The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition

[Semper]

I'm not a lab rat and I definitely don't want to replay something when my motivation to do so is lacking. I choose Roche and that's it. Fuck Iorveth and the exceptional location, my TW2 story is over and definitive.

basically you want all the content in just a single run?! you know, you don't have to play it two times in a row within 1 week... just let 1-2 years pass and this time try out the other path. that is assuming that your brain is capable enough to remember what you did back then. if you hated the game and don't care any longer after finishing, you're simply not worth the additional content.

b2t: i've read about bugs and poor performance of the ee, but didn't found something about a patch to address this. will there be one or is this just some hyped bullshit and the ee plays nice?

 

[Carrion]

Another note - I'll take characters from The Witcher 2 over BioWare's sterile drones any day. it's amazing how much more natural the acting and writing come across. Replaying The Witcher 2, I completely forgot about how things like exposition are woven into the dialogue rather than having tons of it devoted just to exposition. If three people are talking, and everyone knows each other, we don't need to have them all awkwardly introduce each other by name, we'll figure it out as the conversation goes! There are characters who actually have wit and cynicism or are naive or are stupid or have actual personality traits that we can figure out without it being rammed down our throats!

Honestly, trying to play a BioWare game after this is just painful. It's like the dialogue was written by goddamn aliens or something, and read by the most bored actors on the the planet. You can just tell nobody is in the same room as each other or has even listened to the rest of the dialogue before doing their own takes.

I agree. The conversations flow naturally and the writing is overall very good, certainly some of the best I've seen in this type of a game. The voice acting manages to bring much more life and personality to the characters as well.

However, I don't think this approach is always the best when it comes to games, especially RPGs. In games it's sometimes better to just tell than show. There are instances in TW2 when the player has no way of knowing what Geralt knows, and the result is that the player feels like an observer instead of the one being in control of Geralt. One example of this would be right at the start of the prologue, when initiating dialogue with a seemingly random soldier starts a conversation about how that soldier has been spying for Geralt to get information on the assassination attempt. Choosing dialogue options when talking to Roche at the beginning of the game is also sort of difficult since at that point the player doesn't really even know who the hell Roche is and whether or not he's a friend of Geralt. TW1's amnesia thing was the cheapest trick in the book, but it worked to bring Geralt and the player to the same level, as lame as it was. In TW1 you went and talked to people to get information, in TW2 you click on someone and watch Geralt talk to get information he already knows. You sometimes feel like you don't have any control over what's happening in the game or what your character is doing. There's a conflict between what works in books and movies and what would be ideal for a game.

The structure of the game further emphasizes the problem. The prologue is really long and linear, and even at the start of Chapter 1 you'll be going from one cutscene to another for almost an hour. The game spends hours on dumping information on the player and introducing him to a few dozen characters before the actual game really even starts. This wouldn't really have been necessary in a game that actually has a narrator, even if the prologue is overall really enjoyable despite its linearity (and Foltest alone pretty much makes the whole thing worth it). The exposition-heavy beginning does pay off later in the game, but right now when I've started my third playthrough, I kind of wish they would've done some things differently.

 

[toro]

Boohoohoo! I don't want to make tough decisions! I like having 100% completion!

Fuck. You. This is exactly one of the many things wrong with todays RPG's. Cutting the players path to content by his own choice. Go to Bioware. They don't do that.

Bro, feel pain no more. There is Dragon Age 2 and believe me, this game is exactly what you need. It is totally MAJESTIC.

Imbeciles on a mission. Before spewing the same tasteless crap, did you take a second and think about the available alternatives? From your reactions, the answer is definitively NO.

TW2 has a lot of C&C and that's a good thing, in fact I've praised the game several time ... on this fucking forum. But nevertheless the game is LINEAR because once you go to a location, you can never go back. Even if you play with some variables, you cannot leave the path designed for you. I understand that this fact might not bother imbeciles with low attention span, but from a gameplay point of view is a HUGE limitation. It's sad but Betrayal at Krondor (1993) is a better game from this point of view.

