So I decided to replay The Witcher 1...

[Quilty]

Trash, you're a moron.

No u.

Get your silly ad hominem away from me. He was the first npc I spoke to in the inn and his droning on was grating enough to be memorable. I don't expect every npc to only talk about stuff that applies to game mechanics. However I'm also not expecting to get a long and boring lecture that was both badly written, badly voiced and totally inconsequential. If an npc in Torment would've started a long and detailed explanation on how to make clothes or treat hides I would've reacted in the same manner.

Yeah, I had a pretty similar reaction to Kalkstein's speech when I replayed the game a couple of weeks back.

 

[Serious_Business]

I found most of the characters in both TW1 and 2 to be either extremely irritating or uninteresting. In a story-driven game, that's a very bad thing. Apart from the fact that they are poorly introduced (which might have been ok if this was a party-based game so you could get to know them over time), the things they say or do just don't serve to build character. If you compare them with some of the characters from PS:T you realize how your view of Morte and a couple of others kept slightly changing according to the things they said or did. After two entire games I honestly have no idea who Triss is except that she's a place to put my meat and ignore her thoughts about sorcery. Sure, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to her because she bored the shit out of me, so maybe I missed some things she said, but a woman who is supposedly very close to my character should be written by a more capable writer.

Thankfully, the first game was (in my experience) redeemed by its lore, atmosphere, and the need to prepare for combat, which made your opponents unique since there usually weren't that many of them and you had to research them. A game in which you know more about a simple drowner than you do about a dwarf who is supposedly your best buddy has got some strange issues.

So would you state that this is Why The Witcher Is An Intelligent Game? Can I get that statement out of you?

 

[Quilty]

I found most of the characters in both TW1 and 2 to be either extremely irritating or uninteresting. In a story-driven game, that's a very bad thing. Apart from the fact that they are poorly introduced (which might have been ok if this was a party-based game so you could get to know them over time), the things they say or do just don't serve to build character. If you compare them with some of the characters from PS:T you realize how your view of Morte and a couple of others kept slightly changing according to the things they said or did. After two entire games I honestly have no idea who Triss is except that she's a place to put my meat and ignore her thoughts about sorcery. Sure, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to her because she bored the shit out of me, so maybe I missed some things she said, but a woman who is supposedly very close to my character should be written by a more capable writer.

Thankfully, the first game was (in my experience) redeemed by its lore, atmosphere, and the need to prepare for combat, which made your opponents unique since there usually weren't that many of them and you had to research them. A game in which you know more about a simple drowner than you do about a dwarf who is supposedly your best buddy has got some strange issues.

So would you state that this is Why The Witcher Is An Intelligent Game? Can I get that statement out of you?

Unless you're referring to a meme I'm not familiar with, yes, I think it was a very successful game and a true sign of Incline. All I was trying to say was that I honestly enjoyed TW1, but not because of its story or characters, which is a little odd for a game focused on telling you a story and trying to get you to connect with a character. It failed in accomplishing either of those in my experience, but I still found it enjoyable to inhabit the world. In that respect I would compare it to Outcast, whose story got too convoluted or out of hand at times, but whose setting and atmosphere were very enjoyable.

 

[Ivory Samoan]

Just buy it again from GOG. It's only 5 bucks.

Crikey! That's a bargain... I see CD Projekt leading the renaissance in quality crpg's in the coming future.. excellent. :D

 

[sea]

I found most of the characters in both TW1 and 2 to be either extremely irritating or uninteresting. In a story-driven game, that's a very bad thing. Apart from the fact that they are poorly introduced (which might have been ok if this was a party-based game so you could get to know them over time), the things they say or do just don't serve to build character. If you compare them with some of the characters from PS:T you realize how your view of Morte and a couple of others kept slightly changing according to the things they said or did. After two entire games I honestly have no idea who Triss is except that she's a place to put my meat and ignore her thoughts about sorcery. Sure, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to her because she bored the shit out of me, so maybe I missed some things she said, but a woman who is supposedly very close to my character should be written by a more capable writer.

