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The Witcher |OT| Damn all dissonances

Dire

Member
This game is a blast, and you don't really need a monster system to play it. It may not be the prettiest, but it's running just fine on my nongaming laptop I picked up about a year ago.
 

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
Just started Chapter 3 not too long ago. I set the game down temporarily to get some console yumminess out of the way, but I've been feeling the (w)itch recently, so I'll probably get back into this once the new weekend rolls around.
 
Mango Positive said:
I'm knee deep into act 2 of the Witcher: EE. It is on sale on Steam for $39 and it's worth twice that.

Why the hell has GAF not been raving about this game more? Why the hell is this thread only 11 pages long? Seriously... the big Steam sale just happened and I had to bump this thread from November 29th? I had to take the advice of a mild gaming enthusiast to take the plunge fer fuck's sake!

Maybe GAF hasn't really been informed about the best RPG of the last several years? I played through Oblivion and Morrowind... the Witcher is better. I played through Mass Effect and Fallout 3... the Witcher is better. There is so dang much to do in this game. They give you a big world without overwhelming you and losing focus on the importance of the story (take note Bethesda). It has seriously been a LONG time since a game has called to me like this one does. You know... where you know you have to get up at 5:00 AM and it's 11:00 PM, but you just have to get to the end of that quest thread? Next thing you know, it's 1:00 AM, you're only getting 4 hours of sleep and you have no regrets? Seriously... I think I'm getting sick... <cough, cough>. I think I smell a sick day (or two! I could be REALLY sick!).

It truly baffles me that I wasn't GAFed into playing the Witcher MUCH sooner. Console-GAF, hold tight... it's coming. Can-Afford-A-Decent-Computer-GAF has no excuse (except for inferior taste).

It's also really easy to uncensor, even on Steam.


I've tried, I've tried. I've often thought about a creating a "Making Love to the Witcher" thread with screenshots, but never have... It's an absolutely awesome RPG. Can't wait for the console version to play through again.
 

Ethereal

Member
I played the first few chapters right when this game came out and haven't touched it since. I need to go back and get the enhanced version and get back at it.... I really enjoyed what I played and I felt like my actions had genuine consequences.
 
Mango Positive said:
I'm knee deep into act 2 of the Witcher: EE. It is on sale on Steam for $39 and it's worth twice that.

Why the hell has GAF not been raving about this game more? Why the hell is this thread only 11 pages long? Seriously... the big Steam sale just happened and I had to bump this thread from November 29th? I had to take the advice of a mild gaming enthusiast to take the plunge fer fuck's sake!
I guess everyone who cared for has played it already, the game is almost two years old.
 
I got it for Christmas, and I'm looking forward to spending more time with it. I've played through as far as I got in the demo, so from here on out, everything else should be new.
 

Mr.City

Member
I picked this game up from Steam during the holiday sale. I played a few minutes to see how it would run on my machine and really enjoyed the combat for the short time I played it. This is probably going on the backburner, but I'm looking forward to when I get the time to play it.
 

Sanjay

Member
Mango Positive said:
Why the hell has GAF not been raving about this game more? Why the hell is this thread only 11 pages long? Seriously... the big Steam sale just happened and I had to bump this thread from November 29th? I had to take the advice of a mild gaming enthusiast to take the plunge fer fuck's sake!

Maybe GAF hasn't really been informed about the best RPG of the last several years? I played through Oblivion and Morrowind... the Witcher is better. I played through Mass Effect and Fallout 3... the Witcher is better.

It truly baffles me that I wasn't GAFed into playing the Witcher MUCH sooner.

It was PC Game of the Year and finished 27 overall in Gaf's 2007 GOTY awards :|
 

Llyranor

Member
I'll probably give this a shot once it comes out on consoles.

But this wasn't the only good RPG of 2007. People often forget about Mask of the Betrayer simply because it was an expansion.
 

bengraven

Member
Are people seriously saying this is better than Morrowind and Oblivion?

I can't fathom that. I like a wide open world with a ton to do. This looks far too linear.

