03-09-2012, 07:41 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-09-2012, 07:41 PM by SKELTON S. SKELETON.)
Fantasy Adventure stories are probably one of the oldest types of fiction, from Beowulf to The Lord of The Rings, Swords and Sorcery tales have captured the imaginations of people for hundreds of years, from stories like The Iliad to The Sleeping Sorceress.
Videogames became a welcome home to stories of barrel-chested men carving a path through their foes with a longsword in one hand (and usually the other if you take dual wield)
and a morality system in the other.
The Witcher 2 is the sequel to The Witcher by CD Projekt Red which was a relatively derivative, if played up by most gaming blogs, entry into a long list of easy to understand RPG's.
Standing on it's own, the first Witcher title was built on an engine that was more than a few years old and held dearly onto the limitations of that engine.
I can understand why the developer would decide to start from scratch with The Witcher 2, the original sold well and could be considered a "good" game but was so rife with potential a sequel was a given. The Witcher 2 handles itself in a certain way that really serves to separate it from a lot of other WRPG's on the on the market: namely, It's merely pretending to be one, but has much more in common with games like Dark Souls and even Persona than it does with, say, Skyrim, in the way it presents itself.
![[Image: rolM7.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/rolM7.jpg)
The First, And Most Noticeable Of Things that The Witcher Two does in comparison to its forefather is the fact that it actually lets you go to (most) of the places you can see.
Before developers decided that players actually wanted to go to places they could visually, y'know, see, it was common practice to make a player walk around a fence or a patch of tall grass to get to the house on the other side. It was not uncommon to have a developer pad out a game with quests that made you take the longest possible route to an area, while making it all but impossible to say, walk between the trees in front of you or over some rocks.
A practice that CD Projekt RED enforced in The Witcher and for the most part abandoned in The Witcher Two. One of the areas that you get to explore early on in the game is a massive, sprawling Elven forest. Despite being a very obviously closed in area (and pretty tiny) it accomplishes a lot of things that other games have tried to do and failed; namely making the player feel small, you can obviously feel that even the smallest locations in the larger area have been handcrafted with a lot of love by the developer. Tying every element of an area together is the masterstroke of a good developer, and with incredibly atmospheric sound design despite the closed-off nature of the areas, and the general “mystical” nature of the locations lends to it.
It takes other games lavish vistas and an amazingly large world, it takes The Witcher 2 an area the size of a level in Demon's Souls to evoke the same feeling out of the player, because the developers knew what you were likely going to experience and they make that experience worthwhile.
Trees that reach far beyond the visible spectrum, ancient ruins and forgotten monuments to old gods give the world a sense of history that leave you wondering, not reading in-game menus, wanting everything to be spilled out for you. It's true there's supplementary material you can read, but CD Projekt RED took great care ensuring that the player never feels lost in the lore; there's a trick there for other developers to learn from and that has a lot to do with what lore is available is generally stuff pertaining to where you're at in the game.
The Witcher 2 is a vast game, make no doubt, and much like the acclaim Mass Effect 2 receives, a lot of that has to do with the sheer size of the cast you meet: A large breadth of characters that are, if not unique, simply interesting to deal with. Examples of the types of this type of strong characterization abound in your tight-knit group of companions, like the bard and thief Dandelion, who chronicles your every exploit.
As much as they could for adapting another work, even characters like Triss Mergold, who in other games would (incredibly likely) be relegated to the roles of eye candy or an easy “romance option” (ugh) they stood to make her a relatively good example of a strong-female character that doesn't need a Big Strong Man for any validation; as much as she spends the game at Geralts side so does she spend it rescuing Geralts pasty white ass from imminent danger. Being surrounded by a constantly changing cast of characters and ones that don't necessarily hold the same views as the protagonist keep the player steered towards experimenting with the decisions they make and often times are what serve to open up your options to ones that aren't necessarily wholesome but may be the best thing at the time.