Wait, so first you complain that the characters are lacking in depth, but then admit you weren't paying attention to what's going on, and you still expect people to take your argument seriously?

The characters in The Witcher aren't all "deep" in the same way they're deep in Planescape (i.e. people lying to you about their past, or undergoing significant arcs), but they're less about hidden secrets and personality traits than they are about having their own agendas. People you are forced to trust due to circumstance almost always have some sort of shady, questionable or ambiguous side to them, and even if a character comes across as generally good (Thaler), it's still never clear if that character is above resorting to lies, manipulation, etc. (i.e. Thaler asks Geralt to fetch him a letter from a very specific place, which only a few minutes later comes in handy when he is accused of treason and uses the letter as evidence to prove his innocence - coincidence, or is he trying to use Geralt to hide his own misdeeds?). Even Triss, Geralt's lover, is called into question when you catch glimpses of her conspiring with certain people, and despite her insistence that it's all for the best, it's hard to escape the feeling that even she isn't trying to backstab Geralt in some way. While it's true that The Witcher's characters are still more superficial in some senses, it's not fair to dismiss them as bad, boring, generic, or lacking in depth.

You do have a valid point: they do a poor job at introducing those characters. I think that prior knowledge with the books was kind of assumed by CD Projekt in some respects. The exposition is handled far better in the sequel, however, at least for new characters (old ones, not as much, but they seem to assume once again you've at least played the first Witcher).

 

[Ivory Samoan]

*UPDATE




purchased.


Now... hopefully my computer can run it kosha... dual core 2.2/3650hd 512mb graphics/4 gig ram should do it (hopefully)

 

[OSK]

With all this Witcher talk, I was going to reinstall The Witcher and play it this weekend. But then I remember why I quit playing in the first place. It wasn't just the horrible combat. The first chapter was complete shit. It was boring, railroaded and straight-up tedious. I only trudged through it because I was told how much better the game got after the first chapter. In the second, I must have did some quests out of order because Geralt was talking about stuff I didn't experience. And when I got to the swamp with all the re-spawning enemies, I just gave up.

So instead I reinstalled Geneforge.

 

[Gerrard]

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.

 

[villain of the story]

Usually I'm of the opinion that all dubbing is evil but potato people cannot into translation. Even after a Tranny's Cut Enhanced Sex Change Operation Edition.

the subtitles worked great in the first one

I don't know what the hell made them decide that you were getting subtitles only if you were looking at the people in question so you'll be walking along and someone's talking and oh boy you turned too late so you get only potatospeak also you don't even know which one was talking if there's a group

is this fucking radiant dynamic subtitle system or something? why the hell change a core facet of UI that worked 100%?

You are complaining about the TW 2, right? Because the subtitles work just fine for me even when I walk along with my interlocutor. I don't have to even face him - it's enough to be in proximity.

Perhaps this is a bug, then. Subs in my TW1 are certainly dodgy.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Are you saying that it worked right in the original release, before EE?

EE was my first Witcher experience. FWIW I do not recall any bitching about subtitle presentation among all the initial translation decline controversy.

You are complaining about the TW 2, right? Because the subtitles work just fine for me even when I walk along with my interlocutor. I don't have to even face him

Yeah this needs elaborating on. For example in the prologue when I'm walking with Foltest I think it was fine and I could see his royal potatospeak. But for example while I'm walking with him and there's soldiers shouting at each other all around us I don't see their subtitles.

After some thought I'm pretty sure now this is a side effect from TAKING AWAY GODDAMN ISOMETRIC VIEW since with overhead view you could see everyone in your vicinity all at once which includes any individual overhead subtitles.

Should do it halflife 2/movie style and just put the words on the screen if you're going to have this OTS frontal view.

 

[Eyeball]

I'm not a Witcher fan as the sheer tedium of the clickclickclickclick combat coupled with the excruciatingly long loading times stopped me dead in my tracks at the start of act 2 despite me quite liking the presentation fo the game, but I never understood why people hate so much on the voice acting. I thought it was just fine.