I will overlook the fact that the forest in TW2 had corridors and I will go straight to the point: cutting out content WITHOUT choice is as retarded as it can be. Even DLCs are a superior alternative, because you play the CONTENT for which you PAID (real C&C !?) and sometimes they add something positive to the overall experience. The point is not about 100% completion rate, is about cutting off 1/4 of the game because the developer wants to present itself as being edgy and "hardcore". Which is not. The proper way to implement a consequence to a decision would be to use the already established elements of the game world and not by deus ex machina shits like adding/cutting off entire parts of the story. I mean that on Roche's path - Vergen access should be available, however limited and should be similar on Iorveth's path. Nobody can claim that this is proper C&C when the player is not aware about the alternatives to a decision, and I'm not refereeing to detailed alternatives, but at least some information. I didn't have a clue about Vergen until I finished the game and I started reading the reviews, when I felt similar to a kid slapped for no reason. I was thinking how could I have missed such a big part of the game and what did I do wrong. Why my Witcher cannot into Vergen and why I don't know anything about Vergen? If the game is so edgy, why the fuck it doesn't give me the lone wolf option of not giving a fuck about Roche or Iorveth (like it does with Letho in the end) ? Maybe because the game is not really about C&C and is more about marketing!?

And this is my problem, I want to know about Vergen even if I will never go there. That's why when I have to take a decision, at least I have a mental image of the implications. And there are many other superior alternatives, like building up the moment for the decision (linked quests, maybe visiting Vergen!?), but not in the clumsy manner done in TW2: throwing dices and calling that an informed decision. Especially when cutting off content makes this decision the most important of the entire game. Isn't something wrong when you have to take an in-game decision based on meta-gaming knowledge?

As for replaying a game, I simply cannot do it when (1) the combat is exploitable as shit and really not desirable once you finish the game, (2) the end is really not strong or memorable and (3) I need to play on the same corridors before and after the divergence point. If I did that, then I could be called a retarded completionist but I didn't. In my opinion, cutting off content is a phony mechanism which has many advantages for the game developer (he doesn't have to pay any attention to the rest of the world and is free to do whatever he wants), but for players is really not the best option: even if there are different chapters in the game, they shouldn't provide totally different/independent experiences. And another problem is that by doing this, the game continuity is broken and there is no way to continue without ignoring the consequences of these sections. Which TW2 gladly did.

But all is well when people like yourselves are hailing development shortcuts as the next best thing. And just crossing my mind: If cutting content was a viable option, then QUIT GAME is the best C&C feature ever!?

I'm not a lab rat and I definitely don't want to replay something when my motivation to do so is lacking. I choose Roche and that's it. Fuck Iorveth and the exceptional location, my TW2 story is over and definitive.

basically you want all the content in just a single run?! you know, you don't have to play it two times in a row within 1 week... just let 1-2 years pass and this time try out the other path. that is assuming that your brain is capable enough to remember what you did back then. if you hated the game and don't care any longer after finishing, you're simply not worth the additional content.

Where did I say that I've hated The Witcher 2?
"...and don't care any longer after finishing, you're simply not worth the additional content." - judgmental prick.

 

[Havoc]

You are a dumbfuck. In that one post you said that TW2 is linear, because the player has a choice that cuts him from content. You know what? I take my "Fuck. You." back and give you: Get. The. Fuck. Out. Go play Mass Effect. That game is not linear!

 

[Carrion]

That's why when I have to take a decision, at least I have a mental image of the implications. And there are many other superior alternatives, like building up the moment for the decision (linked quests, maybe visiting Vergen!?), but not in the clumsy manner done in TW2: throwing dices and calling that an informed decision. Especially when cutting off content makes this decision the most important of the entire game. Isn't something wrong when you have to take an in-game decision based on meta-gaming knowledge?

Yeah, there's only one entire chapter building up to that decision and making you familiar with the important characters. You can meet with both Roche and Iorveth before making your decision and hear where they're going and what their goals are. In no way is it an uninformed decision.

 

[Semper]

I don't want to do that, I'm not a lab rat and I definitely don't want to replay something when my motivation to do so is lacking. I choose Roche and that's it. Fuck Iorveth and the exceptional location, my TW2 story is over and definitive. On top of that, the combat is so tactically engaging that it makes replaying seems attractive as diarrhea.

got the impression because of this.

