The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition

[Havoc]

Quite interesting, but...

Nah, again - gameplay mechanics subverted for the purpose of cutscene. We need either third agent or C&C.

So wait... how come acid in the face is subverting gameplay mechanics, but a squad of elves with bows isn't?

Acid to the face - you usually dodge all bombs, flasks and even fists during gameplay. Taking away control from the player so that Geralt is hit with the acid bottle == subverting gameplay (I grant you - it's still better than what we have now).

Remember that they fallen in a hole. Nobody knew where they went. Only after the fight was over.

Auckes finding you takes place outside of the gameplay within the frame of the story. Auckes could outsmart Iorveth by essentially doing what Iorveth was planning to - watching the whole battle from the shadows, following Letho's and Geralt's fall and then pushing through the where they were (which takes time, waiting for Iorveth and Roche to bleed out).

This would be merely a plot development and no gameplay would be denied in this way. This is entirely fair and accounts for player's accomplishment without killing off the antagonist (in fact this would allow a character development for his lackey).

I would see the acid throw in the cutscene more like this - Letho gets beaten, sword out of his hands and lying on his side. Geralt wants answers - he's pissed and during his talking Letho does a dirty trick, acid + aard for the bottle to break and spray. Geralt is fast and saves only half of his face. It still burns like a mother fucker, but Letho can escape. Dirty move - the characters later remark about it and want him more dead (even the player for that underhanded thing).

Auckes watching the fight gives us more questions than answers. Why Roche's people didn't see them? Are there two good spots to see the fight? If Roche/Iorweth people didn't see during the fight the collapse, then how Auckes? If the Triss+Geralt moment doesn't occur, then how they know about the secret passage?

I agree, but it would need more than cosmetic changes.

 

[Carrion]

I would see the acid throw in the cutscene more like this - Letho gets beaten, sword out of his hands and lying on his side. Geralt wants answers - he's pissed and during his talking Letho does a dirty trick, acid + aard for the bottle to break and spray. Geralt is fast and saves only half of his face. It still burns like a mother fucker, but Letho can escape. Dirty move - the characters later remark about it and want him more dead (even the player for that underhanded thing).

The scene would be slightly better that way, but DX:HR already did the "protagonist gets careless and the enemy outsmarts him and escapes" thing and it sucked more than a dozen Letho fights combined. Being attacked by a third party while interrogating Letho would work much better, and it would be much more plausible if Letho managed to escape while Geralt was fighting someone else instead of Geralt just making a rookie mistake and letting Letho escape without the player having any control over it.

 

[Havoc]

I would see the acid throw in the cutscene more like this - Letho gets beaten, sword out of his hands and lying on his side. Geralt wants answers - he's pissed and during his talking Letho does a dirty trick, acid + aard for the bottle to break and spray. Geralt is fast and saves only half of his face. It still burns like a mother fucker, but Letho can escape. Dirty move - the characters later remark about it and want him more dead (even the player for that underhanded thing).

The scene would be slightly better that way, but DX:HR already did the "protagonist gets careless and the enemy outsmarts him and escapes" thing and it sucked more than a dozen Letho fights combined. Being attacked by a third party while interrogating Letho would work much better, and it would be much more plausible if Letho managed to escape while Geralt was fighting someone else instead of Geralt just making a rookie mistake and letting Letho escape without the player having any control over it.

You could roll over them and get to Letho faster. Don't you know the wise worlds? "Always use the roll, son."

 

[hiver]

How it is "much better" you have two guys that only want to kill Geralt, have him unconscious two meters away from them - and then they just run away - because he is unconscious?

Would you please fucking read what I've posted?

Motivations and character behaviour consistency is poo, but plan B gas bomb works much better than suddenly just asspulling Aard++.

Yes i did Draq. Why dont you pay more attention to what im saying?

Plan B gass bomb or Quenn or Aard doesnt matter. Those are just tools to achieve a certain outcome.
The whole scene - in both cases - and the outcome of them, were totally retarded.

 

[DraQ]

I am sick of this entire argument.

Realism is NOT a necessary thing for games. Fun is. Also, it is IMPOSSIBLE for games to have perfect implementation of c&c.