In other words, I need examples.
 

Etelmik

Neo Member
Yo, linearity and openworld-ness are preferences.

But on that note, the Witcher mixes JRPG and WRPG conventions, and it does it smoothly.


I like a wide open world with a ton to do.

Yes.

This looks far too linear.

This is too linear for you if you hated the main questline in Oblivion because it requires you to go from point A to point B. How much do you hate linearity? In Oblivion, you make some choice that are permanent upon the world, that cannot be undone except by quickload.

The only difference in this respect is that instead of 5 equal-length medium-sized quest-chains to choose from and a bunch of small ones, this one has one very long quest-chain with tons of medium and small ones on the way, ones that are self-contained in each chapter. Also, the main quest is told through tons of awesome cut scenes with decent voice-acting, so its told in a much better form.

It's different, but if you prefer Oblivion over this it's not going to be because of purely openness--The Witcher has plenty.

For your convenience: I mostly don't like JRPGs anymore. TWEWY and Contact are the only ones I've been able to get myself to play, and that's only because they're so different.
 

Haeleos

Member
bengraven said:
Are people seriously saying this is better than Morrowind and Oblivion?

I can't fathom that. I like a wide open world with a ton to do. This looks far too linear.

In other words, I need examples.

There's a demo.
 

bengraven

Member
Etelmik:

My perfect RPGs are like this:

I get the main quest and it says "go to point A", but I decide to spend 10 hours checking out B, C, D, E, F, etc. And each location gives me a number of quests. I finally decide to find out what's going on with the main quest and I still have about 10 sub-quests in my logbook.

I like spending 100 hours in a game and there are still areas I haven't been to. I've probably played 300 hours of Morrowind on 12 different characters and I can think of a number of entire regions of the world I still haven't been to yet.

Oblivion was a disappointment because while the world was massive, there were only a few quests in each town.

Fable 2 failed because you get about 6 quests, including the main quest, finish them, have to keep going on the main quest to open up another 6, rinse and repeat. I'm done with the game and other than some collection quests/"jobs" and one property (Fairfax), I have nothing to do.

Haeleos:

My PC can't handle even this.
 

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
bengraven said:
Etelmik:

My perfect RPGs are like this:

I get the main quest and it says "go to point A", but I decide to spend 10 hours checking out B, C, D, E, F, etc. And each location gives me a number of quests. I finally decide to find out what's going on with the main quest and I still have about 10 sub-quests in my logbook.

Witcher doesn't have an open-ended in the vein of Elder Scrolls, but it still has TONS of (somewhat) optional side-content to explore in every chapter. Disregarding the very short prologue, the basic setup consists of a new chapter starting along with at least one mainline chapter quest. This number can expand to 2 or more mainline chapter quests going concurrently. During these chapters, you can also open up one or two dozen more sidequests, most of which are optional, and most of which also somehow tie into the mainline quests.

The result is a multi-layered quest-based experience that can be tackled in almost whatever order you want. Sure, the actual experience is very story-driven and reliant upon the completion of the core quests, but the majority of the side-quests are woven so beautifully into the main narrative that progression feels surprisingly open-ended. I basically always leave the main story quests for last, but because I do every single side-quest available (in whatever order I want), I've got most of the chapter's storyline completed before I ever intended to... without skipping over or missing content.

Some quests are mutually exclusive, since decisions you make will inevitably affect later quests and main story drivers, but that's the nature of this kind of RPG. Helps with the replay too, at that.

I love Elder Scrolls, but the Witcher doesn't really sacrifice all that much fun and exploration by dodging the open-ended world layout. The end result is a much more focused experience. Disclaimer: I consider Oblivion to be one of the shittier mainline Elder Scrolls games. Without mods, that game was completely fucking broken.
 

Proc

Member
Des0lar said:
Picked up The Witcher:EE today.

What do I have to expect GAF?

An above average narrative (for a game), a simple but fun combat system, beautiful graphics, some kink, and one of the best single player rpgs the pc has to offer in recent years.
 
bengraven said:
Are people seriously saying this is better than Morrowind and Oblivion?