 

[Notorious]

The choices in The Witcher games suck because they are not role-playing choices, they are more like Choose Your Own Adventure type choices.

Let me elaborate. You are not creating a character in The Witcher and I don't even mean that you have to play that white haired asshole, but you can't even give him an edge. Like make him a good talker, or make him a good Thief, make him an awesome mage (You can put points into the skill trees yes, but no one will react to you being a master of blades or an alchemist or a mage, it makes no difference) you are not role-playing in this game because you are effectively forced into one role.Thus the choices feel forced upon you, unlike in games like Fallout. This is not a hardcore rpg, it is a softcore Choose Your Own Adventure game, just like the ME games.

Also the motivation in the game sucks. If you want to clear your name, alright, but what if I don't care? What if I want to play an outlaw and don't give a fuck about the assassin? The Witcher character I'm playing doesn't seem to care about Triss Merigold at all, so that's no motivation either. In my playthrough it was coincidental that I 'saved' her. (By confronting Letho, which is forced upon me)
So what exactly is my motivation? I just seem to stumble around and do what other people tell me to do. So giving me an choice in Chapter 1 which cut's out 1/4 of the game seems a little pretentious. I have no problem with it, but I too wasn't all that clear about what the difference really was, because no one in the game seems to have any clue on what's going on. So you keep following what could be best described as vague leads until the game is over. And then everything is revealed, in an what I found to be a comical moment, it was so over the top and pointless. I felt really empty because I didn't care about anything happening there, because nothing I did influenced anything and the Witcher character was so shallow. Triss Merigold always gets saved (And I didn't do crap for it). And the Mages always get slaughtered. Then it just ends. Ok. Done.

So it's a nice Action RPG at best. I really didn't see the awesome choices or the use of cutting out content for a single choice in the game.

 

[Captain Shrek]

And what may I ask is a Role play choice?

 

[attackfighter]

Like make him a good talker, or make him a good Thief, make him an awesome mage (You can put points into the skill trees yes, but no one will react to you being a master of blades or an alchemist or a mage, it makes no difference) you are not role-playing in this game because you are effectively forced into one role.Thus the choices feel forced upon you, unlike in games like Fallout.

"Oh no people don't reference my arbitrary class I chose but instead reference how I act around them. This is forced!"

Also the motivation in the game sucks. If you want to clear your name, alright, but what if I don't care? What if I want to play an outlaw and don't give a fuck about the assassin?

What if you don't want to save the vault. What if you think they're assholes who sent you on a suicide mission.

So you keep following what could be best described as vague leads until the game is over.

You're solving a mystery bro. If it were all out in the open there'd be no mystery.

Triss Merigold always gets saved (And I didn't do crap for it). And the Mages always get slaughtered. Then it just ends. Ok. Done.

Yeah and in Fallout the mutants always get blown up and so does the Master. But I guess there are unrelated ending slides so that suddenly makes it not feel forced upon you.

 

[Notorious]

Bad wording, granted. What I meant to say (And I eventually did say) is that you are not allowed to create your own character, thus you are more acting than role-playing. So again it's what is to be know as an Action-RPG, it's very linear, with choices that are in a characters range, that is not created by yourself.

 

[Havoc]

Bad wording, granted. What I meant to say (And I eventually did say) is that you are not allowed to create your own character, thus you are more acting than role-playing. So again it's what is to be know as an Action-RPG, it's very linear, with choices that are in a characters range, that is not created by yourself.

So... TW2 is like Deus Ex?

 

[Captain Shrek]

Bad wording, granted. What I meant to say (And I eventually did say) is that you are not allowed to create your own character, thus you are more acting than role-playing. So again it's what is to be know as an Action-RPG, it's very linear, with choices that are in a characters range, that is not created by yourself.

Look. Even within RPGs there can be subgenres. Some can be more shit than others. Its what these games do with what restrictions are placed on them. Witcher was made with Geralt in mind. I doubt if making that criticism of character creation, is a valid way of judging the game.

