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Preview Witcher impressions at GameSpot

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Tags: CD Projekt; Witcher, The

<a href=http://www.gamespot.com>GameSpot</a> posted some <a href=http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/thewitcher/news.html?sid=6173457&tag=topslot;title;1&om_act=convert&om_clk=topslot>impressions</a> of <a href=http://www.thewitcher.com/>The Witcher</a>:
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<blockquote>Stories in fantasy role-playing games are often an exercise in black and white. There's often a noble protagonist (your character) who usually starts out as an orphan or peasant unaware of his or her destiny, and then there's some unspeakable, monstrous evil that wants to take over the world for no reason apart from that it's there. But what happens when <u>you play a fantasy RPG where you have to continually choose what you think is the lesser of two evils</u>? That's what Atari and Polish developer CD Projekt are aiming for with The Witcher, an ambitious RPG based on the works of Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski.</blockquote>A promising start.
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<blockquote>Like the novels, the game will deal with many contemporary themes--an impressive feat considering that this is a medieval fantasy world populated by elves, dwarves, and other magical creatures. The game will touch upon ideas like terrorism, genetic manipulation, and racism. And one of the core principles of the game is that you inhabit a world where your actions will have plenty of unintended and unforeseen consequences. A lot of RPGs offer the illusion of choice, but many times the choices are fairly simple.
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For example, one of the big choices in the game occurs if Geralt manages to get a simple job guarding a cache of weapons along a riverside. In the middle of Geralt's watch, a group of elves and dwarves appear for the weapons. You can either let them pay you off so they can take the weapons, or you can kill them. Either choice will net you the same reward, so <u>there's no fiscal advantage for making one choice over another. It all comes down to your moral decision</u>.
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The consequences of your choice won't become clear until much later, as much as 10 or 12 hours in gameplay time. If you decide to let the elves and dwarves have the weapons, you'll eventually discover that they are using them against innocent civilians in their insurgency. Even worse, they kill an important non-player character, and his death removes a plotline and quests from the game. However, if you decide to kill the elves and dwarves, you'll eventually discover that their deaths sparked an investigation by the authorities. It turns out that you inadvertently are the cause of the insurgency's downfall, as the authorities identify the remaining rebel members and ringleaders, including another important NPC. His removal from the game denies you his plotline and quests. Note that there's no "good" option here; in either case, someone important to you is going to die. And the outcomes aren't something that you could have predicted, either. Over the course of the game, the consequences of your choices begin to cascade, and the state of the world can change wildly depending on your decisions.
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The depth of storytelling in The Witcher makes it one of the more interesting RPGs in recent years...</blockquote>Definitely. It's one of the very few RPGs I'm looking forward to.
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Thanks, SimonBread
 

Jora

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The world and story sound good but the talk about trying to get into the rythm of sword swings reminds me of Gothic's clumsy system. :x
 

Section8

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After dwelling in so much darkness regarding the damning Fallout previews, the light that this provides can barely be looked upon. It's like beautiful, glowy textual bloom, amped up to the Bethesduhnth degree.
 
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This actually looks pretty good. Although I want be able to play it with my shittacular PC. Oh well....at least I've got Jack Bauer grabbing alien collars in space.....
 

doctor_kaz

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Sounds okay for a start but I want to see it implemented before I get excited about it. "Actions have consequences." How many times have we heard that one before? I'm optimistic because the game is coming out of Eastern Europe but I'm still taking a "wait-and-see" approach for this one. Plus, the gameplay movies that I have seen to not make combat look like fun.
 

OSK

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Nice. I'll be keeping my eye on this game.

Honestly, I'm just happy to hear about any news that isn't Fallout 3.
 
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Hopefully they didn't try too hard to impress graphics whores, so I can actually run it.
 

Texas Red

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Sep 9, 2006
Messages
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I randomly selected a screen over at Gamespot and it showed some goth chick in bikini armor. The retarded part was that her arms were almost completely armored. But not her chest.

:?

I guess the art designers just cant cross the border between the dumb bikini wearing, greatsword wielding bimbos and reality.
 

Kraszu

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Jora said:
The world and story sound good but the talk about trying to get into the rythm of sword swings reminds me of Gothic's great system

Fixed.
 
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I hope that talk just not just a endless hypemachine and it really offers that, what they promise, so there is still some hope in that genre, the Codex also should support these guys, if that game turns out to be good enough. Release date is probably september, i read they fix some bugs right now.
 

AZ

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Feb 6, 2005
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I really hope it is true, and there won't be a lot of bugs.
 

