Gwardinen

That sounds really cool. Like the best part of Dragon Age: Origins. It will mean yet more work for you, though.

Regarding blood magic and mages... based on the first game, no mages can't just up and decide they're blood mages if they want to remain themselves. You can learn it by bargaining with demons and that sort of thing, but it's not an automatic thing. However, it's never entirely clear whether any preconditions need to be set to allow yourself to become an abomination of some sort. So maybe mages can instantly just shout out into the Fade "come give me power and I'll let you ride around in my fleshy bits!" Regarding the endgame:

Just to remind you guys as you finish everything up, I'm still the only one with an official character in the Obsidian Portal campaign. Everyone who's going to be playing needs an account on OP, needs to ask Dan for an invite and needs to actually make a character page on the campaign at some point before we start.

Strangely it doesn't appear to have been mentioned anywhere here that SpyParty is going into paid beta. As far as I'm aware the idea is that it will operate like Minecraft, generating some revenue as it develops into a release version. The link I gave will allow those of you that haven't already to sign up for access in the beta. You don't have to pay now, but the developer is asking that only those that think they'll want to buy the beta sign up for participation. I think there could be some great Thumbs multiplayer possibilities!

I've been waiting for this game since the first screenshots were leaked years ago. I vacillate between thinking it can only be great, because Relic is great and you can hardly go wrong with a third person character action game based on Warhammer 40,000 and thinking that it'll probably be a huge disappointment because of my overblown expectations, Relic being an RTS studio and third person action games with "space marines" being so prevalent at the moment. The animations really give me hope, though, because animation is almost what matters to me most in this sort of game. Beyond even the design of it, if the game LOOKS right in motion I can forgive a lot of failings.

Yeah I tried it for a few minutes and it's pretty bizarre. It's also pretty dense with constant stimulation and information, considering it's a Facebook game. The neverending chat from people online is pretty irritating too.

It was over the end credits of World in Conflict, which made the game for me.

No, I haven't printed those off yet. They'd probably actually work better with light card or something rather than straight paper, wouldn't they? I might give them a go anyway. Though they look fucking creepy in flat form. Triss' gaping mouth won't stop reminding me of a sex doll.

Sure, I could absolutely play it in a totally organic way, and miss a bunch of stuff but never feel that broken magic circle. The world does lend itself to that. But I can already think of things that I would never have experienced in the game if I did it that way, and some of them were genuinely enjoyable. Act 1 Spoiler:

All right, it seems like my persistence has paid off. The Witcher 2 is finally beginning to be a game I can enjoy. I don't know why it felt the need to be so cruel to me for the first few hours of the game, but we seem to be coming to an understanding now. I still think the combat system leaves a lot to be desired, especially considering how this game was basically billed as "the Witcher, but with amazing combat". I also think the whole resolution ratio thing was almost inexcusably stupid, even if they are intending to fix it in a patch. However, the story is now beginning to pick up, I've gotten used to the ins and outs of fighting, I understand the crafting and alchemy well enough now to prepare properly and I've screwed around with the settings enough that I have a decent balance between framerate and visual quality. The game does look gorgeous, I only wish I had the computer to really let it shine, but at least the developers exposed a good number of settings so I was able to wrangle it to the extent I have. I honestly still can't believe how unattractive this game makes itself to anyone that's not solidly committed to it already during its early game. I know there's a lot of complaining at the moment about games hand-holding too much but this goes a little too far in the other direction. Also, as much as the giant golden exclamation point breaks immersion over its knee, I wish there was some way to get at least a hint towards who is worth talking to for side quests. Having to walk into every building, including every bloody peasant hut, and speak to every person, just in case they might bust out a side quest out of nowhere, breaks my immersion just as much and wastes more of my time. Oh yeah, and I apparently screwed myself out of a continuing quest with the "magic amulet" from the Prologue because I must have accidentally sold it to someone and now I can't figure out who to in order to buy it back. Not the game's fault per se, though I wish there were a little more warning when one is still getting used to all the systems that one might be selling a potentially important quest item. It's just a symptom of the fact that the Witcher 2 is comprised of a number of relatively complex systems that are all explained and streamlined just enough that I don't directly dislike them, but not enough that I didn't completely screw myself a bunch of times in a bunch of ways in the first few hours.

I should point out for anyone that isn't aware that most of the "helpful hints" that the Witcher 2 leaves on screen for all of half a second in a font so small that it's unreadable can be accessed later by way of the Tutorials tab in the Journal. I fully recommend everyone go read all the Tutorials, and then read them again when they actually have to use the systems involved. It doesn't seem like the game will actually teach you anything through gameplay, really, so you do just have to read up on it and then experiment. This actually brings up another problem that the forced 16:9 ratio creates - it's really hard for me to read anything. If I use my 5:4 monitor, with the massive black bars the available screen space is so small (and the fonts already so small) that I can hardly read anything, and if I use my TV, it's not really suited for reading the (again, rather small) writing, particularly since I'm sitting further away. I actually think I'm starting to get eye strain from it, as my eyes have been hurting more than usual the past few days. I'm beginning to think that this game really just doesn't like me - which is a shame, because I really want to like it, so why must it make it so hard? Edit: Also, Brannigan, you may have missed it because the little circles on the talents are also really small, but the last two talents in the Witcher Training tree are able to have mutagens put in them as well.

It gets more difficult, particularly because it does that hardcore RPG thing of just having things that are stronger than you be around without warning you that they're stronger than you. So if you happen to explore in a certain way without getting some levels first you can run into some nasty fights. I'm not noting this as a "flaw" per se as I'm sure a lot of people like it that way, but given my current dissonance with the combat system it's not always clear to me whether I'm fighting something I shouldn't or whether I'm just having trouble fighting in general. I tend to only go "aaah" in understanding once I then come across people on the internet warning others away from those things. The targetting difficulty, thinking about it, may actually be the source of most of, or at least much of, my frustration. The way the attacks are now just performed alongside dodges and blocks in a fairly non-targetted way makes it seem like the game should control like a character action game to me. Particularly since it becomes much more fluid when using a gamepad, I really feel like it should work like God of War, Assassin's Creed, Bayonetta, Arkham Asylum etc. style game in which attacks move in a direction that is then interpreted towards an enemy to a greater or lesser degree rather than locked towards a specific enemy. If this was how it worked, I'm sure I'd find it a lot easier to deal with, as I'm constantly trying to shift targets quickly to deal with new ones attempting to jump in and the system just won't let me much of the time. It's like the game still thinks I'm targetting things with a cursor, and it feels clumsy as hell. Maybe I'll get used to it but I don't really understand why it has chosen to go this route rather than the current standard method. I'd be curious to know whether anyone who is enjoying the combat feels like the semi-locked targetting system is improving their experience in some way? If so, how?

Now that I've tried this I entirely agree. In fact the game is so much better with a gamepad that I'm surprised the console versions didn't launch simultaneously (they do definitely seem to be coming). I wish they had because it would have avoided a lot of problems for me to play it on a console. Why not? My card doesn't actually have an HDMI out or anything, but I went out and bought a DVI to HDMI connector and now have it working. The only problem is the speakers being in the wrong place. Also I agree with all the balance issues and the tutorial not teaching you anything. I did turn it down to easy but now I have that same issue, on easy I just run towards guys and continuously hit quick attack. I get hit occasionally but it's just an annoyance, I doubt I'll ever die. By contrast normal is just constantly frustrating. The game is just... janky, in a bunch of ways. I know polish and testing-based iteration isn't the only thing worth paying attention to in a game but it's so hard to play this in this day and age in some ways.

Managed 11. Some of those tricks were just mean!

Yeah, that was my exact setup before I gave in and put the output of the computer through the TV. Annoyingly, though, I don't really have a way to make the sound go through the TV so all the beautiful directional audio I get from my 5 speakers is totally worthless because I'm 8 feet to the right of where I should be.

Two of my three main complaints, already addressed. The performance is terrible, I've had to really ramp down all kinds of options to even get it to approach a stable framerate, and it's still choppy at times, and the combat system is just as shallow as the first game with the added entertainment value of being incredibly frustrating. The first is somewhat forgiveable, CDProjekt has clearly done its best to make this a serious graphical game, but with so many other AAA titles recently being much kinder to my computer (Dragon Age 2 and Portal 2 basically allowed me to run with everything worthwhile on max with literally no drop in FPS, for example) it is somewhat galling. The latter is... well, bullshit. Maybe it gets better, but at the start of the game the combat just feels rushed, uncontrolled and punishing. I actually switched to easy difficulty almost immediately after that ballista fight right at the beginning of the game (you can switch difficulty without restarting) because they just throw you into the deep end of a very difficult combat system. What's more, it's not like the combat actually impresses me now anyway - it's still just clicking fast in the direction of your target. Things are actually going into a strange and uncomfortable tradeoff territory. Yes, you no longer have to fiddle with putting the cursor on the enemy, but now the auto-targetting system is rather dodgy much of the time and I frequently find it hard to change targets fast enough. Also, yes you're no longer just waiting for a cursor prompt to come up to tell you when to hit again, now most likely you're just literally hammering the left and/or right mouse button until the time comes that you need to dodge with space (I knew about E to block but frankly it doesn't seem useful, the dodge reacts faster and often ends up saving you from damage entirely). Additionally, it literally just hands you a load of Signs with no explanation of what they do or what resource they work on. What's more, most of them seem crap. In my experience the push/stun sign and the defensive shield sign are the only ones that have made a substantive difference. Finally, my biggest gripe - it literally refuses to accept anything other than 16:9 monitor ratio! If you select a resolution with any different ratio, it will slap massive black bars across your screen not only in cutscenes and dialogue, but in the actual game itself. This makes it very difficult for me, with my 5:4 monitor, to even READ the tooltips coming up, let alone act on them. What's more it's just fucking ugly and makes everything much smaller than it needs to be while I'm trying to fight within a system that demands full situational awareness from the second fight in the game. I've actually had to hook my computer up to my TV because I couldn't stand playing it like that. At first glance the actual story, dialogue and so on seem great, but right now I'm having a hard time objectively rating them due to my experiences with these three issues. Perhaps a more positive post later.

I actually agree, but it's worth noting that Final Fantasy XIII basically did this (you didn't have access to every possible option in the combat system for a good 20 hours) slow ramp up of systems and concepts over a long time, and got lambasted for it by press and fans. Of course, it didn't help that the game genuinely didn't really become fun for quite a long time, but one does wonder how much the technical holding back contributed to that.

Mostly agree, but actually if you go into the Characters page of your journal and click on the love hearts above those women you've "romanced" you can see the cards again. Also, I don't know if this is an excuse, rationale or just doesn't matter to anyone, but Geralt the character from Andrzej Sapkowski's books is just generally getting into a lot of trysts. So it's totally in-character for him to be doing this in the game.

The combat is actually the main thing that is constantly trumpeted as the great change and improvement from the first game. Also there may be some actual polish (no pun intended) in this game, so it might not NEED an Enhanced Edition to make it playable.

I think you have to invite us to the campaign, I can't find a way to just join it. This is my profile link if it helps: http://www.obsidianportal.com/profile/Gwardinen

Just finished this ahead of the upcoming release of inFamous 2. My main comment is that I now wish I'd played Good Karma because the powers all being red just looked kind of stupid to me. Also at the end of the game your powers get a kind of blackness within them, which only looks weirder and less electrical. By contrast, I looked up a video of the end of the game in Good Karma and there's a white glow within the blue which actually looks more appropriate to electricity than even the blue does. I will probably play Good in the sequel purely because of this.

It varies. Some of the voice acting is surprisingly good, some of it is impressively bad. Dandelion's voice drives me nuts, for example, but now and then Geralt does a completely straight voice-and-face aside joke and the other characters don't react but it's comedy genius.

I really loved the Witcher except for one rather key point; the actual gameplay. Since the second game has apparently been overhauled in this regard, I'm looking forward to it, and to prepare for the story I have been watching all the relevant story of the first game here: http://www.youtube.com/user/CanadianInCanada I'm actually told that it's only the end sections of the story that are really going to be important in the second game, but eh. One thing you do miss out on if you just watch the first game rather than playing it, though, is that if you have a the Witcher save the Witcher 2 will pick certain things up from it. Apparently it's not to the level of Mass Effect, but nevertheless if you want a genuinely customised experience that's the way to go.

I don't like noise. I'm tired and my head hurts. I don't want to go to school. Five more minutes.

For my character I'm curious about the feywaters. Do they technically exist on the same material plane as the rest of the world, or do you have to magically step/sail into them? Additionally, can they be reached from anywhere or does one have to go to a specific place or at least in a specific direction? Generally speaking it might be useful to know a little about the specific area we'll be starting in so we can think about why we are there.