![[Image: JcI6S.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/JcI6S.jpg)
It's unfortunate though that CD Projekt RED have gone through the trouble of making such a wonderfully realized world, but having everything interesting about it only be explored through the most basic of quests, if it's nature, you kill X or gather X, if it's a city, you talk to X and then maybe X. I understand that this is the sort of industry standard for player = world interaction, but there's something so incredibly wrong with it that leaves me puzzled as to why developers don't try to experiment more, especially when the rest of the game is so different from the industry standard in a lot of regards. One of the most troubling things about it is that the developers clearly love the world, but simply lacked the creativity (outside of a few longer story events) to give you a means to experience the world and characters in a more interesting fashion.
Relying too heavily on staying close to general RPG conventions is where it starts to fall apart, but at the same time, excel, a good example is having a combat system that's so reliant on strategy and preparation but having it be completely backed by the same strong-hit light-hit push numbers against other numbers system. Luckily, the CD Projekt RED is smart enough (heh, a smart developer) to enforce the games preparation system through every encounter, by making Geralt largely underpowered compared to most groups of enemies in an area. Covering your sword in various oils or ingesting potions causes you to gain advantages in combat, like extra damage against arachnid based monsters, or stamina regeneration; but there's that evil numbers-and-dice system rearing it's ugly head; there's no way to tell if you're actually doing more damage against a monster besides ghost numbers and stats playing out in the background somewhere, or an occasional green sheen to an enemy to let you know that Yes, Your Poison Ability Worked.
![[Image: sEykP.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/sEykP.jpg)
Most of the bad design choices I mentioned earlier really come to the forefront in the encounters with monsters outside of quests. It's unfortunate that for as fun and challenging that the longer battles and boss fights in the game, smaller encounters are rarely more than rapidly hitting the light and heavy strike buttons and throwing in a bit of magic. Solo or one on two battles start becoming by the midpoint of the game more akin to chores or that hold you up on progressing to the encounters that really let you get into the meat of how wonderful the magic and enhancement systems are strategically; though it's not quite as bad as Dragon Age 2 trying to ape action game conventions by adding a not-needed “Press X To Kill Shit” atmosphere to the combat.
Handling minor encounters in their next title is likely going to be a solid point of improvement in quality. Showing great skill in making longer and larger encounters rely on strategy and skill than sheer luck with numbers, if CD Projekt RED can find a way around the shortcomings of their battle system and how it relates to minor encounters, it may serve as a good example for ways to handle combat in RPG form for other developers.
Unfortunately for as much as I can build up the characterization, plotting and pacing, the game seriously falls apart when it comes to sticking to a pretty clumsy dialogue system. Even though it's not inherently tied to a morality system, several events in the game give Geralt an option of using magic to manipulate people into your favor, but it isn't always made evident exactly how useful this is or how much of the story it changes. I fault a lot of games for having ridiculous black/white morality compasses, but including some way of at least keeping track of how your decisions affected the game world might help the player feel more involved.
Not only that, but sticking so closely to the source material is many times kind of a weakness, as events and old characters are brought up that the game gives you no reference to, even sometimes through the supplementary lore, or just sometimes doesn't clue you in till way later in the game.
“Not Cluing You In” Is probably numero uno at the list of things The Witcher 2 messes up; most oils you add to your weapons deal damage to specific monster classes, but outside of knowing that giant spiders are insect-type monsters, a lot of times it's hard to know exactly what type of monster you're fighting, and yet I wouldn't trade having a pull up bestiary for the feeling you get traveling to some old corner of the world in The Witcher 2 and buying a dusty old book about monsters for anything.
The Witcher 2 is a game that always leaves you wanting more, and even somehow after upwards of sixty hours there's just not quite enough adventures with Geralt and co. To satisfy you. Finding yourself in a craving for a different from the norm of pulpy good-vs-evil, there are few better games to spend your time with than The Witcher 2.
