Tag: the witcher 2

#oneaday Day 523: The Adventures of Lord Bath

I finished The Witcher 2 today after quite some time. It’s a beautiful game with a few niggly, tickly little flaws, but overall a fantastic experience for those with the hardware to back it up. Even better, Xbox 360 owners will be able to enjoy it for themselves at some point in the near future, too. This post won’t contain spoilers, for those of you still intending to play it.

The best thing about it is its uncompromisingly adult nature. It doesn’t do this in the slightly tacky way that its predecessor did with its collectible “sex cards” — instead, it keeps the best bits of its predecessor, which is a feeling that your choices throughout have consequence — and that said choices don’t have a “correct” option. You say your words, you deal with the consequences. This has such a big effect on the game that once you’ve finished Chapter I, the rest of the game is completely different based on a choice that you make — and then within each chapter, there are plenty of smaller choices to make that affect the way things transpire and indeed the way the whole thing draws to a conclusion. It is, in short, a Good Thing.

The combat is the biggest hang-up for a lot of people. Taking its cues from Demon’s Souls, this is a game that’s not afraid to stick its cock in your ear and thrust until it hurts — or, indeed, some equally unpleasant metaphor. You fuck up in combat and you will die against regular enemies. Several times. You will learn to block and you will learn how to use your spells effectively rather than just hacking away a la Zelda or Diablo.

For the most part, this is cool. Swordfights feel like swordfights. Boss encounters require strategy rather than endurance. But there were just a couple of points throughout where it just felt a little bit unfair — mostly when it came to situations where our titular Witcher Geralt was attacked by multiple assailaints from all angles. There were several occasions where I couldn’t see how I was supposed to defend against the barrage of incoming blows — this alone would be enough to put some people off, I feel. I, fortunately, have a bit more patience than that, and settled for a few expletives. Only once did I feel the need to lower the difficulty level — and I put it straight back up again to complete the game, and the bosses towards the end weren’t as difficult as this relatively incidental confrontation.

So in summary then, if you’re looking for an RPG that treats you like a grown-up without feeling tacky, The Witcher 2 will scratch that itch. If you’re not one for overly-technical action RPG combat, then bumping the difficulty down to Easy allows for a satisfying experience from the story without the frustration of dying repeatedly on a battle that really shouldn’t be that difficult.

And if you’re wondering why I titled this post “The Adventures of Lord Bath”? Well, when I explained the concept of the original The Witcher to my girlfriend Andie by pointing out that the protagonist was a “white haired dude who kills people and has sex with a lot of women”, her immediate response was “Oh, like Lord Bath?” (Disclaimer: I have no evidence as to Lord Bath’s extracurricular activities. But I find the alternative name for The Witcher amusing, so it stays.)

#oneaday Day 148: People, The Mutant’s Pursuing Me!

It’s been a very long time since a game has genuinely gobsmacked me with its obvious technological marvellousness, but The Witcher 2 has gone and done a sterling job of it so far. I beat the first game this morning and enjoyed it so much I wanted to go straight on to the sequel, which I’d had the foresight to download in advance from Good Old Games.

I wasn’t quite ready for the leap in graphical fidelity between the two. I thought the first game looked pretty good — it used to bring my old computer to its knees, after all, and it was one of the first games I installed on my new computer to enjoy in its “full glory” — but wow. The Witcher 2 makes its predecessor look decidedly primitive in many respects.

Gone are the stilted, uncomfortable character animations when people are standing around talking to each other. Gone are people’s inability to remain seated while talking to you. Gone are the sex cards (replaced with good, old fashioned full frontal nudity — are you paying attention, BioWare?) and gone is the fun but arguably overcomplicated combat system. (Also gone are some of the original voice cast, which is a little disappointing, but perhaps understandable given the amount of time between the two games.)

In is a decidely cinematic presentation (including an entertaining ability to wiggle the camera around veeery slightly using the mouse in conversation scenes, giving it a “hand-held camera” look). In are more than five different character models. In is background scenery featuring realistic foliage best described as “lush”. In is a motion blur effect that makes rotating the camera look infinitely more realistic than in 99% of other games out there. And in is a Demon’s Souls-style combat system that at first appears to be hack and slash, but isn’t afraid to punish you mercilessly for thinking so until you learn that it’s actually based on timing, patience, blocking and carefully watching your opponents to look for an opportunity. A combat system which has divided people somewhat, with many impatient types upset that it’s “too hard”. Hard it may be, but there’s nothing wrong with a challenge.

One of the things that has impressed me most so far, though, is the potential for the branching of the plot, with different resolutions to problems and different major and minor choices. Already in discussion with a friend, I’ve seen that at least four or five parts of just the prologue branch off into alternative paths — some of which meet in common places, others of which diverge. And, like the original The Witcher, there’s no obviously “right” choice in many situations. This is a Good Thing, as it makes you think about what you’re doing, and also forces you to live with consequences which don’t necessarily make themselves obvious until much, much later.

In short, The Witcher 2 is looking like being an absolutely amazing game. A lot of people have been quietly anticipating it for a long time — this is a game from a company that doesn’t saturate the market with announcements of TV ads for their games, after all — and it’s gratifying to see firstly that they’ve made an excellent game, and secondly that a lot of people seem to be thinking very highly of it. It deserves it, and CD Projekt Red deserves a huge amount of success for creating such an excellent RPG franchise.