I can't fathom that. I like a wide open world with a ton to do. This looks far too linear.

In other words, I need examples.

I felt I get too easily sidetracked with Oblivion and as results, while I've explore a lot, I don't remember much of it either since some of the sidequests are pretty random.

in Witcher, most of the sidequests are tied into the main storyline, I haven't beat Witcher yeat, but if chapter 1-3 is any indication, than I like how The Witcher handle it's sidequests.

basically, there's a mystery cases in each chapter and all sidequests you do give you hint and clues about what really happened until you get into the final quest of that chapter where you make your decision based on your hint and clues and be a judge of some sort at the end of the chapter.

it's a little bit Detective Conan and Kindaichi-ish in that sense, and I loved it. even better when you realize that no one is innocent in this game's world, so choosing shich sides you want to stand with is not an obvious good or evil options.
 

Echoes

Member
Des0lar said:
Picked up The Witcher:EE today.

What do I have to expect GAF?
Whatever you may expect, the game will crush that ceiling heavily. I fucking love this game to death. Favorite RPG since a very long time. I lost my savefile due to a format (stupid me) and now I'm replaying it. I'm at Chapter 3. Only complaint I have is that characters are duplicated a lot. It's really bugging me. I never been bugged while playing Fable 2 for example (brought it up since I finished it right before this) or other new-ish RPGs. Other than this, it's a gem. In my top 5 of this generation, easily.
 

Google

Member
Des0lar said:
Picked up The Witcher:EE today.

What do I have to expect GAF?

Why not read the 11 page thread you're posting in?

Also: The Witcher has been spoken about on this very forum for a long time...You forget, it's a very niche title, developed in western europe, and requires a somewhat powerful system to play...

Is there any reason GAF isn't starting a dozen threads each week?
 

suikodan

Member
Des0lar said:
Picked up The Witcher:EE today.

What do I have to expect GAF?

Wow, expect a lot of things:

Expect a somewhat slow beginning, wondering what you're getting into.
Expect after that a strong second chapter that brings you back into the game.
Expect some surprises when you're thinking that you've seen it all.
Expect an ending that is both satisfying and mysterious.

(And if you're more "console" than PC)
Expect to buy the game again when it's out for consoles. :lol
 

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
I'm amazed at how polished this game seems to be post-EE patch.

Granted I am running on an i7 920 w/a 4850 card and 9GB RAM(yea). But sheet these load times SCREAM and with everything maxed, the game is silky smooth. Entering random houses loads faster than the autosave meter trailing it.

I held off all this time until I had a proper gaming rig, but looking back now, this game easilly would place in my top 3 of 2007. Easilly(2008 for EE fixes I guess).

I do wish there wasn't a delay when looting corpses. I often have to sit and wait a second or two hovering over a carcass until the lootable context icon appears. Is that normal?
 

kittoo

Cretinously credulous
BTW, anyone else was picking his/her jaw from the floor as soon as he/she reached the Swamp level for the first time? What an atmosphere, what a feeling, what an absolutely immersive level that was as a whole?
Anyone else remembers and agrees?
 

bkw

Member
Brandon F said:
I do wish there wasn't a delay when looting corpses. I often have to sit and wait a second or two hovering over a carcass until the lootable context icon appears. Is that normal?
I think it's normal. I had that same issue and it was somewhat annoying.

kittoo said:
BTW, anyone else was picking his/her jaw from the floor as soon as he/she reached the Swamp level for the first time? What an atmosphere, what a feeling, what an absolutely immersive level that was as a whole?
Anyone else remembers and agrees?
Yes yes! I wasn't feeling it at first, but once I went back into the settings and pushed the draw distance, it was awesome! Well worth the loss in frame rate.
 

Belgand

Member
Hmm... I might have to re-evaluate this now. I'd heard it really wasn't very good and was plagued with all manner of terrible, game-ending bugs.
 

Mamesj

Banned
bengraven said:
Are people seriously saying this is better than Morrowind and Oblivion?

