The Witcher

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JaySevenZero
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The Witcher

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here is where you can leave your thoughts regarding The Witcher for possible inclusion in the podcast when it's recorded.
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MauricioMM
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Re: The Witcher

Post by MauricioMM »

What’s a bit unusual about my experience with this game series is the way it came to my attention: a couple of screenshots from The Witcher 2. It wasn’t the book series (I knew nothing about author Andrzej Sapkowski back then), it wasn’t the somewhat little press it had (all I knew about CD Projekt RED, the developers of this game saga, is that they specialized in localizing games for Poland), it wasn’t even word of mouth, it was just two screenshots from the second game. Those images had the right amount of information and, at the same time, mystery to make me want to start the saga from its humble and intriguing beginnings.

I might’ve thought at the time that its ugly graphics, badly designed UI, unfriendly controls, terrible animations and some apparently tacky, Fabioesque elements (just look at Geralt and some of the ladies in the game :lol: ) should have been enough to uninstall it and forget about it. However, as I got through each chapter the game kept absorbing me with its narrative, its characters and its unique setting —medieval fantasy with strong slavic elements— that I just couldn’t give up on it. Granted, the storyline itself wasn’t the best thing I had experienced in videogames but its addictive skill leveling system, the way the story was told, its eastern european flavor, its landscapes and scenery, its quite folkloric music, its interesting atmosphere and quests (check Chapter IV, it’s the epitome of the whole Witcher experience), some of the monsters’ design and even some of its sense of humor made me appreciate it like no other videogame at the time. Even objectively great games like Dragon Age: Origins became forgettable to me after playing The Witcher :o

This game ultimately felt like, as they said in Casablanca, "the beginning of a beautiful friendship" :) ...just don’t get me started on the way they handled sex and romance, OK? :oops: Especially about certain collectible cards :lol:
Spoiler: show
At least in The Witcher 3 they made Shani’s personality more like her book version, and sleeping with The Lady of the Lake this time was simply out of the question :lol:
By the way, I strongly recommend reading Sapkowski’s Witcher book saga, especially before playing the videogames. Despite some artistic license from the writers at CDPR —the game isn’t an official sequel of the books to begin with— there are still some cool tie-ins to events and characters in the books, plus they are truly great works of fantasy literature with superb writing.


P.S.: F*ck Alvin, what an annoying little sh*t... Sorry, I had to get it out of my system :lol:

---

My three word review:
Hardly Fabioesque Fortunately
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ashman86
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Re: The Witcher

Post by ashman86 »

In the 2000s, BioWare were the undisputed kings and queens of the Western RPG. They were a company I had grown to love back in the Baldur's Gate days, and I regularly visited their official site and forums to keep myself apprised on the latest rumors and tidbits about the next big adventure I could expect from them. This was particularly true in the years that followed their original reveal of Dragon Age, which they billed at the time as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. Between the years of 2004 and 2008, BioWare were all but silent on that particular project, but somewhere between 2006 and 2007, they began promoting another RPG powered by the Aurora engine of NeverWinter Nights and KOTOR fame: The Witcher. The developers, CD Projekt Red, were a no-name group based out of Poland about whom I knew nothing, and I knew less than nothing about the book series by Andrzej Sapkowski upon which their upcoming game was based. What I did know, however, was that the music featured on its official website was eerie and mournful and positively lovely and that the game was to feature an alchemy system that sounded more compelling to me than any I had seen in a game before.

I began following the Witcher up through its development cycle, and I was delighted when it released to surprised by generally very positive reviews. Critics had a lot of great things to say about the game's approach to morality and choice, especially about how the game delayed the consequences for in-game choices until much later in the narrative, which made them feel impactful and permanent in a way that hadn't really been seen before. I read also that load times were horrendous, voice acting was largely passable at best, and that the game reduced women to collectible trophies of sexual conquest.

Even still, the only barrier I could see to my actually playing the game was my aging desktop PC, which was already struggling to play most modern releases at the time. When a demo was released for The Witcher, I finally got a chance to put the game to a test. Hilariously, it failed to render nearly any of the textures in the game save for the disembodied and literally glowing cleavage of Triss Merrigold. Deflated, I relegated The Witcher to a personal wishlist for some time in the future and the mostly forgot about it.

Years later, a "leaked" trailer for The Witcher 2 hit the internet, and it was jaw-dropping. My wife and I were newly married and, although money was tight, she had surprised me with the components to build a gaming PC for our first Christmas together. I was determined to throw myself headfirst into the Witcher 2 when it launched, and I figured the best way to prepare myself for just that was to finally play the first game. I picked up The Witcher: Enhanced Edition on Good Old Games (now GOG.com) for less than $20, ignored Alvin's laughably bad voice acting in one of the early scenes, and immersed myself wholly into Geralt of Rivia's world.

I think that for many, the first chapter or two of the Witcher are a slog, and while that seems like fair criticism to me, I was in love with it almost from the get-go. The game's world was dark and compelling, and the monsters I fought were unique and alien. Visually and conceptually most were different from the run-of-the-mill enemies you'd encounter in typical high fantasy RPGs, and many of them reminded me of one of my all-time favorite games, Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, which also featured an eastern European setting. I also read every snippet of text I could find in the game because I was entirely enamored with its lore.

I was not disappointed with The Witcher's approach to choice and consequence, which I couldn't help but compare and contrast to Mass Effect, another game near and dear to my heart that released in the same year as the Witcher. Where BioWare's RPG featured a binary morality system in the same vein as some of its predecessors, The Witcher's felt morally gray, and as I navigated one moral dilemma to the next, I rarely felt certain that I had made the objectively right choice. Far more often I felt a bit uneasy, sometimes even nauseated, but I decided early on to own my decisions in the game and see how they would play out. At one point half-way through the game, I fought the completionist within me and actually abstained from completing either one of two conflicting side quests, unwilling to align myself with either the fanatical Order of the Flaming Rose or the terrorist Scoia'tel.

