The Witcher 1 Thread

[nataS]

I have read an online review of the German Gamestar magazine which has given The Witcher a lousy score of 73%. It critisizes massive bugs (the patch is going to fix over 200), a confused story, quests which give you no clues how to solve them, cloned npcs, repeating interiors, only a few interesting npcs and the loading times. The review is beeing criticized by readers who are playing the game and think it has deserved a much higher score. One of the editors has defended the score and stated that even if there were no bugs the score wouldn't be much higher because the game design is flawed. (Oblivion got 90%, Gothic 3 86% and Two Worlds 83%) He also added that The Witcher lacks interesting quests.

One of the positive aspects noted is that choices really have consequences.

 

[Hamster]

quests which give you no clues how to solve them.

OH, TEH HORROR!!!!!!!!!

a confused story,

Story may seem confused to people who haven't read the books, but looks nice so far.
And, btw, since "Oblivion got 90%" when the fuck they started judging games by their story :wink:

 

[Mr. Teatime]

Action RPG so far, but already with branching - choosing which part of this fortress to defend.

Am a bit confused about where to assign points, I like the idea of being a super fast ninja type guy - yeah don't laugh - so am thinking about putting points into the fast sword style. But I can't see if I need to use all styles - seems I do depending on the enemy - rather than developing one style above all?

Anyway, looks intersting so far.

 

[Monolith]

I have read an online review of the German Gamestar magazine which has given The Witcher a lousy score of 73%. It critisizes massive bugs (the patch is going to fix over 200), a confused story, quests which give you no clues how to solve them, cloned npcs, repeating interiors, only a few interesting npcs and the loading times. The review is beeing criticized by readers who are playing the game and think it has deserved a much higher score. One of the editors has defended the score and stated that even if there were no bugs the score wouldn't be much higher because the game design is flawed. (Oblivion got 90%, Gothic 3 86% and Two Worlds 83%) He also added that The Witcher lacks interesting quests.

One of the positive aspects noted is that choices really have consequences.

If The Witcher had been developed by one of those major American companies, they'd have given it easily +20% just on that account. They've always tried too fucking much pleasing everybody outside of Europe and Germany in particular.

EDIT:
Which doesn't mean that their review is invalid. I haven't played the game yet, but everything I read so far seems to hint in a different direction. I just hope that Gamestar is once again just full of shit.

 

[Zinc]

i read this from some guy who pirated the game

"great game, i think best Polish game i played beta and in my opinion this game is something beetween Gothic 3 and oblivion greetings from poland"

make of it what you will

 

[MasPingon]

repeating interiors, only a few interesting npcs and the loading times. (Oblivion got 90%, Gothic 3 86% and Two Worlds 83%)

Drama. That's a load of bullshit

 

[DraQ]

It critisizes (...) a confused story, quests which give you no clues how to solve them (...)

Sounds very appealing.

One of the editors has defended the score and stated that even if there were no bugs the score wouldn't be much higher because the game design is flawed. (Oblivion got 90% (...))

Lulz.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Gamestar is indeed full of shit.

I remember buying their magazins monthly untill they gave Oblivion 90 % or something and praised it as "Teh best rpg eva". Another thing is, that they usually always give german developers bonus points (Examples: Sacred, Spellforce, even "The Fall") for no reason (actually money is a reason, "accidentally" there was a full page ad of the earlier mentioned games, who received good scores). They are probably right on some points, though, i`m just saying there is something fishy going on there.

pps: first patch is out: ftp://ftp.download-center.com/internati ... ch_1.1.exe

 

[Zinc]

I'll wait for the Gamespot and IGN reviews. At least they are mildly reliable.

 

[bozia2012]

Action RPG so far, but already with branching - choosing which part of this fortress to defend.

Am a bit confused about where to assign points, I like the idea of being a super fast ninja type guy - yeah don't laugh - so am thinking about putting points into the fast sword style. But I can't see if I need to use all styles - seems I do depending on the enemy - rather than developing one style above all?

Anyway, looks intersting so far.

I'm putting all I got to fast style - seems the most versatile. Supported by signs (it's possible to knock down opponent with aard and sell him a mercy blow) of course.

 

[DraQ]

I'll wait for the Gamespot and IGN reviews. At least they are mildly reliable.

I'll wait for the codex review, or at least thread with mini review.

 

[Texas Red]

I'll wait for the Gamespot and IGN reviews. At least they are mildly reliable.

Dude. Dude! Are you fucking serious? No offense to you but that is about the dumbest post I read in a while.

 

[dragonfk]

I'll wait for the Gamespot and IGN reviews. At least they are mildly reliable.