I can't fathom that. I like a wide open world with a ton to do. This looks far too linear.

In other words, I need examples.


Some of us like closed worlds with tons of interesting things to do and a narrative that doesn't seem compiled from a random fantasy story generator.
 

bengraven

Member
Mejilan said:
Witcher doesn't have an open-ended in the vein of Elder Scrolls, but it still has TONS of (somewhat) optional side-content to explore in every chapter. Disregarding the very short prologue, the basic setup consists of a new chapter starting along with at least one mainline chapter quest. This number can expand to 2 or more mainline chapter quests going concurrently. During these chapters, you can also open up one or two dozen more sidequests, most of which are optional, and most of which also somehow tie into the mainline quests.

The result is a multi-layered quest-based experience that can be tackled in almost whatever order you want. Sure, the actual experience is very story-driven and reliant upon the completion of the core quests, but the majority of the side-quests are woven so beautifully into the main narrative that progression feels surprisingly open-ended. I basically always leave the main story quests for last, but because I do every single side-quest available (in whatever order I want), I've got most of the chapter's storyline completed before I ever intended to... without skipping over or missing content.

Some quests are mutually exclusive, since decisions you make will inevitably affect later quests and main story drivers, but that's the nature of this kind of RPG. Helps with the replay too, at that.

I love Elder Scrolls, but the Witcher doesn't really sacrifice all that much fun and exploration by dodging the open-ended world layout. The end result is a much more focused experience. Disclaimer: I consider Oblivion to be one of the shittier mainline Elder Scrolls games. Without mods, that game was completely fucking broken.

That actually sounds kind of awesome, I must admit. I liked the idea of playing a fantasy game I can get "lost" in, but if it's seriously about 60 hours worth of sometimes optional content, I'm happy to give it a try. I just finished Fable 2 with only 25 hours logged after trying very hard to stay away from the main story and I'm feeling burned for THAT kind of RPG.

Also: I agree with you that Oblivion is the weakest of the series. What I'm looking for in a wrpg is a huge part of Daggerfall and Morrowind, but I'm fiending for a well told, adult story.

Some of us like closed worlds with tons of interesting things to do and a narrative that doesn't seem compiled from a random fantasy story generator.

Uncalled for.
 

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
bengraven said:
That actually sounds kind of awesome, I must admit. I liked the idea of playing a fantasy game I can get "lost" in, but if it's seriously about 60 hours worth of sometimes optional content, I'm happy to give it a try. I just finished Fable 2 with only 25 hours logged after trying very hard to stay away from the main story and I'm feeling burned for THAT kind of RPG.

Also: I agree with you that Oblivion is the weakest of the series. What I'm looking for in a wrpg is a huge part of Daggerfall and Morrowind, but I'm fiending for a well told, adult story.

I think you'll be happy. As long as you walk in knowing that it's not Oblivion (or Morrowind) and that it's not trying to BE like those games, you'll be fine. Similarly, don't expect to spend hours and hours trawling through landscapes looking for random caverns, ruins, castles, and such. Most every location in the game is there for a reason, and while you can explore them at whim once the chapters open up enough, keep in mind that you probably WILL have to go back for the purposes of a quest or five. On that note, the journal is so fucking awesome, that you can easily keep tabs on all of your quests and what their current statuses are. Hell, I generally did every quest in one area until I ran out, then selected my next area to explore by looking through my journal and counting out where all of my quests wanted me to go next. The area with the most quests pointing me to there would win! It's great fun! :lol

As a bonus, the game isn't even all that expensive, and you might be able to find good deals if you look hard enough. I think Steam had a good price on it not too long ago, which might still be going. I paid full price for the EE, and I'm fucking thrilled. One of the best original CRPGs I've played in YEARS.
 

BeeDog

Member
Brandon F said:
I do wish there wasn't a delay when looting corpses. I often have to sit and wait a second or two hovering over a carcass until the lootable context icon appears. Is that normal?

Hold CTRL while clicking on the corpse. Voìla!
 

