Andyman Messiah
Mr. Ed-ucated
1. No real choices and/or consequences!
Speaks for itself. The Witcher is a shallow game with the illusion of importance. An extremely linear choose your own adventure where you are the hero who simply cannot fail no matter the path you choose. I have here four examples of all four kinds of c&c's you will encounter in The Witcher:
Example 1: aka "choose which girl to fuck" You can choose between giving Alvin to witch chick or nurse chick and all it results in is sex with the lady you chose and a stern talking-to from the lady you didn't choose.
Example 2: aka "completely useless" The very first choice you get, do you want to fight the monster or do you want to go inside the castle (and fight a mage)? Only difference is the rewards and you have to go inside the castle afterwards anyway.
Example 3: aka "if you think about it it's actually completely useless" Early in the game you can decide a witch's fate. If you save her, she'll come back later in the game. If you don't, she won't and in her place will instead be generic witch with the same exact role.
Example 4: aka "oh shit my cat's looking at me I gotta feed it be right back" You can choose to help the Templars, the elves or stay "neutral", as it's called. Neutral as in helping out whomever you want at first but then back off when you trigger the "Geralt starts getting uncomfortable" plot point. These are choices, yes, but it does not matter as there are no real consequences other than what Geralt is going to say in the cutscenes and what your final armor is going to look like and who you have to bother in order to craft it.
I think the biggest trick Poland ever pulled was convincing the Codex that their games had choices and consequences. I mean how the fuck did that happen? Can someone please answer this? Bonus points if the answer is a quote from The Usual Suspects.
2. Simple revenge plot made up almost entirely by fetch quests!
A character created specifically for the game so he can die is murdered and a MacGuffin nobody seems to know what it does or cares about at all (until the very last minutes) is stolen. I can't blame Geralt or the game for not being particularly motivated to do anything because more than half the main quest is about doing things that are completely unrelated to Geralt's supposed mission. When Geralt suddenly decided that it was time to have a boys night out with his friends the retard dwarf and the fucking bard so he could get fucking relationship advice (!) was when I decided I had to cut BioWare some slack, I'm not joking, and I had already suffered through that fucking wussy party at elf chick's place. But to be fair, not all of the quests are fetch quests. Some of them involve going to a place and killing a dude/monster for a dude. Oh no, Geralt is in prison. Kill this monster to get out.
3. The villains are forgettable.
Forgettable is the wrong word so I take that back. I'm sorry. Let me try it again.
3. The villains are lulzy and doesn't matter.
There are, what, three villains total? And the main one is introduced very late, almost the same time when you enter a dream world to kill him. I'm sorry, CD Projekt, but why should I care about this guy that I haven't seen more than five minutes of total? Don't get me wrong, I knew immediately when I saw him he was evil but come on.
Geralt hires a private detective to find out more about one of the villains and at one point his medallion starts to vibrate whenever he enters the room, signalling to everyone BUT GERALT that the villain is obviously now impersonating the detective. Here's another example of The Witcher's fantastic lack of c&c: why does the player have to wait until he or she has reached a point in the quest where Geralt can bring up his suspicions?
4. More derpy romances than in a BioWare game.
Say what you will, but in The Witcher you're wooing ladies at all times. And don't give me that shit about "they're optional" because fuck you by the same amount of ignoring them necessary so is Tali and that creepy elf with the disproportionate everything in Dragon Age 2. Not to mention that the Boris Vallejo art makes it into a retarded pokemon game. About the only good thing I can say in The Witcher's favor is that the fans aren't analyzing witch chick's shit or something. I FUCKING HOPE.
5. Poorly written.
Granted some (but definitely not all) of the problems with The Witcher's writing SEEMS TO stem from an extremely poorly made translation but there's nothing that can be done about that. There are also a lot parts that serve absolutely no point in the game other than for padding and should have been cut from the game completely, like 2 thirds of the fourth act.
6. The rest.
Speaks for itself and is IMO.