I fear it is for one reason only - stories are all about believability of events. A leads to B, B leads to C or to D (depending on player's choice). When C is subverted because GM (designer) decides to use reversed Deus Ex Machina the credibility is lost.

Stories are to be believeable - otherwise it's bad storytelling. And we all know Witcher 2 designers put the story in the game on the forefront of their product.

It's not that this scene destroyed the whole game or the themes the story touched upon. But it's important to recognise weak point when it is as opposed to clapping to it and claiming it's a 'good design decision'. No it was not. It was contrived.

Bioware didn't suck arse on day 1. It was only after bunch of rabid fanboys came along who started to extol the most awful rubbish there was as quality. This totally forced them to change their focus. That's why knowing what;s really good and what's really bad is vital.

I'd have probably just gone with "GTFO", TBH, so .

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

An interesting read, but what do you propose as an alternative?

This is the point - this is a goddamn custscene and we all know even laws of physics be damned in those. The problem is the cutscene is contrived - it's constructed to subvert everything that gameplay tells so that 'the plot must go on'. If the cutscene stemmed from player's actions e.g. performance in the previous section of the game it would be all believeable an ok. But it does not. It denies all that happened just prior to it making gameplay section pointless. It's the equivalent of the GM ignoring player's input (performance in combat) and rendering them powerless with words:

'The dragon emerges unscathed from the demolished tunnel. Before anyone of you has any time to react he breaths fire of you 5 times, scorring critical hits for each of you. All of you fall uncnoscious to the ground. The dragon flies off leaving you behind. He is a powerful beast, isn't he?'.

Essentially the same happens in the fight with Letho and in the hypothetical (but so true) example I came up with. It's suddenly putting hold on the ruleset and declaring 'you lose, muhahaha!'. It's cheating and being cheap. It's just contrived mess.

And I don't get your:

The whole thing being a cut-scene is highly untraditional and would probably give the player the impression that they had even less control of the situation.

How accounting for player's performace in battle gives the impression he has less control over game? If anything the opposite is true. Play well - you get one cutscene. Play bad - you get another. Both cutscenes can bring different consequences. It's logical - it's just common sense. Losing when you are winning because GM (designers) stomped his leg and said 'You lose' is on gindergarten sandbox level and proves that someone didn't plan scene thoroughly enough. Bad writing, no matter the way you look at it.

The funny thing is TW2 uses the mechanics I am talking about in another fight. When you have duel between Roche and Iorveth its ending cutscene depends on which character had more HP left. Why can't we have the same with Letho?

You're referring to the first fight with him? (I really have to try to finish this game sometime).

Yeah, I was pretty annoyed too. Didn't think I'd see anyone talk about that, but it sorta made me change my expectations of the game a bit. Not from good to bad, just to "cutscenes are gonna interfere with player agency/Geralt isn't really your character" type of change. Don't really consider it a writing problem since 'bad writing' has little to do with branching consequences. More like bad design.

 

[toro]

script should serve the game, and not the other way round.

The game's designers apparently disagree. Why single out the Letho fight when the entire game prioritizes a cinematic experience over gameplay? The only difference to Bioware is that it's better written; the concept is the same.

Fucking shit. I say the same thing for almost one week.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

script should serve the game, and not the other way round.

The game's designers apparently disagree. Why single out the Letho fight when the entire game prioritizes a cinematic experience over gameplay? The only difference to Bioware is that it's better written; the concept is the same.

Fucking shit. I say the same thing for almost one week.

I was just about to mention this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't half the reason you guys whine about BioWare is that they constantly prioritize their vision of how the story and your character should act, to the point that their stories obfuscate any player agency their games might have had?

I still think that the Witcher 2 generally offers more player agency than recent games from BioWare (at least with sidequests).

 

[toro]

Havoc - you are an imbecile. Basically you started the discussion and now you are just trolling.

Also salutations to the other imbecile that put me in ignore for criticizing TW2.

Both scenes [Javed + Professor fight and Letho fight] are retarded without a a doubt. But whatever. Fucking witcher drones.

 

[toro]

script should serve the game, and not the other way round.

The game's designers apparently disagree. Why single out the Letho fight when the entire game prioritizes a cinematic experience over gameplay? The only difference to Bioware is that it's better written; the concept is the same.

Fucking shit. I say the same thing for almost one week.

