Preview GameSpot talks Witcher

[Spazmo]

Tags: CD Projekt; Witcher, The

<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/pc">Gamespot PC</a> have impressions on the Aurora powered Polish CRPG The Witcher from the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
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<blockquote>As we saw, the Witcher will hold his adventures in a world where there are no clear-cut evil or good characters--the game will actually have three distinct endings that you'll see depending on your own actions. We watched the Witcher encounter a pair of decrepit zombies that summoned him to their master, a necromancer wearing black robes. We found out then that the necromancer wasn't necessarily a horrible villain, but rather, a grieving man who had recently lost his wife and had resorted to malefic sorcery to resurrect her. Instead, the fledgling wizard had unwittingly conjured the zombies, whom he hates and fears, and he asks you to rid him of them. You can opt to help him by slaying the zombies, turn on him and attack all three, or simply go on your merry way. In another sequence, we watched the Witcher confront a grave robber standing watch at the mouth of a tomb on behalf of his comrades. While we were offered the choice of attacking the robber, we talked our way past him into the grave and encountered the robber's cohorts, who demanded to know our business. After threatening them once, then apologizing, the Witcher managed to avoid a conflict, but from then on, the distrustful grave robbers told us nothing but pretty lies about how they were actually upstanding citizens who were just visiting the tomb in search a certain variety of medicinal mushrooms.</blockquote>
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Not bad at all for an action RPG. And hey, three endings is one more than BioWare's ULTRA DEEP ROLE PLAYING EPIC <a href=http://www.swkotor.com>Knights of the Old Republic</a>.

 

[Spazmo]

Here's another cool thing:

"CDProjekt has made heavy modifications to the engine, so that the game's environments are no longer tile-based (as they were in Neverwinter Nights), and to allow for a number of new special effects, like the game's good-looking water."

The tiles in NWN were one of the things that bugged me the most about that game. Getting rid of that boxy feeling is a good thing for The Witcher. Too bad it's so heavily fantasy.

 

[Elwro]

But I guess it means no editor.

 

[Transcendent One]

I personally have no problem with that

 

[Spazmo]

But I guess it means no editor.

Big deal. I have a policy concerning that sort of thing: never buy a game expecting people to make good mods for it. Stuff like Counter Strike is the exception, not the rule.

Of course, I have a new policy regarding fantasy RPGs, too, so yeah.

 

[Elwro]

[Big deal. I have a policy concerning that sort of thing: never buy a game expecting people to make good mods for it.

Well, I just like to tinker with the games myself.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

My big question is whether or not they fixed the save game thing. 20MB save files piss me off.

 

[MrBrown]

My big question is whether or not they fixed the save game thing. 20MB save files piss me off.

You must be really low on HD space...

 

[S4ur0n27]

My big question is whether or not they fixed the save game thing. 20MB save files piss me off.

You must be really low on HD space...

That's not the point, you can't transfer your save games using a floppy.

 

[Spazmo]

That's not the point either. The point is that when you get around to the end of the game and are sitting on a good 20-30 saves (if not more), your save folder gets ridiculously huge. That's purely wasted space, and not just because progress in NWN is a waste of time, but rather because if other developers can keep savegame sizes manageable, why can't BioWare?

 

[MrBrown]

Well, I only use 3 to 5 saves myself, so can't really sympathize.

And 20-30 times 20 is still only 400-600... shouldn't be a problem if you've bought a HD in the past 5 or 6 years.


Anyways, the reason they're that big is that they're not compressed at all. I transferred my 13mb save to another comp to continue playing and winrar got it down to 800kBs. Dunno why they're not compressed... faster loading times?

 

[Spazmo]

That's really not an excuse. 20-30 meg save games are impermissible, especially since they were able to store BG2 savegames--which had FAR more variables involved--in much smaller files. It's not a game breaker, but it does make you wonder what the heck the programmers over there are doing.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I know when I deleted my save game directory from NWN, I freed up 2GB of disk space.

I think the point isn't how much disk space free I have, which is 30GB at the moment, but it's more a question of why the hell does a save game HAVE to be that large?

 

[Nightjed]

i thought they were large because it saved the whole module (or at least the areas you visited in the module), am i wrong ?

 

[MrBrown]

i thought they were large because it saved the whole module (or at least the areas you visited in the module), am i wrong ?

After doing a bit of experimenting, it seems it saves parts of the whole module (probably the locations where the player has been in) uncompressed. Doing even some light compression would have probably dropped it under 5 mbs per save, easily. No idea why they didn't do that.

 

[Eclecticist]

The Witcher sounds good so far. Pity about the choice of engine, though.

 

[Ausir]

It was a good marketing choice, though. When it was announced, no one really cared about some new cRPG from Poland. Now they get coverage everywhere because of BioWare.

 

[suibhne]

I was vaguely curious until I read the GameSpy preview for this title:

Attacks can be lined in an action queue at the bottom of the screen, much like you could stack actions in KotOR. However, in The Witcher, they've discarded the idea of having battle actions occur in a turn-based system. Every click of the mouse will perform the next attack in the action queue. It's not a Diablo-style click-fest, though. Every move has a timed animation, and each click of the mouse must be coordinated with the end of the preceding animation. Click too fast or slow and you'll be penalized with less XP and less effective attacks. Time your clicks correctly, though, and you'll be rewarded.

Anything I could say would only sully the pristine experience offered by the above paragraph.

 

[MrBrown]

Anything I could say would only sully the pristine experience offered by the above paragraph.

Damn, and I was starting to get interested.

I hope that quote isn't true.

 

[Elwro]

It seems a bit stupid, but I'll give the game a chance.

 

[HanoverF]

It seems a bit stupid, but I'll give the game a chance.

Me too, if the heavens split open and the game falls on the ground in front of me, theres a chance I'll pick it up and install it.




Prolly not tho

 

[Ausir]

This bit from the GameSpy preview is funny:

Warsaw, 2001: CD Projekt, a Polish game developer responsible for local distributions of RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Planescape: Torment and others, considers producing the PC version of Baldur's Gate 2: Dark Alliance. Discussions with Interplay, which owns the publishing rights to the game, break down, and CD Projekt starts work on developing its own tale set in Polish fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski's Wiedzmin quintet.

 

[Shevek]

Attacks can be lined in an action queue at the bottom of the screen, much like you could stack actions in KotOR. However, in The Witcher, they've discarded the idea of having battle actions occur in a turn-based system. Every click of the mouse will perform the next attack in the action queue. It's not a Diablo-style click-fest, though. Every move has a timed animation, and each click of the mouse must be coordinated with the end of the preceding animation. Click too fast or slow and you'll be penalized with less XP and less effective attacks. Time your clicks correctly, though, and you'll be rewarded.

Hrmmm, youre right, that doesnt sound very good at all. I can understand ditching the rounds since it is suppose to be an action title but, eh, penalties for not clicking to a rhythym sounds terrible.

 

[Anonymous]

I dont mind it, it's kinda a blend of NWN and Action RPG combat, while trying to remove the bad parts of both.

So it removes the automation and bordem of NWN combat, and the mindless repetitive clicking of Action RPGs.

 

[Spazmo]

It sounds like a combo system, the kind of thing many games have used before to some degree of success.