By the game's third act, I knew The Witcher was truly something special, and I warped through it to the finale over the course of a single weekend.

It was the ending that cemented for me The Witcher as a true masterpiece of RPG gaming. As I inched closer and closer through a winter wasteland to the final encounter with the Grandmaster of the Flaming Rose, a creeping sense of familiarity fell upon me. Lessons I had imparted on the young boy Alvin found their way into the mouth of my nemesis who twisted them to his own ends and used them as justification for the atrocities he committed. When at last he lay dead at my feet, still clutching the dimeritium amulet Triss had given him as a child, my fears and suspicions were confirmed. This man, this monster, had been my ward.

My mind was blown.

And that was when The Witcher became my all-time favorite gaming franchise. Now I can't wait for Cane and Rinse to get to the sequels.
Todinho

Re: The Witcher

Post by Todinho »

The first time I saw anything about the Witcher was the amazing CG cutscene in which Geralt fights the Strigga, I never heard of the books or even knew what type of game it was but that cutscene alone convinced me to play it, I was expecting an action game or typical western RPG but the more I played the more unique and interesting the game proved to be,in both it's story and gameplay, that was what ultimetly kept me playing it until the end despite the multiple issues it also has.

What grabbed me right away was the setting,not because you were a monster hunter in a medieval world but because it was a world that was leaving you behind,you as a witcher was relic of a bygone age ,maybe once people saw you as a ray of hope but when the game takes place people just look at you with disgust like you were a mistake they wanna erase from history,it's diffult to explain but it's something that is throughout the entire game and is best personified in how the Witcher castle is in complete disrepair and in the main villain motivations as well. Another thing that quickly stood out to me were the characters and by that I dont even mean just the great cast of side characters that interact with you throughout the whole game like: the masterspy Thaller,the tragic Siegfried or the not always funny dandelion. I mean the regular NPCs that you'll interact once or twice in the game,it's once again difficult to explain but the people in this game dont feel like characters in a fantasy world,they feel like what I image real people would've been on the end of the medieval ages, which bring me to another point on how the game deals with it's more mature aspects.
I played Witcher 1 right after Dragon Age: Origins and what struck me the most in playing both back to back was how much more mature Witcher felt in comparison to Dragon Age and how this helped it's own storytelling and world. Witcher 1 is a game that is unapologetic about its sex and violence, not only the game has characters talking about sex and even full blown nudity without much fuss,while Bioware was still struggling in making their romance scenes not cringueworthy, but comparing the use of the non-humans in Witcher to the elves in Dragon Age is night and day,you completely buy and understand the nonhumans and their struggle and why many join the scoia'tal due to the level of violence used against them and why the Scoia`tal act like they do,it doesnt feel gratuitous and it's in a way very realistic given how real life persecutions back in the middle ages were and some are even today, by comparison the oppressed elves and mages in Dragon Age seems quite cartoony. What Im getting at it's that the game has alot more grit to it and it`s done in way not to make the story more "edgy" or to shock but to make it's world more belivable and lived in, the game doesnt use those elements right all the time,some times it can be quite juvenile and sexist with it's "trading cards",but overall the game uses them to it's advantage and makes what could be a standart fantasy setting much more compelling.

Setting aside the world for abit the gameplay also really grabbed me once started paying attention and understanding it, this is a game that doesnt hold your hand if you rush into combat without preparing properly and without a plan you are going to die, and oh boy did I die, at the beginning of the game I constantly died or scrapped by the skin of my teeth until I figured out how to approach combat and how important it was to prepare before combat with the right potions and oils,to use signs to your advantage and of course picking the right sword for the job(never forget steel for humans,silver for monsters). It was difficult to grasp at first but once I got it the gameplay just clicked,this system would be greatly improved upon and streamlined in the sequels but I still quite enjoyed this original iteration.
I also liked how the game dealt with choice and the multiple paths it offered, it was something of a breath of fresh air in comparison to the Bioware RPGs I've been used to, I chose the neutral path trying to remain in character with my position as a Witcher, speaking of which a special mention must be made to Geralt, at first I discounted him as just another stoic boring protagonist but as the game went on he really grew on me and the reason is that unlike many other protagonists of this type Geralt is very human: He gets drunk,gets horny and sometimes he's just dumb. All of that makes him very relatable to the point that as the games went on he quickly became one of my favorite protagonists in videogames.

This is where my praise for the game ends however because on the technical side the game is a bit of a mess,I still remember constant bugs and crashes while playing,the terrible animations and graphics that even at the time looked awfull and some pretty bad voice acting. Still given that the game was made on the NeverWinter Nights 2 engine, which even though Im no programer I still believe is some act of sorcery to be possible, had the inumerous issues during development and that it was done by a really inexperienced team. I cant help but feel that despite it's many technical issues this game is still a triumph for still managing to succeed on so many fronts despite itself.(By the way Great interview on Rock Paper Shotgun on that: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/0 ... ospective/)

So it comes the question,would I recommed Witcher 1? This is funny because I have,after I played it I recommend to all my friends who were into RPGs and none have finnished it,most didnt even get to Vizima just giving up earlier, while it`s a game I think it`s virtues are worth sticking with,most people I know certainly dont think so even those who later played and loved the sequels,to be honest even I never replayed the game since I first played it back in 2010 despite by comparison having replayed Witcher 2 4 times, this might say more how I feel about the sequel then the original but still Witcher 1 is a game I dont see myself revisiting any time soon despite the praise I`ve given it,it`s still a great game but one that I think I`ll leave just in memory.
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