[Video Game] The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (Available 5/17)

If you're curious, a couple of the major review sites finally put up reviews. All pretty positive of course (except for Destructoid, which is a joke review for attention I'm guessing).

GT review (warning: some major spoilers):
<div style="background-color:#000000;width:520px;"><div style="padding:4px;"><embed src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:moses:video:gametrailers.com:714184" width="512" height="288" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" base="." flashVars=""></embed><p style="text-align:left;background-color:#FFFFFF;padding:4px;margin-top:4px;margin-bottom:0px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;">Tags: <a href="http://www.gametrailers.com">GameTrailers.com</a>, <a href="http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-hd-the-witcher/714184">Review HD</a>, <a href="http://pc.gametrailers.com/">PC Games</a>, <a href="http://ps3.gametrailers.com/">PlayStation 3</a>, <a href="http://xbox360.gametrailers.com/">Xbox 360</a></p></div></div>
I almost didn't post this given the spoilers. I don't know why GT always does that in their reviews.

Side-note: Does anyone actually prefer having bloom turned on? I've had it turned off, and I much prefer that look. If you haven't tried it, might want to give it a shot.

edit: Also, CDPR is supposed to announce a new game at E3 I think. Could be a console port, although just speculation at this point.

 

Finally finished the game earlier this morning (always fun ending games at 2AM).

Definitely a great experience, and a huge leap over its predecessor IMO. I don't know where to place it on the RPG ranking list, but it is up there. And The Witcher universe is quickly becoming one of my favorites.

Lots of things it does right, but I just want to repeat what I said earlier: this game nails the whole "decision/branching storyline" mechanic. Many (mostly Western) RPGs put this in their games these days, but this game does it so much better (well, that I've played anyway). In other games, you get to make decisions. But you can just ignore what is going on and just pick the good "blue" one instead of the bad "red" one. In The Witcher 2, there are no good or bad decisions to pick from. Just decisions. And tough ones at that. I often had to spend a good amount of time considering my choices, before finally picking one decision and hoping for the best. Do I go after the "bad" guy and get revenge, or do I save the innocent people that are tied up in a burning building? (this is probably one of the easier decisions too, now that I think about it)

Of course, this wouldn't matter if the decisions were pointless. In other games, the "good" option might just result in a slightly different response from the NPC. But it is pretty much the same as any other choice, and the story plays out 99.9% the same way. But in The Witcher 2, each of these choices really does change the storyline. In my previous example, keep in mind the game doesn't let you have your cake and eat it too (ugh...I hate that saying, why did I use it?). If you let the bad guy go, you (may?) not get a chance to see him again. If you don't save the people in the building, no one else is going to step up to save them (and they also won't being apart of the game anymore...since they're dead).

Story was pretty good, although I think probably greatly improved by other aspects of the narrative (including the decisions the player can make). Seems very well-written, especially given how complex it has to be to account for the branching paths. This is probably the first time where I beat a game, went to read a discussion about the plot, then realized I was still getting major plot points spoiled because I didn't take that path. No one is really "good" or "bad." The story is basically about the events involving different people with different motives, beliefs, etc. Definitely some great characters in the game.

Hopefully not too much of a spoiler, but definitely seems like there will be a Witcher 3. Witcher 2 seems to a do a good job at having a self-contained storyline (with a resolution at the end), but also advancing the main storyline of the games (and books?) in a satisfying way (i.e., not like that was just put on hold while the player does some adventuring, killing, ploughing, etc.). Only thing that was a bit disappointing is that decisions carried over from Witcher 1 didn't really seem to have that much of an impact. Don't think any games have really done that right, but it was a bit surprising to me given how well everything else turned out. Granted, there's definitely some things that change based on your decisions, but not as much as I expected. Wonder if that will change in any future games/content. I would think so given how different things can be, but guess we'll have to wait and see.

Despite all that praise, CDPR definitely does have some things they need to work on. As I mentioned earlier, the inventory system (IMO) is really broken. I went with the mod that lets you carry everything. Guess it did break the balance a bit, but it was much better than the default setup. I'd rather have unlimited inventory, especially given how important crafting, alchemy, etc., is in the game. A couple of other gameplay mechanics also don't seem to be quite right, although none quite as major as the inventory stuff. Then, of course, all the technical problems with the game. Although I should point out, when I say technical issues, I mostly mean the graphics/performance issues, along with the DLC/server issues they had in the last couple of weeks. As far as gameplay bugs...I can't really recall any (especially serious ones). Which, now that I think about it, is pretty impressive.

Probably just needed another couple of months of playtesting and QA. Not really major issues IMO (and the gameplay is pretty solid, even though I haven't really mentioned it), but something that I think they'll need to work on. Hopefully, they learned a lot while making this game, and they'll be able to make a similar leap forward in their future titles (which, hopefully should include bigger budgets as well...assuming Witcher 2 sells 10% as much as it should). Side-note, but returning to the whole console thing, I think the game should turn out pretty good on consoles. It certainly will take a huge hit in visuals (a shame since it really is beautiful), and perhaps some things will need to be tweaked a bit more. But I'm thinking the experience should transfer over very nicely. If it comes out on 360 and/or PS3, I definitely recommend people check it out. Unless they somehow botch the port I guess, but given that they cancelled the port of the first game due to quality issues, I doubt that will happen. And as someone who prefers playing these types of games on the PC, I'm definitely not worried (at the moment anyway) about this series becoming "consolefied," as some other games have. There's no doubt that this game was at least considered for release on consoles (and thus, needed to be designed that way), but it felt very much like a PC game to me (i.e., nothing "dumbed" down).

So congrats to CDPR. In only your second game, you made a game that is better than many of those made by the big names in this genre. Funnily enough, they actually started out translating the Baldur's Gate games (among others). And now, they're making RPGs that are better than those put out by the same people who made Baldur's Gate (well...IMO).

Wow, I wrote a lot more than I originally planned. Bottom line, I really enjoyed the game. Also, got to love these little moments in The Witcher universe:
<iframe width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hCW5ihfsyZ8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
(minor spoilers I guess, but you probably don't really know what is going on until you get to a certain point in the game...at which point, you'd probably assume this scene would happen anyway)

 

The game is a bit weird in its difficulty curve. Starts out really hard, but gets easier as you go along (and not just because you're getting used to it). There are a lot of talents for Geralt that make combat much easier (minimize backstab damage, increase rolling distance, group attacks, etc.).

Early on, you have to be very careful with you positioning and not try to take on too many enemies at once. Use bombs/traps (spam Yrden) if that helps (you can keep your distance).



I don't know if it would help, but if you're interested in the storyline, it might not hurt to read some brief summaries from the books (or even read them if you can, although I didn't and probably won't). I checked out a little bit before the game was released, just out of curiosity, but it seemed to be a good idea (if you don't, you might be confused when some certain names/events pop up...although maybe you could figure it out).

 

Nothing confirmed, only the things I mentioned at the end of the original post. I think the odds are pretty good though.

Also, the game is so awesome that Poland used it as a gift for the President. Seriously:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/110469-Polish-Prime-Minister-Gives-Obama-Witcher-2

 

It's not that big of a deal now. For preorders, GOG (and maybe Steam a bit) were nice because you could preload the game. Also got more goodies I think.

Though now that I think about it, you might want to skip Steam. For some reason, Steam doesn't play well with their patching system, so it ends up having to download a lot more data for each patch. The patch for the GOG release was 9MB. For Steam, it was 9GB I think (it had to re-download most of the game or something). Maybe they'll fix that.

The other versions were screwed up with DRM, but they removed it in the patch.

 

Polish retailers listing 360 version of the game, releasing on 11/15:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-02-witcher-2-on-xbox-360-in-november
A bit too close to Skyrim...but you guys are going to buy it, right?

 

I used M&KB and enjoyed it fine. I think both work pretty well, which is nice. From what I understand, the controller has a few issues when you're doing some things (e.g., inventory management), but probably nothing major.

They're patching in a few things to address that though I think:
http://en.thewitcher.com/patch1-2/
New patch going up tomorrow. Includes all the retailer DLC, new DLC for hairstyling (yep, your heard...um...read right), and lots of various fixes/improvements. They sort of spoil certain parts of the game though.

Example (not an actual spoiler):

They officially announced the 360 version of the game (as I posted about earlier). Sales hit 400K in the first week (nice, might have already broke even!). $10 off the game if you buy it at Amazon, Steam, etc., during E3.


Not directly related to The Witcher, but GOG announced a partnership with EA where they'll distribute some of their old games (Wing Commandeer, Ultima, Magic Carpet, Alpha Centauri, etc.). Unfortunately, Syndicate and System Shock were not part of the deal, although they're working on it.

(CD Projekt had their Pre-E3 conference today, hence all the news)

 

I missed that last post somehow.

But yeah, I mentioned that in my last post:

So it is through E3 (AFAIK anyway).

Go buy the game people.