Dude. Dude! Are you fucking serious? No offense to you but that is about the dumbest post I read in a while.

Just out of curiosity TWD, which gaming sites you consider reliable?

 

[MountainWest]

"Confusing quests" might very well mean the lack of the ever important quest arrow or/and the blinking map marker. Furthermore you might actually have to *gasp* listen to what people have to say.

Bah, haven't played the game yet. But I sure as hell won't judge it based on what some star struck fanboys, aka "professional" reviewers, have to say.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

Gamestar is indeed full of shit.

I remember buying their magazins monthly untill they gave Oblivion 90 % or something and praised it as "Teh best rpg eva". Another thing is, that they usually always give german developers bonus points (Examples: Sacred, Spellforce, even "The Fall") for no reason (actually money is a reason, "accidentally" there was a full page ad of the earlier mentioned games, who received good scores). They are probably right on some points, though, i`m just saying there is something fishy going on there.

pps: first patch is out: ftp://ftp.download-center.com/internati ... ch_1.1.exe

Say, how retarded are you? Just because the UK and US press totally ignores everything that is not made in the US or the UK makes their "reviews" of German games more reliable than those of GameStar? If you've ever took some time to think, than you'd realised that Spellforce was treated superficially in the US press and the Fall wasn't even released in the US. Both games were praised in Eastern Europe, where (that's my experience) the most intelligent gamers live today.

GameStar is a subsidary of IDG publishing - those guys are way beyond the need to get some bribes (the Fall guys would'nt have even been able to bribe them).

They are so tough on Witcher now, because they ignored the bugs in Gothic 3 (oppsed to the now defunct PCPowerplay) and got their assed whipped because of that.

Go, read their list on their webside. I will wait at least one other patch before I start playing.

 

[Mr. Teatime]

Further impressions and questions:

Performance is about the same, if not a bit better, than NWN2 was for me. Issues are pausing every few seconds when you're running (and there seems to be no way to walk?), where I assume the engine is loading new content. This gets very annoying.

Load times are annoying when you get things like one-room huts and you have to wait a while when you exit them.

Dialogue is a bit iffy, nowhere near as good as PS:T for instance. Voice overs are fine. I like the atmosphere. Remiinds me a bit of Ultima, a slightly more refined gothic.

Now some questions: I've got to the outskirts of vizier (vizimar? Can't remember), got a couple of quests. First, get some ghoul stuff, which I figure is in the crypt, but the door's locked? I can't unsheathe my sword or try blowing the door off with magic for some reason - is unsheathing your sword disabled in non-combat zones?

I talked to a hunter guy in the middle of the outdoor map, said he wanted me to kill a monster that lurks by the lake - but no quest was added to my log to do this. A bug, or... ?

Still getting the hang of the game, it does seem slightly buggy (had a CTD a few minutes ago), but definitely above the average RPG. The plot, and quests, and dialogue, are nothing spectacular right now though, but it does have a feel of a richer world than your standard CRPG, probably because of the source material.

 

[vrok]

Downloading the patch now so might as well write something. The game feels a lot like a mix between Gothic (only played #2) and _maybe_ TES, but done right. Absolutely right. The realistic touches to the universe really help with immersion, better dialogue, better NPCs and massively better combat. The dungeons are actually pitch black and NPCs actually stop talking to you for a while if you piss them off!

Having completed Chapter 1 so far, there hasn't been any serious roleplaying through dialogue as in MotB, though it's certainly not non-stop action. Instead it's mostly information gathering and quest clues with Geralt's own flavor sprinkled on top. To persuade NPC's, instead of a magic skillcheck, you'll have to find out something about (or fetch something to bribe) him that convinces him to oblige. Certain inn visitors usually allow themselves to enter what's essentially a drinking contest so they'll spill their secrets out but at the risk of passing out yourself and even if you don't you'll pretty much crawl around with distorted vision and lowered combat capabilities until you rest. Guards however are most keen on the old fashioned bribe.

It's so much based on information gathering that you have to be taught by NPCs or read books about herbs and monsters, as the game requires you to have that information in your bestiary etc to be able to get the ingredients you need for quests or elixirs. There's a skill to pre-learn some basics but I don't know how far that extends and I'm not certain if just fighting monsters for a while will add them to your bestiary, didn't seem like it for me anyway. Then you have plenty of Alchemy recipes on top of that.