While Geralt indeed has a kind of generic Grizzled Hardass voice, he delivers it well and it fits the character excellently, and most of the characters I remember talking to also did a good job reading their lines. I did take offense at the level of profanity, though, as it seemed to be inserted seemingly randomly every now and again as if just to remind the player that this was a DARK ADULT HARDK0R GAME, FUCK OFF BACK TO YOUR POKEMONS, SISSY! I specifically remember the conversation with your dwarf homie that went something like this:

"Why do elves and humans fight?"
"WHY DO PRICKS GO IN CUNTS?!"
".....charming, now would you like to answer the question?"

Come to think of it, that should really be the tagline of the game.

Planescape: Torment - What Can Change The Nature Of A Man?
The Witcher - Why Do Pricks Go In Cunts?

 

[Elwro]

Well, just believe me that it's a brilliant line in archaic Polish, entirely appropriate (from a dwarf) and very funny given the context. I also have completely no idea how to translate it to English properly. Well, I realise this doesn't help

Also, the famous "your mother sucks dwarf cock" line was also different in Polish, suggesting that its recipient's mother had slept with a dwarf, no cocksucking mentioned.

The philosophising Geralt / Yarpen talk was also brilliant in Polish. I replayed it every once in a while.

tl;dr: I piss on your juvenile scorn.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Well translated skilled swearing from a foreign language can be magical. There should be museums for such things.

 

[1eyedking]

"Why do elves and humans fight?"
"WHY DO PRICKS GO IN CUNTS?!"

One of the best lines in the game.

It's the borked English voice-over that completely fucks the game. It's completely devoid of emotion.

 

[Trash]

Well, hearing 'your mother sucks dwarf cock' in the background did make me laugh.

 

[PrzeSzkoda]

:snip:

Well, in general I agree with your diagnosis. The stories are definitely better than the books. Although I still found the books to be immensely fun to read, despite some cringe-worthy moments.

It's not that I tore up the saga in rage. It was quite amusing but I just put it down one day after reading for a bit with plans to finish at a later date - but I never did. Never even really thought about the why of it until you asked.

 

[DraQ]

The philosophising Geralt / Yarpen talk was also brilliant in Polish.

Well, it was also very Polish. That's the feeling of authenticity that's part of the game's charm.

 

[Zed]

PÖLISH SHIT
make beer instead, your games suck
ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

 

[PrzeSzkoda]

The philosophising Geralt / Yarpen talk was also brilliant in Polish.

Well, it was also very Polish. That's the feeling of authenticity that's part of the game's charm.

They only way it could've been any more Polish than that would have been if both Geralt and Zoltan had to be drunk in order for the convo to happen.

It was also very in the spirit of Sapkowski. Random diatribes about life, the universe and everything interspersed betwixt swordfights, indecent jokes and sex.

Actually, some of the complaints people seem to be having about the games' writing and general style result from the devs' staying true to the spirit of the books (or at least trying to).

 

[DraQ]

The philosophising Geralt / Yarpen talk was also brilliant in Polish.

Well, it was also very Polish. That's the feeling of authenticity that's part of the game's charm.

They only way it could've been any more Polish than that would have been if both Geralt and Zoltan had to be drunk in order for the convo to happen.

This.
: x

 

[tindrli]

Installed, downloaded the EE patch. It asks me to register the copy. I did it when the game first came out, but fuck me if I remember the password, or even the user name. The official forums seem to be down, so I can't ask for assistance there. Advise me, my brethren in potato.

HMMM im currently playing enhanced edition .. and all that i did was install the 1.5 patch witch was a fast install and seems that this patch is removing DRM and some more things .. anyway it didnt ask me for any registration..

what is EE patch??

 

[Destroid]

There should be a law that when you make a sequel, the first title must be made available free of charge.

 

[tindrli]

There should be a law that when you make a sequel, the first title must be made available free of charge.

 

[el Supremo]

This is why we don't quote or reply to this dumbfuck, Mr. Gordon Freeman.

I just cannot believe that some moron would consider PC not needing to sleep a big issue. Or an issue.

Why does he still post here?

Hatters gonna hate.

 

[DraQ]

Hatters gonna hat.

Fixed.
Prole.