 

[Notorious]

attackfighter

The last time I checked you can ignore the main quest in fallout and still enjoy 95% of the content. There are many people who never finished Fallout 3 (Got I hate to bring this game up), but loved it.
Also it's more about taste I guess. Do you think good choices should be based on your character, your skills and traits, or do you think they should be awesome and not blocked off only because you didn't create or pursue a certain character.

My point was also that The Witcher wasn't all that motivated. What connection do I have to this people? None. And I saw no emotion for Triss. In Fallout we know that we grew up there and without us they all die (Or must leave, whatever). But what happens if we let the killer go? Who knows, who cares. What happens if we leave Roche or Ioverth to themselvs? Who knows, who cares. What happens if we don't save Triss? Who knows, who cares...

Also m< point was that they give me secondary choices, for secondary characters, and then in the end none at all. A 2011 game, which want's to be know for it's sophisticated C&C, should not be compared to a 1997 cRPG. It's just sad, that it offers no major choices or consequences. Also that you make most of them blind to their outcome, which apparently most people seem to like, so again a matter of taste.

 

[toro]

You are a dumbfuck. In that one post you said that TW2 is linear, because the player has a choice that cuts him from content. You know what? I take my "Fuck. You." back and give you: Get. The. Fuck. Out. Go play Mass Effect. That game is not linear!

You.Funny.
1) Choose Roche. Vergen is cut off.
2) Choose Iorveth. The haunted battlefield is cut off.

Both are specific implementation of a generic behavior: Take decision => unlocks adventure path and content is cut off. And there is no option to avoid taking the decision => player doesn't have a choice. I call this a LINEAR game.
And as it seems you are the biggest fan for Mass Effect, don't you notice the similarities between this approach and the ME stuff? Look deeper and you will find out that the philosophies between these franchises are similar. TW2 is just a Bioware game done correctly.

That's why when I have to take a decision, at least I have a mental image of the implications. And there are many other superior alternatives, like building up the moment for the decision (linked quests, maybe visiting Vergen!?), but not in the clumsy manner done in TW2: throwing dices and calling that an informed decision. Especially when cutting off content makes this decision the most important of the entire game. Isn't something wrong when you have to take an in-game decision based on meta-gaming knowledge?

Yeah, there's only one entire chapter building up to that decision and making you familiar with the important characters. You can meet with both Roche and Iorveth before making your decision and hear where they're going and what their goals are. In no way is it an uninformed decision.

Silly me. I did not know that I have to play a entire chapter for a single "decision" and I also did not know that based on that decision, I could play two different games. Especially when the main quest of that chapter was about trying to get more information about the kingslayer location and not about Roche/Iorveth politics. Call me a dumbfuck, but in this game I only cared about my skin. Why is this not a viable option? Because it could break the game designer little precious puzzle?

Other than this, I agree that the story tries to build for that decision. Which is good and bad at the same time: I simply don't like when the game designer is pushing his design on the player. Better option: Implement passive quests, which could never be activated unless the player reaches his own conclusion and joins a faction in the game. In Gothic it feels natural, in TW2 it feels forced.

In the end, it doesn't really matters. These are details that only bother peoples who gives a shit about wasted potential.

I don't want to do that, I'm not a lab rat and I definitely don't want to replay something when my motivation to do so is lacking. I choose Roche and that's it. Fuck Iorveth and the exceptional location, my TW2 story is over and definitive. On top of that, the combat is so tactically engaging that it makes replaying seems attractive as diarrhea.

got the impression because of this.

It was a rant. And I probably wanted to be edgy ... because there is only ONE codex
And to be more specific, I don't hate TW2, but I was expecting a new direction - like going for an open world. And is funny, because in another thread I was arguing for heavy narratives in games and in this one, the story is basically suffocating the player freedom.

The choices in The Witcher games suck because they are not role-playing choices, they are more like Choose Your Own Adventure type choices.

Let me elaborate. You are not creating a character in The Witcher and I don't even mean that you have to play that white haired asshole, but you can't even give him an edge. Like make him a good talker, or make him a good Thief, make him an awesome mage (You can put points into the skill trees yes, but no one will react to you being a master of blades or an alchemist or a mage, it makes no difference) you are not role-playing in this game because you are effectively forced into one role.Thus the choices feel forced upon you, unlike in games like Fallout. This is not a hardcore rpg, it is a softcore Choose Your Own Adventure game, just like the ME games.

