Hello Malstrom
I haven’t played The Witcher 2, but I did play the original game, so let me give you my impression of it. Is it a typical industry games or an old-school game? I think it’ somewhere in between, having both the good and the bad of both in it. The Witcher was CD Projekt’s first game, they were not new to gaming, CD Projekt is a PC game publisher for eastern Europe, but they had never made one on the their own before, so my guess is that ambition to play with the “big boys” of AAA gaming got mixed together with not having the team to go full on Hollywood.
Here is how the story works: You are the hero from the novels, Geral of Rivia, you are a witcher, a professional monster slayer who has been mutated to have higher strength, reflexes and tolerance to poisons but has become clearly marked as a mutant. At the beginnign of the game it is stated that Geralt was thought dead and it turns out that he has lost his memory. This allows players to explore the world as a famous character without having to know his background. So if you meet a fried of Geralt and you don’t know who he is it doesn’t matter because Geralt doesn’t know either. I think that was a pretty smart move, because it lets the players rewrite Geralt’s character according to what they would do.
The plot is mostly fixed, it has a clear beginning and a clear end. In between the main plot is fixed as well, certain events *have* to happen, but you are allowed some minor variation. For example there is this kid named Alvin throughout the entire game, his fate is fixed and there is nothing you can do about it, but some minor variations, like which of two women is supposed to look after him, can be done. They don’t affect anything in the long run though. CD Projekt used to boast about how complex the story is, how your choices aren’t just black and white and how they affect the story in the long run. It’s a bunch of marketing BS, they have just prepared a limited set of minor plot variations, that’s all.
That said, the good thing is that the story never interrupts the game. There are only a handful of cutscenes and they are pretty short, most of the story is done through those over-the-shoulder dialogues which can be skipped. When you are allowed to explore an area you are not being stopped every few steps by someone. There is no stupid “you can’t go here because the plot doesn’t allow it” or “follow me across half the map very slowly while I tell the story” or any other modern nonesense. If you run off and get surrounded by monsters after nightfall it’s your fault and you have to find a way to get out of there. That said, the areas themselves are not very larger and have invisible borders. It’s not that the game designers are not allowing you to go there, it’s just that there isn’t anything. The size of the areas didn’t really bother me, there is enough content, but it does feel kind of cheap to see the world go on while you run into an invisible border.
One bad modern habit they did carry over is full voice acting and motion capturing. Every line of dialogue is fully voiced and every motion captured, but there is only so much you can record. This way they automatically limit your amount of choices heavily, which might be one reason why the story is so fixed. The role-playing aspect is limited to basically two or three choices at a time.
The story itself is decent for a video game, it treats its subjects with respect, but it’s still a video game and you won’t find any literary greatness. I haven’t read the books, aside from the first short story which came with the game, so I can’t compare it. The setting is a war-torn medieval fantasy world where humans are the dominant race. As a consequence the non-human races, elves and dwarfes, are forced to live as outsiders in human society. This spawned a rebel movement, but the rebels aren’t saints either, relying on terrorist tectics, robbing, capturing and killing civilians, including children. Witchers are born human, but their training involves mutations to give them the physical advantage they need for their jobs, so they are seen as freaks by humans. Thus Geralt’s role is somewhere between humans and non-humans; he is of human origin, but he is no longer like them, he can hear better, see in the dark, process poisons, resist diseases, use magic and is stronger than a normal human.
The story starts out as a mystery quest, at the beginning the witcher stronghold is attacked by a group of mercenaries under the guidance of a mage and an assassin and their secret mutagens are stolen. The story then sets you up to find those mutagens before the organization can abuse them. Over the course of the game this quest gets joined with a conspiracy against the king and the struggle of the human army against the non-human rebels. Poverty, corruption and racism are the predominationg topics of the plot. It’s not a nice game, it hasn’t been dumed down but it doesn’t use those topics just to be edgy either, it’s just something you would expect in such a world at such a time.
So far I’ve covered the story, but what about the gameplay? It’s pretty standard, combat is a matter of point&click, you have two swords, a steel one for humananoids, a silver one for monsters, and with each sword you have a strong, a fast and a group stance. When you perform an attack you can chain the next one if you click right before the current one ends. You can also cast simple spells, but you are not a pure mage. What adds an extra layer of complexity is the alchemy system. You can find all sorts of ingredients that have various components, you can then make potions, oils and bombs out of them. Potions give you certain advantages like faster movement, darkvision or faster healing, oils can be applied to weapons for extra damage against certain creatures or to inflict special effects and bombs can be used in combat with different effects. In addition to health and mana you also have a toxic bar that fills up when you drink potions and forms a limit to how much you can drink at a time. You can also use runes or meteorite ore to upgrade your swords. When you level up you get skill points to distribute in various trees. Each tree is dedicated to one discipline (like fire spell or steel sword) and you have different branches in these trees. Invested points don’t just make you stronger in that discipline, they have various effects like being able to perform longer combos or add special effects to attacks and spells. All in all the system works fine, there is enough to play different character builds and approach combat in different ways. It’s more about preparing for combat than the combat itself, during combat you just need to time your clicks properly and choose the right stance and sword.
The game routine is essentially that you always have one main quest that involves investigating the whereabouts of the stolen mutagens and you do that usually by talking to people and doing quests for them. You are free to go anywhere within the limits of the current chapter, this means that in chapter 2 there is nothing stopping you from going right to the swamp and fighting monsters,but you will *eventually* have to do the talking parts if you want the game to progress. Within the areas there is nothing stopping you from exploring them, but you might run into unique monsters, those are stronger than the rest and give a special reward when slain. If you want an impression of the world’s size you can google for a map of the game:
http://images.wikia.com/witcher/images/2/26/Game_world_map.jpg
(those thick forests are not part of the game)
So, what to make of all of this? I’m not really sure myself, as I said it’s stuck somewhere in between. When the game lets you go then you are free, there is no artificial handholding and you can play any way you want. However, all this is strapped into a corset of fixed chapters and full voice acting. Personally I really enjoyed it, often times I found myself playing until three in the morning without noticing it, but I haven’t played it since. Part of the reason is that I already know the story and places, so the initial joy of exploring the world and uncovering the mystery is gone forever, once I know the story I know it. Another reason is that I had to boot up Windows to play it, maybe now that I have it on Mac I’ll give it another go and see if the *game* itself can hold up for a second playthrough.
It seems like the Witcher is worth a try should I find it on sale for a few bucks.
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