CTLance

Member
Finally decided to forego my DRM phobia and install my xmas gift. Awesome so far. The only problem was that I wanted to see if I'm up-to-date with my game. Oh god, rant incoming, skip ahead.

The EE pack is swell and all, but I swear to $deity, whoever thought that the patch check would work that way ought to be flogged.
t9ihz7.png

Don't tell me I have v1.4 and then tell me to get patch v1.4 - it doesn't make sense, but in a twisted way there's a possibility that it could. Don't tell me to download a patch I do not need.
Do NOT send me to the non-EE patch site with all the bonus content that's already in the EE. ESPECIALLY not the 1GB patch (100KB/s servers are fun!) that's just the SE->EE patch. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

And then the patch subsection of the site itself. This is not a good user interface. If there are only four steps to follow, then list them in an easy-to-follow way, like the checkout at a retailer: Step by step on separated pages. Do not connect step one and three with a line. Do not rely on gimmicky selection screens, just give me a freaking list. Separate the info for cripes sake. Cramming everything and the kitchensink, including unrelated stuff on one single page is just insane. Augh.

Maybe I'm spoiled by gog.com, but still. Same guys, and such an outright shocking difference in ease of use and general UI design.

Now on to the game. Looks really enjoyable so far. Sorry for the meltdown, but ... I had to rant. I just spent quite a bit of time navigating a website I'll likely never see again and downloading patches I do not need at glacial speeds instead of playing a game I was/am very much looking forward to.
 

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
Their website, download system, and patch checking are downright fucking horrible. There's really no excuse for it.

The least Atari could do is create a better front-end for US gamers. Blah.
 

CTLance

Member
5nw39e.png

...and I haven't saved in forever!
168eu6o.gif


I love this game so far, just got what I assume is the first card before the game crashed while loading the first city. Looking forward to collecting the rest of the deck. *cough*

Also, I got what could be described as a full-on OCD hardon. Herbalism & Monster recycling??? I will probably spend most of the game mixing shit together, or harvesting ingredients.

Premature minireview:

AGAINST: float-walking people, a metric shitton of clipping errors (especially in cutscenes or character closeups), some glitchyness
FOR: Artwork, voice actors, story/setting (so far), and nearly everything else

Conclusion: Awesome. Graphics whores and tech freaks will probably break out in hives when playing this, but even they and hopefully everyone else will enjoy the atmosphere and gameplay this game has to offer.
 

Minsc

Gold Member
Mejilan said:
Their website, download system, and patch checking are downright fucking horrible. There's really no excuse for it.

The least Atari could do is create a better front-end for US gamers. Blah.

Ah, yes. That whole thing threw me for quite a loop as well. :lol

All I need is to get the idea in my head that there might be a newer version, which that fucking check does on purpose I tell you, and well, I hope they don't get charged for bandwidth, because I must have downloaded that 1 gig patch atleast 5 or 6 times before it completely properly, then I don't think I ever decided to install it.
 

GameGamer

Member
So far I'm really not liking it.

Really bad camera work, and lots of rough jumps in story.

Going to keep playing it, but may give up.
 

CTLance

Member
Man, what is it with this game and crashing... Dang thing crashed yesterday a couple of times, crashing random drivers from time to time. Once it even took out the chipset/IDE drivers. Windows crashed hard (frozen mouse pointer, looping sound and everything) after losing all drives. Hasn't happened to me in a long-ass time. My PC didn't even want to do a warm boot, got stuck when initializing the drives. Had to switch it off and on again. And no, that wasn't overheating. Temps stayed well below anything threatening throughout. Case was open by coincidence, too. Nearly gave me a heart attack, I thought my main HDD had died.

At least it's so addictive that I immediately resumed playing. I'm looking forward to getting back to it tonight. Autopsy time. :) Yeah, still in Chapter 2, but there's so much to do (and buy).

Why is the onscreen medallion going nuts when meeting a certain character with a fancy hat and a predisposition of sticking his nose where it doesn't belong after a certain event? It normally does that only when ... Hmmmmmmmm. If this is a bug in the game I'm gonna be sad. If not, awesome. Twists within twists. Yay. Love the story.

