Nice write up Dart.
I actually liked the cut scenes pointing out the C&C and I'm not a moron but it has been called in to question from time to time.:lol: I usually play games over months, not weeks so the reminders of my decisions were welcome.
Major disappointment? I suppose with the hype it could be. I think the hard part is judging it as a 2007 game.
The first few time I played it I really enjoyed the combat but after playing games like Dark souls and the witcher 2 it doesn't feel as fun.
Do you think you would have scored it higher if you'd played it back at release, before being influenced by the witcher 2 and other newer games?
Also thanks for no spoilers as I'm still making my way through it.
I'm not sure if I would have scored it higher back then. I might have, but that would be because the writing might have appealed to me more when I was younger.
I wrote it off upon release and though I've tried it multiple times, I've never managed to stay interested. I would never have finished this game if it wasn't because of how the save game carries over to the next one. I'm a huge fan of games that carry stuff over - and I felt forced to go through with it, which is probably not a good way to enjoy a game. I'm just tired of giving up on games - so I felt it was time to finish something proper
Thankfully, the last two chapters were actually pretty good - and it made the whole thing somewhat enjoyable towards the end.
But the writing was probably the thing that most surprised me, and that's not in a good way.
I used to think these bleak and super harsh settings were cool - simply because I found a lot of other settings or stories too light or unrealistically "fantastical" if you will. So, before it became a trend to overdo it, I really liked such things - much as I really liked Gothic, which I tend to find a more plausible take on a harsh setting.
But, these days, I find everything is harsh and rather extreme - or certainly - it's much more common in entertainment. I don't think that's interesting by itself anymore, and I'm always looking for "a point" to the whole thing.
That's what I was missing with The Witcher - and it really did seem to be about how everything is terrible. I don't need a magical or hopeful ending - but I do want something that's worth engaging in beyond simply dwelling on how sad everything is.
Though I concede it was really nice to be able to influence what happened in the game, the vast majority of it felt EXTREMELY rigid and guided.
I've always been a freeform non-linear kind of guy - and I really despise feeling that I'm jumping through hoops, and I don't enjoy doing something unless I agree it should be done or, at least, understand why I'm doing it.
A surprising amount of quests in Witcher were obscure and confusing to me, and though that's likely because of translations and this being a first effort - it served to take me out of what I was supposed to be doing.
I liked the Prologue - because everything was set up nicely, and it gave a proper motivation for moving on. But the game digressed immediately in the first chapter, and seemed to devolve into a giant FedEx simulator - and that's when the game started losing my attention.
Maybe they wanted to do too much - or maybe this is simply not the game for me.
I tend to lean towards the latter explanation, and I think people who don't mind being led around by the nose - and who're less annoyed with awkward writing and dialogue - are much more likely to enjoy it, because of the intriguing characters and truly interesting lore.