The Witcher 2: Likely better in quality than at least Four Out of Five of that big name RPG I can't recall very well
![[Image: qstJK.png]](http://i.imgur.com/qstJK.png)
(this is also up on PXC
Videogames became a welcome home to stories of barrel-chested men carving a path through their foes with a longsword in one hand (and usually the other if you take dual wield)
and a morality system in the other.
The Witcher 2 is the sequel to The Witcher by CD Projekt Red which was a relatively derivative, if played up by most gaming blogs, entry into a long list of easy to understand RPG's.
Standing on it's own, the first Witcher title was built on an engine that was more than a few years old and held dearly onto the limitations of that engine.
I can understand why the developer would decide to start from scratch with The Witcher 2, the original sold well and could be considered a "good" game but was so rife with potential a sequel was a given. The Witcher 2 handles itself in a certain way that really serves to separate it from a lot of other WRPG's on the on the market: namely, It's merely pretending to be one, but has much more in common with games like Dark Souls and even Persona than it does with, say, Skyrim, in the way it presents itself.
The First, And Most Noticeable Of Things that The Witcher Two does in comparison to its forefather is the fact that it actually lets you go to (most) of the places you can see.
Before developers decided that players actually wanted to go to places they could visually, y'know, see, it was common practice to make a player walk around a fence or a patch of tall grass to get to the house on the other side. It was not uncommon to have a developer pad out a game with quests that made you take the longest possible route to an area, while making it all but impossible to say, walk between the trees in front of you or over some rocks.
A practice that CD Projekt RED enforced in The Witcher and for the most part abandoned in The Witcher Two. One of the areas that you get to explore early on in the game is a massive, sprawling Elven forest. Despite being a very obviously closed in area (and pretty tiny) it accomplishes a lot of things that other games have tried to do and failed; namely making the player feel small, you can obviously feel that even the smallest locations in the larger area have been handcrafted with a lot of love by the developer. Tying every element of an area together is the masterstroke of a good developer, and with incredibly atmospheric sound design despite the closed-off nature of the areas, and the general “mystical” nature of the locations lends to it.
It takes other games lavish vistas and an amazingly large world, it takes The Witcher 2 an area the size of a level in Demon's Souls to evoke the same feeling out of the player, because the developers knew what you were likely going to experience and they make that experience worthwhile.
Trees that reach far beyond the visible spectrum, ancient ruins and forgotten monuments to old gods give the world a sense of history that leave you wondering, not reading in-game menus, wanting everything to be spilled out for you. It's true there's supplementary material you can read, but CD Projekt RED took great care ensuring that the player never feels lost in the lore; there's a trick there for other developers to learn from and that has a lot to do with what lore is available is generally stuff pertaining to where you're at in the game.
The Witcher 2 is a vast game, make no doubt, and much like the acclaim Mass Effect 2 receives, a lot of that has to do with the sheer size of the cast you meet: A large breadth of characters that are, if not unique, simply interesting to deal with. Examples of the types of this type of strong characterization abound in your tight-knit group of companions, like the bard and thief Dandelion, who chronicles your every exploit.
As much as they could for adapting another work, even characters like Triss Mergold, who in other games would (incredibly likely) be relegated to the roles of eye candy or an easy “romance option” (ugh) they stood to make her a relatively good example of a strong-female character that doesn't need a Big Strong Man for any validation; as much as she spends the game at Geralts side so does she spend it rescuing Geralts pasty white ass from imminent danger. Being surrounded by a constantly changing cast of characters and ones that don't necessarily hold the same views as the protagonist keep the player steered towards experimenting with the decisions they make and often times are what serve to open up your options to ones that aren't necessarily wholesome but may be the best thing at the time.
It's unfortunate though that CD Projekt RED have gone through the trouble of making such a wonderfully realized world, but having everything interesting about it only be explored through the most basic of quests, if it's nature, you kill X or gather X, if it's a city, you talk to X and then maybe X. I understand that this is the sort of industry standard for player = world interaction, but there's something so incredibly wrong with it that leaves me puzzled as to why developers don't try to experiment more, especially when the rest of the game is so different from the industry standard in a lot of regards. One of the most troubling things about it is that the developers clearly love the world, but simply lacked the creativity (outside of a few longer story events) to give you a means to experience the world and characters in a more interesting fashion.
Relying too heavily on staying close to general RPG conventions is where it starts to fall apart, but at the same time, excel, a good example is having a combat system that's so reliant on strategy and preparation but having it be completely backed by the same strong-hit light-hit push numbers against other numbers system. Luckily, the CD Projekt RED is smart enough (heh, a smart developer) to enforce the games preparation system through every encounter, by making Geralt largely underpowered compared to most groups of enemies in an area. Covering your sword in various oils or ingesting potions causes you to gain advantages in combat, like extra damage against arachnid based monsters, or stamina regeneration; but there's that evil numbers-and-dice system rearing it's ugly head; there's no way to tell if you're actually doing more damage against a monster besides ghost numbers and stats playing out in the background somewhere, or an occasional green sheen to an enemy to let you know that Yes, Your Poison Ability Worked.
Most of the bad design choices I mentioned earlier really come to the forefront in the encounters with monsters outside of quests. It's unfortunate that for as fun and challenging that the longer battles and boss fights in the game, smaller encounters are rarely more than rapidly hitting the light and heavy strike buttons and throwing in a bit of magic. Solo or one on two battles start becoming by the midpoint of the game more akin to chores or that hold you up on progressing to the encounters that really let you get into the meat of how wonderful the magic and enhancement systems are strategically; though it's not quite as bad as Dragon Age 2 trying to ape action game conventions by adding a not-needed “Press X To Kill Shit” atmosphere to the combat.
Handling minor encounters in their next title is likely going to be a solid point of improvement in quality. Showing great skill in making longer and larger encounters rely on strategy and skill than sheer luck with numbers, if CD Projekt RED can find a way around the shortcomings of their battle system and how it relates to minor encounters, it may serve as a good example for ways to handle combat in RPG form for other developers.
Unfortunately for as much as I can build up the characterization, plotting and pacing, the game seriously falls apart when it comes to sticking to a pretty clumsy dialogue system. Even though it's not inherently tied to a morality system, several events in the game give Geralt an option of using magic to manipulate people into your favor, but it isn't always made evident exactly how useful this is or how much of the story it changes. I fault a lot of games for having ridiculous black/white morality compasses, but including some way of at least keeping track of how your decisions affected the game world might help the player feel more involved.
Not only that, but sticking so closely to the source material is many times kind of a weakness, as events and old characters are brought up that the game gives you no reference to, even sometimes through the supplementary lore, or just sometimes doesn't clue you in till way later in the game.
“Not Cluing You In” Is probably numero uno at the list of things The Witcher 2 messes up; most oils you add to your weapons deal damage to specific monster classes, but outside of knowing that giant spiders are insect-type monsters, a lot of times it's hard to know exactly what type of monster you're fighting, and yet I wouldn't trade having a pull up bestiary for the feeling you get traveling to some old corner of the world in The Witcher 2 and buying a dusty old book about monsters for anything.
The Witcher 2 is a game that always leaves you wanting more, and even somehow after upwards of sixty hours there's just not quite enough adventures with Geralt and co. To satisfy you. Finding yourself in a craving for a different from the norm of pulpy good-vs-evil, there are few better games to spend your time with than The Witcher 2.
The Witcher 2: Likely better in quality than at least Four Out of Five of that big name RPG I can't recall very well
(this is also up on PXC
![[Image: cKfiI0F.png]](http://i.imgur.com/cKfiI0F.png)
![[Image: 34434.png]](http://jesusfuck.me/di/COZP/34434.png)
![[Image: Rrr4r.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/Rrr4r.jpg)