Also the motivation in the game sucks. If you want to clear your name, alright, but what if I don't care? What if I want to play an outlaw and don't give a fuck about the assassin? The Witcher character I'm playing doesn't seem to care about Triss Merigold at all, so that's no motivation either. In my playthrough it was coincidental that I 'saved' her. (By confronting Letho, which is forced upon me)
So what exactly is my motivation? I just seem to stumble around and do what other people tell me to do. So giving me an choice in Chapter 1 which cut's out 1/4 of the game seems a little pretentious. I have no problem with it, but I too wasn't all that clear about what the difference really was, because no one in the game seems to have any clue on what's going on. So you keep following what could be best described as vague leads until the game is over. And then everything is revealed, in an what I found to be a comical moment, it was so over the top and pointless. I felt really empty because I didn't care about anything happening there, because nothing I did influenced anything and the Witcher character was so shallow. Triss Merigold always gets saved (And I didn't do crap for it). And the Mages always get slaughtered. Then it just ends. Ok. Done.

So it's a nice Action RPG at best. I really didn't see the awesome choices or the use of cutting out content for a single choice in the game.

+1

 

[Havoc]

You are a dumbfuck. In that one post you said that TW2 is linear, because the player has a choice that cuts him from content. You know what? I take my "Fuck. You." back and give you: Get. The. Fuck. Out. Go play Mass Effect. That game is not linear!

You.Funny.
1) Choose Roche. Vergen is cut off.
2) Choose Iorveth. The haunted battlefield is cut off.

Both are specific implementation of a generic behavior: Take decision => unlocks adventure path and content is cut off. And there is no option to avoid taking the decision => player doesn't have a choice. I call this a LINEAR game.
And as it seems you are the biggest fan for Mass Effect, don't you notice the similarities between this approach and the ME stuff? Look deeper and you will find out that the philosophies between these franchises are similar. TW2 is just a Bioware game done correctly.

This isn't a fucking sandbox game. Get in your head. It's like Deus Ex, Gothic or other. And your definition of fucking linear is batshit insane. Having a choice that makes you see the other side, have different quests and meet different people and ideologies is linear?
It's like raging about Deus Ex, because you can't go back to China! Or you can't go back to Khorinis, after taking the ship to the special island. This game focus is story, Geralt's story that the player choses how it goes. Killing a king. Finding the murder. Choosing who to trust. Those are your decisions.

 

[Kitako]

Take decision => unlocks adventure path and content is cut off. And there is no option to avoid taking the decision => player doesn't have a choice. I call this a LINEAR game.

You're calling a game linear because you don't have the choice to not make a choice?

 

[GordonHalfman]

And there is no option to avoid taking the decision => player doesn't have a choice. I call this a LINEAR game.

o_O

C&C nuts are never fucking happy.

 

[Storyfag]

And the Mages always get slaughtered.

Except for the combination of choices which allows them to survive :p

 

[Regvard]

CDPR know what makes the fagboxers tick.

In all seriousness though, that is some technically impressive cgi from a fringe potato developer.

That bald guy looks like he lowered his int to 4 and spent the points on agility.

 

[Lunac]

Jesus! This thread and all Shitcker1/2 threads need a mandatory decline AND pollack tags for future recognition purposes.


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[toro]

Jesus! This thread and all Shitcker1/2 threads need a mandatory decline AND pollack tags for future recognition purposes.


...
..
.

which future ?

 

[Havoc]

OUR FUTURE! DO YOU JOIN OUR UNITY OF WITCHER FANS? JOIN! DIE! JOIN! DIE!

 

[toro]

Havoc Location: Poland
I'm such an imbecile.

 

[Havoc]

Meh. It wouldn't matter even if I was in the North Pole, so that argument was invalid from the start.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

CDPR know what makes the fagboxers tick.

In all seriousness though, that is some technically impressive cgi from a fringe potato developer.

That bald guy looks like he lowered his int to 4 and spent the points on agility.

You obviously haven't played the game. Not to spoil anything, but Letho is one of the most intelligent characters.