflected your interactions with them.
Was disjoint intentional or not it fits this cold and (more) realistic world.
 

Blackstaff

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 17, 2014
Messages
211
OK, I slugged my way through the 5th act of this game, and this is my utmost limit. What a fucking mess this whole thing was !

I gotta admit first that it wasn't so unpleasant all in all. There was some good quests here and there, a couple of good revelations or situations, and the overall rpg questing thingy wasn't that bad for a moment...

It's just that now that I have to conclude the whole thing, I can't bring myself anymore to endure it again. Sure gameplay is shit, and this is a huge part of it, but, most of all, I'm just forced to realise that my engagement is nihil. Nada. I can't care less about Geralt, the world or any characters whatsoever. And, of course, I don't give a shit about the ending.

So my question is pretty simple : if I feel like the witcher world is horribly bland and needlessly edgy, that the overall story and characters are shit and plain as fuck, is there any point in finishing this game and trying the sequels ? I mean, does it get better storywise or on the C and C front ? I don't think that the gameplay is going to get better anyway, so without a good story incentive, I'm not going through the rest.
 

Sodafish

Arcane
Joined
Dec 26, 2012
Messages
8,476
Witcher 1 is very clunky in most departments. The atmosphere and alchemy system were OK, but that's about it. The story is much improved in 2 and 3 (and the latter does have a flat-out awesome expansion). Combat is still pretty ass in 2, but better than 1. Witcher 3 is easily the best overall IMO, and absolutely worth playing.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom