Erkki

The Witcher

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So is anyone else playing this yet? I've been playing the past two weeks or so and while it has some flaws (the loading times, oh horror) it's also becoming one of my favorite RPG-s ever. I especially love the combat system together with the alchemy stuff. If you play on the hard difficulty, then you can't survive without drinking all sorts of potions. And the potions are IMHO somehow a lot cooler than in other games. Perhaps mostly because they are proactive -- usually you have to use potions before combat, not during it. Gulping down health potions like there's no tomorrow just isn't very possible in this game (though there is a roundabout way it could be done, I think).

Also, I think the journal is quite well done. It's easy to navigate, and I often refer to it, to check up on quest status, monster weaknesses and stuff. The inventory system could be better, but it's no worse than your average RPG. Actually I think it's a welcome change that you can't pick up all the weapons that enemies drop -- avoids having to make lots of back-trips just to sell items in a store (occasionally you may have to still do that though).

Played the demo earlier in the week and dialogue struck me as pretty consistently rubbish. Especially when they have supposedly olde-worlde characters calling each other "babe" for fuck's sake.

Does the demo take place only in Kair Mohen (the fortress)? I don't really pay that much attention to dialogue in this game (occasionally it is shit, though), but I think the introductory part was terribly misrepresentational of the game overall, perhaps in the dialogue part as well. Actually, I was somewhat disappointed with the early part of the game and stopped playing for a while. Later, I decided to continue and it became better and better.

If I'd have to compare this to other games, I'd say it's a mix between Gothic and Baldur's Gate. It's not very epic, mostly everything that happens is very local (at least so far) and you are often choosing the lesser evil -- there isn't a very clear good & evil distinction.

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If I'd have to compare this to other games, I'd say it's a mix between Gothic and Baldur's Gate. It's not very epic, mostly everything that happens is very local (at least so far) and you are often choosing the lesser evil -- there isn't a very clear good & evil distinction.

Honestly, Bioshock for GotY, but one thing that bugged me was how black and white the game's morality system was. Maybe choosing between varying degrees of evil is a better approach? I don't know, I haven't played the game.

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Update: new patch (1.2) greatly improves load/save times!

Indeed, the load times are in some cases non-existent now, an unbelievable improvement. But in my case, it comes with a catch: the game now crashes after half an hour of playing or so (before this patch it only crashed once).

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Just finished a playthrough of the main game, the Enhanced Edition. Not much seems to have changed, actually. Sure, the load times a lot better than the original unpatched, but I didn't actually notice that much difference in the dialogues.

And now on to play the additional adventures included in the enhanced edition.

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I bought the Director's Cut on Steam last night and am eager to tear into it this weekend!

What, is this the same as the Enhanced Edition or is it an Enhanced Enhanced Edition?

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It's the North American nekkid ladies edition. $27.99 on Steam until August 12.

I was really bummed about the console version getting the kibosh, but I'm gonna do an XPadder map to my 360 controller and play from the loveseat in my home office. Yee-ha!

Fucking 14GB download though - yeesh!

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Just started playing it, after the massive download, seems pretty cool. I really like the combat system, closest to it I have previously used is KotOR. I am really happy that the dialogue included a use of 'shan't' though.

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This is one of those games I keep meaning to get but never pull the trigger on, even walking into a store to get it and coming out with something else. Or, in the last year or so, going to Steam and downloading something else.

With Mass Effect 2 imminent and Dragon Age still fresh, not sure if I'll ever play it now!

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This is one of those games I keep meaning to get but never pull the trigger on, even walking into a store to get it and coming out with something else. Or, in the last year or so, going to Steam and downloading something else.

With Mass Effect 2 imminent and Dragon Age still fresh, not sure if I'll ever play it now!

It was £7.50 on the steam sale, one of the few reasons I picked it up.

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I had to stay away from that sale!! Couldn't trust myself, and I'm always broke Christmas week anyway.

Very awesome though. It'll probably drop again before the summer. I'm waiting for that and maybe Tropico 3. Maybe.

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Just started playing myself, really digging it about 2-3 hours in.

Anyone feel a bit lost in the story to begin with, seems like the localization wasn't done with the big picture in mind or something.

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I've also recently begun, after a couple of false starts since its release.

I agree that the story seems to be a bit unexplained, but I suspect that since Geralt is supposed to have amnesia, all the important bits will eventually be explained. The developers may have also been operating under the assumption that most people who bought the game would already be familiar with the books, which may or may not be a bad thing.

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The developers may have also been operating under the assumption that most people who bought the game would already be familiar with the books, which may or may not be a bad thing.

haha there are books? This might explain a few things.

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I got the Enhanced Edition from Steam during the end of year sale. Installed it yesterday and the game froze just after the 1st fight. Good times...

and by the way, that's a very inefficient engine. I have a core i7 @ 4GHz, HD4870 and it's reaaaally slow @ 1920x1200...

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I got the Enhanced Edition from Steam during the end of year sale. Installed it yesterday and the game froze just after the 1st fight. Good times...

and by the way, that's a very inefficient engine. I have a core i7 @ 4GHz, HD4870 and it's reaaaally slow @ 1920x1200...

isn't for me, admittedly at the lower resolution of 1360x768, but I run an AMD phenom II X4 @ 3.2GHz, highest settings it is playable nicely, troughs at about 30fps

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I got the Enhanced Edition from Steam during the end of year sale. Installed it yesterday and the game froze just after the 1st fight. Good times...

and by the way, that's a very inefficient engine. I have a core i7 @ 4GHz, HD4870 and it's reaaaally slow @ 1920x1200...

Yeah, it could be a lot better. I've had a few problems of my own, and in searching for solutions, I've seen a lot of things that come down to insufficient memory.

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That's odd. It used to run with everything near its highest setting on my old setup, with 3500+ AMD and GF6800. Have you tried turning of the depth of field thing it does? It completely crippled the framerate for me.

Running an i7 now too, but I haven't tried to play the game on this setup. You're probably right when you say that it's not a very efficient engine, though. :mock:

I remember a time, before the patches, where it took took 45 seconds to 1 minute to load a transition from going indoor to outside, for me. :tdown:

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I've also recently begun, after a couple of false starts since its release.

I agree that the story seems to be a bit unexplained, but I suspect that since Geralt is supposed to have amnesia, all the important bits will eventually be explained. The developers may have also been operating under the assumption that most people who bought the game would already be familiar with the books, which may or may not be a bad thing.

Nay, at the time Witcher was published the relevant books weren't even in English. That was just conscious decision not to dumb story down.

btw: People, try playing it with original (Polish) voiceovers. I heard many good things from the people who did try this.

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That's odd. It used to run with everything near its highest setting on my old setup, with 3500+ AMD and GF6800. Have you tried turning of the depth of field thing it does? It completely crippled the framerate for me.

Running an i7 now too, but I haven't tried to play the game on this setup. You're probably right when you say that it's not a very efficient engine, though. :mock:

I remember a time, before the patches, where it took took 45 seconds to 1 minute to load a transition from going indoor to outside, for me. :tdown:

I think the game prefers AMD processors, for a change, which is nice.

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I haven't noticed any loading time problems (perhaps because I'm running on an Intel SSD). I'll give it a shot again tonight, I'll disable the depth of field as suggested.

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I haven't noticed any loading time problems (perhaps because I'm running on an Intel SSD). I'll give it a shot again tonight, I'll disable the depth of field as suggested.

It got patched for the Enhanced Edition, so those who bought the game from steam won't experience them.

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Nay, at the time Witcher was published the relevant books weren't even in English. That was just conscious decision not to dumb story down.

btw: People, try playing it with original (Polish) voiceovers. I heard many good things from the people who did try this.

Fair enough, but I'd venture to say that while the US was definitely a major consideration, it might not have been the target market.

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