So I decided to replay The Witcher 1...

[Rhalle]

After years of trying to get through the prologue - mission accomplished.

I didn't mind the prologue and rather like Chapter 1, even if it is drawn out beyond a neccessary length.

It's the Vizima Confidential quest in Chapter 2 that halted my first playthrough years ago (I suspect I ain't the only one); and is where I am right now, wondering if I will continue.

That quest is too complex for its own good, and if you fuck up part of it, it closes off all sorts of things to do, and you just run around talking to the same people and end up with "I need more evidence". I didn't do the part with Vincent Meiss at the warehouse the right way, so I can't prove him innocent, and so the Autopsy portion-- which is hours and hours of playtime later-- is all fucked up and it won't allow me to come to the right conclusion about who is guilty, and it therefore won't let me into the graveyard to do other things besides come up empty with the same suspects.

It's fucked. I hate it. I really want to play the rest of W1 again, but I can't bring myself to get the quest wrong and then run all over town trying to figure out what will trigger the game to move forward.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Can't say I've ever had a problem screwing up the vizima confidential quest. The Vincent Meis warehouse encounter has a pretty obvious line where you play along with him for a bit while he talks to the thugs. Half of the quests end with "I can't prove anything at the moment and I'll keep looking for evidence", thats not a sign you messed up.

The autopsy I believe can be correctly solved no matter what your prior decisions are as long as you properly read up on the relevant book material (and/or receive the journal entries from talking to NPCs) and remain skeptical throughout the process. The only thing you lock out by not handling the quests right is getting to the graveyard before the autopsy to make the autopsy irrelevant which you need to mess up on both Thaler's and Meis's stuff to do, and I'm not sure its even possible to mess up Thaler's.

On the bright side, if you mess up and kill Ramsmeat you get Yellow Meteorite, which is otherwise impossible to find till much later in the game.

Chapter 2 is definitely a pain in the ass though. It would be much better if it was something on Planescape for example, because load times are a half second and traveling to other places is as easy as scrolling the map and clicking, rather than manually driving Geralt everywhere. Probably the worst part for me is the ending where you need to

Spoiler

gather the Sephirot

which you as the player had assumed was just a really long side quest, but it becomes a primary quest and to find them you need to explore most of the horrible swamp and finish all the other side quests anyways hoping they drop in your lap.

 

[Rhalle]

See, I did play along with Meiss at the warehouse, but for some reason I can't find him innocent, and he's just mad at me, and won't give me a pass.

Thaler is messed up; and he wants me to prove him innocent before he'll give me the graveyard pass, and I have no idea how to prove him innocent.

I'm pretty sure I've read every single book from the Antiquary, but the Autopsy won't do the Zerrikanian insects bit (I know for certain the Gardener gave me his war story spiel about them), and only allows me to find Rammsmeat or Kalkstein guilty. Maybe I missed that one book, but I sure think I've read them all.

This is exactly what happened when I tried to play through the game first; somehow I made it through but could only enter the graveyard after Chapter 2 had started. By that time I had had enough and I quit. My second attempt, though, for some reason it all went smoothly.

But here I am again, and I really want to play the rest, but don't want to slog through the rest after finding Ramsmeat or Kalkstein 'guilty'.

 

[sea]

I don't think it's possible to get stuck in Chapter 2, but it might be. The real problem with it is that there is no clear direction and the leads you're given are often extremely subtle. Reading the journal can help at times, but even then it feels like a lot of stumbling around through the dark and just talking to every NPC you know until something happens. Make sure that you speak to everyone involved, and make progress in some of the other quests as well, like in the swamps, as I believe some of the progression in Vizima Confidential is tied to other bits.

 

[RK47]

It was quite anal as I remembered, yeah, I remembered trudging around the swamps a bit because I got bored with Vizima Confidential...I was hunting for the last Sephiroth....SOMEWHERE.SOMEHOW.

I never could get it...then I gave up and loaded up gamefaqs.

The last sephiroth is given to you at the end of Vizima Confidential.

 

[Turisas]

Increasing movement speeds

Guide on how to make Geralt not slow. Note that contrary to the information, you need to change only the line "Default" in moverates.2da. I recommend changing only the run speed since thats all Geralt needs. It will make everyone else run faster, but it doesn't look too bad so long as you don't push the speed too high. I use a speed of 4.5 myself.

Can you upload your modified moverates.2da to mediafire or someplace? That asshole article writer should've done it in the first place instead of just providing a tutorial.