For some odd reason I find it mildly amusing that Geralt seems to f_ck the everloving daylights out of everything that's bipedal, female, and incapable of running faster than him. Everytime he encounters a differently-modelled female there's this unspoken question of "So... what will your card look like?".

I'd really like a more active movement scheme though. For example, why can't Geralt scale the houses and run across the rooftops? Would have been awesome. At least jumping... Doubt the engine could handle a more "3D"/"interactive" aspect though, it already seems to be pushed to its limits. Plus it'd have probably tripled the budget. So for now, I'm content.

For now. *eyes sequel*
 

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
I'm on Chapter 3, and have probably put about 25 hours into the game so far... without a single crash. Are your drivers up to date?
 

Chichikov

Member
CTLance said:
Man, what is it with this game and crashing... Dang thing crashed yesterday a couple of times, crashing random drivers from time to time. Once it even took out the chipset/IDE drivers. Windows crashed hard (frozen mouse pointer, looping sound and everything) after losing all drives. Hasn't happened to me in a long-ass time. My PC didn't even want to do a warm boot, got stuck when initializing the drives. Had to switch it off and on again. And no, that wasn't overheating. Temps stayed well below anything threatening throughout. Case was open by coincidence, too. Nearly gave me a heart attack, I thought my main HDD had died.

A*
What is your OS version?
Vista 32bit had some issues with it.
This link helped me (didn't have a single issue after that).
 

CTLance

Member
Gonna try that userspace memory thing when I get home. I'm on Vista 64Bit, but I doubt that's the problem. All drivers are up to date. Currently I'm blaming the graphics card drivers, and my dual monitor setup.

<rant>I remember running into a heap of problems back in the Win2k days when trying to play e.g. Dawn of War, with the configurator crashing and/or displaying nonsense and the game itself going bonkers. Still, that was two Windows generations ago, I had hoped it was fixed by now. Looking at the CCC I have little doubt on whose fault that is though. One of these days I'm gonna find the SOB that invented that piece of trash, and his gruesome fate will be spoken of in horror for generations to come.</rant>

Anyway, I'm gonna electrocute me some golems tonight after doing every(?) quest in the city.

Game is a blast so far, although the swamp is a bit of a bore - tons of Drowners and their palette-swapped pals; I hate those guys - not worth the two to three clicks it takes to kill 'em, and thanks to the red ribbon they're mostly just running away anyway. So what's the point? At least there's the bloodzuigers and wolves to mix things up a bit. The former have a bit of a curious design though. Leeches... with legs? I :lol'd.
 

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
I also have had no crash issues yet and am running on Vista 64 with a Radeon 4850. Also deep into Chapter 2. Dunno what to tell you.
 
I'm currently playing NWN2. Should I get the Witcher or Mask of the Betrayer next, GAF? Which one is better?

I found NWN2's narrative and characters rather boring to be honest, but I hear MotB is something else entirely, so I can't decide.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
I love the game but the FPS loss annoys me a lot, the large crowded areas like Vizima Merchant District give me like, sub-30 FPS. Even at the lowest settings the game doesn't run at 60fps in those areas. Which is weird, my computer should more than be able to handle it.

It might be my ram though, while I have an 8800GT and a Intel E8500 I only have 2gigs worth of ram on Vista 64.
 

Leonsito

Member
Easy_D said:
I love the game but the FPS loss annoys me a lot, the large crowded areas like Vizima Merchant District give me like, sub-30 FPS. Even at the lowest settings the game doesn't run at 60fps in those areas. Which is weird, my computer should more than be able to handle it.

It might be my ram though, while I have an 8800GT and a Intel E8500 I only have 2gigs worth of ram on Vista 64.

I have an E66000 and a 8800GTS and didn't have any framerate drop in almost anywhere on the game, I played it on XP so maybe is that, bit strange :S
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Yeah, considering all other games I run pretty much run the way I expect them to I seriously think it might be Vista itself, or some setting that I'm not aware of.
 
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