I was just about to mention this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't half the reason you guys whine about BioWare is that they constantly prioritize their vision of how the story and your character should act, to the point that their stories obfuscate any player agency their games might have had?

I still think that the Witcher 2 generally offers more player agency than recent games from BioWare (at least with sidequests).

You are right on both points. About the reason and about TW2. But considering that TW2< TW1, there is a lot of space for improvement.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

There's space for improvement in every game. Also, The Witcher and The Witcher 2 are RPGs. Sorry, but that is the truth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_video_game

Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they aren't RPGs. I can understand how Elder Scrolls fans can say they aren't RPGs, because their idea of an RPG is being able to make a furry. They can't understand the concept of starting the game as a pre-defined character. But that doesn't stop it from being an RPG.

 

[Commissar Draco]

There's space for improvement in every game. Also, The Witcher and The Witcher 2 are RPGs. Sorry, but that is the truth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_video_game

Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they aren't RPGs. I can understand how Elder Scrolls fans can say they aren't RPGs, because their idea of an RPG is being able to make a furry. They can't understand the concept of starting the game as a pre-defined character. But that doesn't stop it from being an RPG.

It is however ARPG with twichy combat where atributes and skills are (aording to many) meaningless. I'm saying this Despite that I do like the game. (For graphics, art direction and interesting story).

 

[Havoc]

Wut? What did I start?

 

[Deleted member 7219]

There's space for improvement in every game. Also, The Witcher and The Witcher 2 are RPGs. Sorry, but that is the truth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_video_game

Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they aren't RPGs. I can understand how Elder Scrolls fans can say they aren't RPGs, because their idea of an RPG is being able to make a furry. They can't understand the concept of starting the game as a pre-defined character. But that doesn't stop it from being an RPG.

It is however ARPG with twichy combat where atributes and skills are (aording to many) meaningless. I'm saying this Despite that I do like the game. (For graphics, art direction and interesting story).

The people who say the skills are meaningless are wrong. Try fighting with swords without putting any stats into swords, for example, in either game, and see how far twitch combat gets you. I accept that at the lowest possible difficulty you could probably best every fight (except the boss ones), but I don't know for certain since I played both on hard.

I accept there aren't any attributes, which is a shame. Personally I would have preferred to have seen something along the lines of SPECIAL, but the exclusion of attribute points doesn't exclude it from being an RPG.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Heh the new Elderscrolls and Bio games are as ARPG as TWitcher 2 is. Not to mention they have worse graphics, NPCs, dialogues and Story.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Tell me where the option is to walk away from Saren/Illusive Man/God-Child/Alduin. Tell me where the consequences are in the Elder Scrolls games. Tell me where the different Act 2/Act 3s are depending on who you decide to side with.

 

[Havoc]

Tell me where the option is to walk away from Saren/Illusive Man/God-Child/Alduin. Tell me where the consequences are in the Elder Scrolls games. Tell me where the different Act 2/Act 3s are depending on who you decide to side with.

Didn't you get the memo? Those're fake choices!

 

[Mrowak]

You're referring to the first fight with him? (I really have to try to finish this game sometime).

Yeah, I was pretty annoyed too. Didn't think I'd see anyone talk about that, but it sorta made me change my expectations of the game a bit. Not from good to bad, just to "cutscenes are gonna interfere with player agency/Geralt isn't really your character" type of change. Don't really consider it a writing problem since 'bad writing' has little to do with branching consequences. More like bad design.

Actually I'd argue that it is bad writing, but not in the sense that the wording is broken. It's more like bad writing in a dramatic play or a film - when you have a pointless aside, a needless soliloquy; or the very reverse - you don't have them where they should be. It's just bad comment from author in the script, or lack of any comment where there ought to be one like [the thunder special effect] or [C&C]. After all it does damage the reception of the story and it just feels wrong - many players easily spoted that.

The difference is that in this case scenario we do get something contrived - which is a legit flaw in narrative in literary standards. Again if A does not result in B but in Z because the cutscene invalidated A with no explenation other than 'You lose!' something is pretty much broken.

 

[Dagorath]

You people do know that every story is contrived, right?

I mean, the notion of an "organic story" is total bullshit. You can't plant a story and stand back waiting for harvest.

