I’ve played both Witcher games a few times. The games don’t provide the player with much of a feeling of growth, so you might find them disappointing. Each chapter is its own self-contained world with various sidequests, treasure, and main quest objectives, but there’s no large open world. Combat is a lot more polished and challenging in the sequel than the original, but it’s also much more unforgiving and somewhat unintuitive. The game’s setting pulls from the Witcher novels, and the world feels quite different from most fantasy RPG’s. Lots of politics, racism, foul-mouthed jerks, and brutal war between factions. For some reason the world didn’t come across as poorly manufactured the way it feels with the typical industry RPG. I also enjoyed the various story-related decisions the game has you make – none of them are on a simple good-evil spectrum. In both games, you rarely see the full consequences of your choices until much later.
The games were unique and I’m glad I played them, but there’s not much point to replaying them. The first game has a demo as far as I know, but to be honest the game really gets started at Chapter 2. If it’s on sale you might want to give it a shot.
As an aside, the author of the novels was an accomplished salesman before he got into writing. It would be awesome if we had game devs like that.
I’ll be on the lookout for Witcher 1 if it comes on sale.
I guarantee his novel is ‘bestselling’ because he knows how to sell. Most writers don’t. They are not only are ignorant about sales and marketing, they think sales and marketing are ‘evil’ and ‘beneath’ them.
I don’t think game devs should be salesmen, but they shouldn’t have an attitude that sales and marketing are ‘beneath them’ or ‘uncouth’. The original game makers had no problem going out in front of people selling their games. How often have you seen Richard Garriot, Sid Meir, and Will Wright get in front of a camera or be open to an interview? (Note: reason why I don’t do interviews is because I’m not selling anything. What would be the point?)
I don’t know what Miyamoto does outside the public eye, but Shigeru Miyamoto should be praised and exemplified as a great promoter and salesman of his works. He gets on the stage, in front of countless interviews, and sells his company’s products. (And he does sell them…) This is what I admire most about the man. Going onto E3 stages, again and again, giving interviews to kid game journalists over and over again, all that is hard and probably gets very boring. But he seems to do it with a good cheer, consistently, over a decade or two.
Usually, people are very proud of their games/books/whatever and are very happy to convince people to buy them. I understand that the Game Industry is very automated and game developers have little say and are more worried about being fired when the game ships. It sucks and the Game Industry is stupid.
I am more directing this at the youngsters who ‘dream of becoming game developers’ or whatever your passion in life. Business is about sales. It is where the tire hits the road. However, kids are not exposed to sales in school or college and not even out of college. Ultimately, everyone’s job at the company is to sell. If stuff stops selling, people get fired. If you can point to you a sizable cashflow the company obtains and say, “I am responsible for that,” you will never get fired. You’re better off getting emotionally understanding of selling and marketing because it will play a huge role in whatever business you work in.
“But what if I make my own business, Malstrom? Then I won’t need to know about lame stuff like sales and marketing.”
No, good friend. If it’s your own business, you must become an EXPERT at sales and marketing or else your business disappears.
“How come no one told me that is how the world works?”
That is the tragedy of education.