Magic seems to be mostly a sidearm meant to enhance melee fighting instead of replacing it. The first sign you get is basically force push, used to clear paths from rocks or knock opponents over so you can kill them with a finishing move which is a one hit kill. Playing on hard makes this almost a required tactic to bring down many of the enemies as fighting 4 of them with group style takes too long and exposes your back too much, while other enemies simply take too much punishment otherwise and can still manage to break through your combos.

Sword combat is pretty straight forward and looks great. Combo-based with 3 styles each for the 2 blades, click when the trail lights up in orange to continue the combo. Each style has its own tree that adds bonuses when using the style and allows for unlocking more advanced stages of the combo that further enhances damage and provides a unique animation for that stage of the combo giving combat the ability to be more than one million identical swing animations like in Oblivion. The down side is there's no active parry or block. You'll have to buff that passively through elixirs or skills.

Hard can sometimes be a bitch to play when you don't know how to best exploit your enemies weaknesses or when the game goes from dialogue or zoning to standing in the middle of a small space with 4 enemies surrounding you. It's so worth it though to finally play a game with challenge that isn't easily circumvented through creative leveling or other techniques, like farming the Shadow Void monsters in MotB. Even if the repeated loading combined with the long loading times is a pain.

It has some C&C. The game even bluntly explains so to you at one point, but having played so little and not explored the choices I didn't make, it's hard to say yet if it really makes the game different. I've just barely discovered one faction that seems joinable and have no clue which others can be joined or even if they're mutually exclusive.

The mini-games or whatever you want to call them so far consist of gambling either through dice poker or fist fighting, with their own quest advancement chains. Not sure how that concludes.

I so far consider it to be one of the most enjoyable action/adventure RPGs I've played and it has showed no signs of horrible design so far (the reason I couldn't bring myself to play Gothic 3), everything seems triple-A. While it's certainly an RPG it's not focused on different dialogue choices or straight diplomacy, and most NPCs are just one-line filler to enrich the environment but does so way better than Oblivion could ever dream of. Instead it focuses on what you do or do not, how you choose to deal with the people you do interact with.

Haven't noticed any specific bugs so far playing unpatched except the odd CTD.

 

[Gambler]

I'll wait for the Gamespot and IGN reviews. At least they are mildly reliable.

This must be some bad joke. Their reviewers are utterly incapable of describing a game to the readers, let alone analyzing it's design. They simply iterate over some generic points (it's 3d!!! it's fantasy!!!) and then jump to conclusions (me like!!!).

 

[Saxon1974]

I'll wait for the Gamespot and IGN reviews. At least they are mildly reliable.

This must be some bad joke. Their reviewers are utterly incapable of describing a game to the readers, let alone analyzing it's design. They simply iterate over some generic points (it's 3d!!! it's fantasy!!!) and then jump to conclusions (me like!!!).

I agree gamespot is horrible now. They totally ignored Oblivion's level scaling and the generic environments of the game and just praised it like it was the messiah of RPG gaming.

 

[Trash]

Been playing again for awhile now. I heartily concur with vrok with both the positive and negative points he brings up and have to add that I'm enjoying myself immensely.

To be able to complete quite a lot of monster slayer and body parts retrieval quests it's imperative to learn about your enemies. This is done through books, story progression and by chatting with npc's. A lot of the quests on noticeboards need for you to learn info about the monster involved first. It's fun to seek that info.

In fact, a lot of quests need you to learn stuff, talk/bribe with people and generally try to find out what's going on. I'm really digging it, but I can understand how those that expect to be hand led through a game might be put of. Fuck 'em though, they can play oblivion.

It's also great to tinker around with the many traits, skills, upgrades and the like in the character screen. You do play the pre defined character Geralt whom is a professional monster slayer who uses combat, some magic and his potions to do his work. So any roleplaying is more done through the different paths you choose then to play as a thief or wizard. Suits me, cause I usually like to play a fighter-mage.

One last thing before I go back t the game is the combat. I kinda expected it to get a bit boring after awhile. it's not. The game is hard enough to keep me on my toes and battles are short, fierce and bloody. 3 swordstyles, other weapons, blasting the enemy with spells and using the right potion (that you had to learn, find the ingredients and make yourself) keeps it interesting and varied.

Just got the patch. From the readme I gather it fixes a lot of small things that really aren't that gamebreaking. Hope they keep this level of support up.


PS Lets hope stuff like this sells well enough for the rpg genre to get a chance for a grand return. It's been awhile since I played two great rpg's in as many months.

 

[Antagonist]

GameStar is a subsidary of IDG publishing - those guys are way beyond the need to get some bribes (the Fall guys would'nt have even been able to bribe them).

They are so tough on Witcher now, because they ignored the bugs in Gothic 3 (oppsed to the now defunct PCPowerplay) and got their assed whipped because of that.