Bradylama

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Now some of you guys are just sounding jaded. The choices available to the player and how they affect the game has been the main selling point of The Witcher. I doubt they're going to build this massive amount of hype and sell the game on a concept that doesn't actually deliver. This isn't like Fargoth's quest, there have been several examples so far.

I'm absolutely ecstatic about this. Compared to Megaton, the amount of depth involved in the dwarf/elf insurgency is like comparing a pothole to the Grand Canyon.
 

hiciacit

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I've been there
Bradylama said:
I'm absolutely ecstatic about this. Compared to Megaton, the amount of depth involved in the dwarf/elf insurgency is like comparing a pothole to the Grand Canyon.

Hear, hear!
 

fastpunk

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Finally! Some good news. This is the best piece of news I've read in days on this site (I think we all know why...).

The moral system seems very well developed. Finally, we get to play a game where you DO suffer the consequences of your actions. Frankly, I don't care how good or bad the combat will be, if The Witcher delivers on story and characters (and all sings point towards a success) I will play it.
 

Mr Happy

Scholar
Joined
Jul 15, 2006
Messages
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The consequences of your choice won't become clear until much later, as much as 10 or 12 hours in gameplay time. If you decide to let the elves and dwarves have the weapons, you'll eventually discover that they are using them against innocent civilians in their insurgency. Even worse, they kill an important non-player character, and his death removes a plotline and quests from the game. However, if you decide to kill the elves and dwarves, you'll eventually discover that their deaths sparked an investigation by the authorities. It turns out that you inadvertently are the cause of the insurgency's downfall, as the authorities identify the remaining rebel members and ringleaders, including another important NPC. His removal from the game denies you his plotline and quests. Note that there's no "good" option here; in either case, someone important to you is going to die. And the outcomes aren't something that you could have predicted, either. Over the course of the game, the consequences of your choices begin to cascade, and the state of the world can change wildly depending on your decisions.

That rocks. This, Afterfall, Aod, Eschalon/hourglass (can't remember which one looked better) are actually making for some great stuff in rpg land. Dragon Age can come too, I guess.

Yeah, Lol @ megaton.
 

Shannow

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Edward_R_Murrow said:
This actually looks pretty good. Although I want be able to play it with my shittacular PC. Oh well....at least I've got Jack Bauer grabbing alien collars in space.....
I didn't find a systems requirement. Since it is built on the Aurora Enginge (NWN) I wouldn't expect it to be very demanding, or at least it should be quite downscalable for older systems. But I might be wrong ;)
At least you'll be able to be extremely EXTREME!

EDIT: It is not about manipulation. VD clearly states what he likes and what he doesn't like, taking a track record into account. Coincidently most codexers share his likes and dislikes. I've been following the Witcher before I became a member of the Codex. And it sounded promising from the start.
 
Joined
Oct 8, 2006
Messages
172
Ah, this reminds me of the time when Oblivion was coming out, and the efforts to divert attention towards Gothic 3. Any RPG's a good RPG, even when its combat system might be even more action oriented than Bethesda's offering. Still, somebody has to do it.
 

Teja

Novice
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Jul 4, 2007
Messages
8
Shannow said:
Edward_R_Murrow said:
This actually looks pretty good. Although I want be able to play it with my shittacular PC. Oh well....at least I've got Jack Bauer grabbing alien collars in space.....
I didn't find a systems requirement. Since it is built on the Aurora Enginge (NWN) I wouldn't expect it to be very demanding, or at least it should be quite downscalable for older systems. But I might be wrong ;)
After this(German), the systems requirements for mid-quality graphic settings are
1. Pentium 4 2,8 GHz
2. 1024 GB Ram
3. nVidia GeForce 6600 128MB RAM
Original source seems to be this news, but i can't understand polish.
 

Micmu

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ALIEN BASE-3
Keender_surprise said:
Ah, this reminds me of the time when Oblivion was coming out, and the efforts to divert attention towards Gothic 3. Any RPG's a good RPG, even when its combat system might be even more action oriented than Bethesda's offering. Still, somebody has to do it.
In Witcher's case... from what I know, Witcher's combat is typical stat-based RTwP so I don't see how it might be more action oriented than FPS with damage modifiers.
As for G3/oblivious... I don't think the combat was the main issue there.
 

Elwro

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When someone sees "Stat-based RTwP", he might think of BG or NWN etc. While in The Witcher iirc the important thing will be timing your attacks and connecting them into chains, which makes me think it'll be more similar to Gothic in this respect.
 

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