 

[pocahaunted]

Well, I wasn't unable to prove anyone innocent prior to the autopsy and had no problem discovering the true crook, I can't really figure out what your problem is, though.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Increasing movement speeds

Guide on how to make Geralt not slow. Note that contrary to the information, you need to change only the line "Default" in moverates.2da. I recommend changing only the run speed since thats all Geralt needs. It will make everyone else run faster, but it doesn't look too bad so long as you don't push the speed too high. I use a speed of 4.5 myself.

Can you upload your modified moverates.2da to mediafire or someplace? That asshole article writer should've done it in the first place instead of just providing a tutorial.

http://www.mediafire.com/?arara8sgwwqfs6l

Throw it into \Data\Override\

 

[Turisas]

Sweet, thanks.

 

[Grimlorn]

It was quite anal as I remembered, yeah, I remembered trudging around the swamps a bit because I got bored with Vizima Confidential...I was hunting for the last Sephiroth....SOMEWHERE.SOMEHOW.

I never could get it...then I gave up and loaded up gamefaqs.

The last sephiroth is given to you at the end of Vizima Confidential.

You get some piece of paper or prophecy (can't remember) that tells you where every Sephirat is. It then goes into your journal and gives some pretty easy descriptions on acquiring each one. I remember it saying the last one is destined to come to you or something. Whatever it said it was easy to deduce you had to proceed through the game's story and quests to get it.

 

[Breaking Axe]

I tried out the English subtitles, and unfortunately even in the EE script there's still a lot of text omitted compared to the Polish version. Whole sentences even.

I kinda thought someone would start a project to actually translate the missing parts when it first came out, but nothing like that happened as far as I know.

I put the language to French with subtitles in English (Did it to help me learn the language), it's almost opposite to your situation, four words in French for four sentences in English. It's exceptionally annoying since you sometimes don't have enough time to read the translation, there's no option to pause in dialogue, but thankfully, an option to skip. I've since changed to English.

 

[villain of the story]

I just can't stomach the English voice acting. Especially Geralt. Sounds like he is trying too hard to be mysterious and cool compared to the almost indifferent tone of the original Polish voice.

Has anyone noticed one of the locals in Vizima whistling the Imperial March? For some reason, I fount it very pleasing.

 

[visions]

Thaler is messed up; and he wants me to prove him innocent before he'll give me the graveyard pass, and I have no idea how to prove him innocent.

Spoiler

Talk to Shani, some things should proceed from there naturally

 

[RK47]

Yeah I did spot that early on back in 2010. CDP staff confirmed the whistling was an easter egg.

The VA is really a case of limited budget that leads to poor voice directing during the process.

 

[Turisas]

Is it ok to skip the swamp entirely until act 3, or would I miss out on some content (mostly worried about sidequests)?

 

[Darkforge]

Playing again for my 2nd play-through on hard of part 2, I never did finish it the first time around due to the shitty combat.

using FCR it's actually a lot better game play but still pretty shitty combat. You actually need to use alchemy and it's not just a case of spamming combo's until everything dies, so it's more enjoyable so far.

One annoying thing is when you get surrounded by enemies and the game decides to sheath your weapon, compounded by the fact back-stabs can drain your life in a couple of hits.

 

[villain of the story]

But the swamp is beautiful.

Buy a drowner talisman if it's the constant spawns that bug you.

 

[visions]

Is it ok to skip the swamp entirely until act 3, or would I miss out on some content (mostly worried about sidequests)?

You can't get to act three without some running around in the swamp. And yeah, the swamp is beautiful.

Spoiler

And if you only do the tower related quests in the swamp and then proceed to the next chapter, you will miss some sidequests.

 

[Turisas]

Yeah I know, I was just wondering about swamp quests of Act II being disabled in act III - in earlier playthroughs I've always went there asap. Actually I'll just go there now, since iirc you get to bone that dryad.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

You miss out on a few side quests if you don't scour the swamp in chapter 2. You also get some side quests in chapter 2 which can't be finished until later chapters, so if you find something that doesn't have a solution at the moment don't worry.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I don't get the moaning about Geralt's movement speed. I found it to be quite fast, unrealistically so considering he has the same speed going through water as he does when on land. I'm sure his speed in Witcher 2 is slower.

 

[villain of the story]

Plus he can outrun anything and anyone while running with sword in hand in fast and group styles.