Here's a monumental reality check failure. It doesn't matter to what big company the Gamestar belongs to as their existence is solely dependent on their ability to create revenue and the moment it fails to do so will be the one where IDG will close it for good. The Gamestar guys know it and the publishers know it as well so Gamestar will play ball as long as their retarded readers will buy magazines with the most exclusive previews/reviews/demos/whatever. I still have an axe to grind with the Gamestar after these corrupt fucks gave Ultima 9 a score 90 percent and assuring me that it was close to the second coming for any old-school Ultima fan coincidentally after getting an exclusive Ultima 9 demo and interviews.

 

[VonVentrue]

Hmm... Summarizing, pretty much everyone's first impressions are fairly positive.

I'm looking forward to reading the Codex review that shall inevitably be published sooner or later before purchasing the game, though.

 

[Mr. Teatime]

Is it true the patch requires a game restart for most of it to take effect?

 

[spacemoose]

I've not visited any review sites for at least two years now ( not counting searching for screenshots and stuff like that )

my decision on whether to buy a game is based entirely on opinions I get on trusted forums (like this one) or demos, if there are any.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Patch 1.1 is out.

Patchlog:http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showpost.php?p=4683648&postcount=256

5. Patch 1.1 Major Fixes
======================================================

Gameplay & text bugs fixed:
- Fixed character development issues with some abilities and skills.
- Fixes for some storyline related progression breaks.
- Fixes for druids' day-night cycle in Act 5.
- Fixes for sex scene with nurses in Act 5.
- Signet fixes (some signets were received twice).
- Fixed story incoherency regarding Erkyn in Act 3.
- Experience gain indication localization fixes.
- Mutagen potion - new fixes for showing up a message.
- Fixed items used in eating animations.
- Geralt's allies fixed to always react properly to all mosnters.
- Bounty Hunter is Agent Smith no more (he doesn't replicate). Mr. Geralt, we missed you...
- Echinopses and Archespores now use their own spikes instead of arrows.
- Fixes for alchemical ingredients extracted from some monsters.
- Raven Crypt - few fixes for geometry and placeables.
- Fixed few places where player was supposed to meditate, but couldn't.
- Fixed story incoherence in Berengar quest.
- Berengar won't disappear on sight when sparing him.
- A whole lot of localization fixes (some of them won't work with old savegames!).

Code bugs fixed:
- Fixed all diagnosed stability issues and crashes.
- Fixed few gameplay issues with WSAD and mousedrive controls.
- Alt-Tab related issues fixed (random crashes, hang-ups, cursor blocking).
- Cat potion estimated time display - fixed.
- Dropping items from the inventory fixes for better spread.
- Weapon visual FXes fixed during dialogues.
- Confirmation box shown when player uses Quick Load.
- Tooltip fixes for lower resolutions (for example 800x600).
- All read books now have the appropriate note in description.
- Sitting animation fixes for few characters that sat beside the chair.
- Alt-Tab fixes for dialogue lines and gameplay options.
- Savegame option blocked around Aard throwing time.
- Audio: rat squealing sound fixes for minimized mode.
- Movies and cutscenes fixes for Alt-Tabbing.
- AI: fixed NPCs chasing enemies that were no more.
- AI: few poker fixes.
- Fixed problems with items appearing back in storages.
- Fixed blizzard problems with cutscenes and dialogues.
- Fixed toxicity effect for Alt-Tabbing.
- Finishers fixes - animation sometimes did not play.
- When taking out an unknown item of the storage, the user can no longer see the name of the potion. Good one...
- Fixed saving in tight places (player got teleported after load... sometimes).

Art & sound bugs fixed:
- Vizim's Temple Quarter: ~30 physics fixes; corrected barrels; ~10 decoration fixes.
- Kaer Morhen: Wild animals fixes.
- Sewers: commoners sleeping fxes; ~5 item properties fixes; ~10 skeleton placement fixes.
- Vizim's Temple Quarter/Burning Vizim:The banner on the tower is no longer black.
- Old Manor: Koschey boss movement fixes.
- Mutants fixes for decapitation. That means no decapitation now.
- Werewolf physics fixes.
- Chainmail stand placeable now has collision surface (player/npc can't pass through it).
- Celina brightness fixes for interiors.
- Order knights lighting fixes.
- Bread item fixes for eating animation.
- More detailed model of Horse+Wagon for opening cutscenes.
- Journal entry for crypts fixed now.
- A child in epilogue cutscene doesn't look like badly sewn young Frankenstein.
- Old lady and dwarves - idle animation fixes.