Some writers are good at hiding that. Others are less so. To expect possibly the lowest grade of writers (well, except journalists, harhar), that is games writers, to be able to do it even remotely as well as successful fiction writers ("literature") is even more stupid than the most stupid journalist ever.

 

[toro]

Tell me where the option is to walk away from Saren/Illusive Man/God-Child/Alduin. Tell me where the consequences are in the Elder Scrolls games. Tell me where the different Act 2/Act 3s are depending on who you decide to side with.

The option to walk away from murdering Letho is quite cool. But it also the end of the game, so there is no point in discussing about a consequence. *Maybe* they implement one in the next game. Like they did for Shani

As for the rest of information, read this: http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/The_Witcher_2_ending

No matter what, Nilfgaard will be on the march north to invade the Northern Kingdoms.

That's the real ending of the game because the rest of stuff is just fluff. You cannot *really* defeat Letho's planning, Triss, Zoltan, Dandellion, Iorveth or Roche cannot die (as they are integral part of the witcher story), you cannot change shit in the end ... just press buttons in Powerpoint and watch different slides. Yeah, that's the end of TW2. They put the dragon there for diversion, but honestly at that point I did not care anymore about all the trannies parading on the screen.

I mean, the notion of an "organic story" is total bullshit. You can't plant a story and stand back waiting for harvest.

Why not?

As for Letho, I'm sure that he will not appear in TW3, because they gave players the possibility to KILL him. And implementing consequences for CDProjekt means:
1) In you walk away from Letho, he will be obscurely mentioned in TW3.
2) If you killed Letho, he will not be mentioned at all.
This is not satisfactory, because it simply betrays the hacking mentality of the developers - they don't have a complete story for all 3 games and they do what Bioware is doing, invent shit as you go.
That's why the story is so *more* contrived than necessary. Which can really mess up the game experience for some people. And I guess that is one point of the discussion.

 

[toro]

There's space for improvement in every game. Also, The Witcher and The Witcher 2 are RPGs. Sorry, but that is the truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_video_game

I did not say that TW is not a RPG, I just said that is a limited ARPG. And my comment about linearity was based on the fact that once you *witcher* an area, you cannot go back to check and what happened in Vegas stays in Vegas.
The story is modularized: you have a little space for maneuvers, but nothing that could break the game narrative and in the end you will always get in the same point with superficial differences. Just a Bioware game done correctly.

 

[odrzut]

You people do know that every story is contrived, right?

I mean, the notion of an "organic story" is total bullshit. You can't plant a story and stand back waiting for harvest.

Actually you can. At least in pen & paper RPG. You design NPCs, give them goals, skills, relations and knowledge. Best to start with powerfull NPCs that have conflicting goals. You then put players there, and see what happens. Story grows by itself.

If CRPG was designed in such a way, that every decision you want to make playing it was possible, and the universe reacted beliveably, and the result was interesting - it wouldn't matter for your experience with game, that this game was preprogrammed, and your decisions were predicted, and the reactions was scripted, and there were some decisions you had not thought of, that the game had not allowed you to make.

It's obviously impossible (now) to predict all reasonable decisions you could make, and program reactions to them. But maybe at some point it would be possible. Computers are better every year, programming languages and tools evolve, budgets for games increase.

Recently I've thought one way to generate non-linear game - just start with p&p RPG (maybe with extremely simplified mechanic, because we're generating story and C&C). Play the p&p rpg with your starting condition with 50 teams as a Dungeon Master, record the sessions, in your CRPG implement all the most frequent decisions and their consequences.

It would cost, and it would be slow, but I think it would generate much better nonlinear plot for CRPG with C&C.

 

[toro]

Recently I've thought one way to generate non-linear game - just start with p&p RPG (maybe with extremely simplified mechanic, because we're generating story and C&C). Play the p&p rpg with your starting condition with 50 teams as a Dungeon Master, record the sessions, in your CRPG implement all the most frequent decisions and their consequences.

Not a bad idea.

 

[toro]

16 totally different endings - check
Vergen vs Battlefield presented as something good - check
ME different colored cut-scenes presented as different outcomes - check
Please replay the fucking game - check

Is not like the same thing was said 5 pages ago.

 

[Toffeli]

http://en.thewitcher.com/patch3-2/

New patch. Supposedly "modifies the UI significantly"