The Witcher - First Release Candidate
 

News from The Witcher community site that they have the first release candidate:
More information.

Can't wait for this one.

That is great news - let's hope the final testing and polishing goes well.

Still undecided on this one, but leaning more towards getting it. Might wait for some early reviews rather than pre-ordering as I usually do!!

Looks interesting, kind of Gothic-like. Anyone know if there will be demo?

If they've gone RC1, they're past the polishing stage. Testing, certainly.

But yeah, this does sound good. I have a feeling that if Witcher will be a failure, it'll be an interesting failure… and it has a good chance of being a success.

I am just thinking that exhaustive testing will likely lead to finding some significant bugs that need squashing, and hopefully it will be a relatively painless process and not like … um … so many other games we all talk about here.

True enough. Obviously we don't know much about the real quality level of the project, not having seen it, but still… the project *smells* good from where I'm at. There's a certain vibe you get from following the progress of a project, even from pretty far off like here, and even if the vibe is faint, with The Witcher it's a good one. If this is the case, it means that the overall architecture and quality level is fine, which means that any bugs that come up during the RC phase will be pretty easy to quash and won't have too serious knock-on effects.

But we'll see. I've been wrong before, but I'll be cautiously optimistic about this one anyway.

Afaik, open ended RPGs are the toughest to debug due to all the variables in Quest possiblities.
If they really have 60+ hour of game, due to many different Quests and not some mindless hack & slash with variables occuring 10 hours later, it could still be a lot of work ahead.
Hopefully since they have been in charge of their own development for the most part, this would have allowed them to do most of their own testing without having to send to a publisher for testing, approval and fix list or else they will be shipping buggy in with a 2007 release.

I'm pretty confident this will be a hit. Not a Bioshock or Oblivion HIT!!! but a solid minor hit.

I just wonder how it will do in terms of 'mind share' … I am planning a blog about the 'tyranny of the majority' in terms of gaming, as exemplified by Bioshock, Metroid 3 Wii and soon Halo 3 …

Good topic. It definitely happens - games (and other stuff…Harry Potter etc etc) take on a life of their own, where hype builds on and creates more hype and suddenly it's the topic on everyones' minds.

I'd feel safer to have it be a minor hit--solid and profitable, but not a huge media event that gets out of hand, where all the onlookers, middlemen and money people move in, where expectations get raised to make more and more money and the developers and idea guys get caught in a vice and lose control. For every Bioware there's a dozen shops that couldn't handle success at that level.

I think, and I could be totally wrong in this, that hype is far more an American thing than a European issue. Therefore, I believe Euro games are protected somewhat from that destructive cycle you fear Magerette.

Unfortunately they are also protected from selling as many copies … ;)

Is it fair to lump BioShock in there?
KLevine was doing most all of the PR himself and didn't seem to mislead anyone, i.e. hype over substance or am I missing something?

I'm not trying to bash Levine - just observe that Bioshock's hype gathered so much mass it had it's own gravity.

You are correct Acleacius, the more open ended, the more complex the game structure is. By open ended I don't mean Oblivion - Oblivion is completely linear, every quest only has a single outcome - I mean games where most quests have several solutions, and where you actually have an impact on the game world. Debugging that kind of code is a mess, variables all over the place in various states, methods being triggered in different order all the time and so on and so forth. Just the sheer amount of test cases on such a game is overwhelming due to all the possible outcomes.

Personally I don't have the patience to work with that kind of code. The games can end up great, but the code is usually a mess, and testing is a nightmare (unless you really enjoy extensive testing).

Still, I have high hopes for The Witcher, and I will most likely buy it as soon as I see it in my local store.

My statement had nothing to do with PR for the game but rather the massive all-consuming vortex created by and in the media.

I see what you guys mean though, there certianly was huge media devoted to BioShock. :)

I was thinking how refreshing it was, to have a game live up to the expetations set by the interviews in many areas, for the most part and how the public wasn't misled about the game quality (not counting 2k's screw ups with copy protection problems, it's not Irrational's fault).

I am with you Maylander, I am looking forward to it as well, especially the very cool look of the game world and premise of geniticly altered subject matter.
Ok, ok and the naughty postcards now that I have learned about those, too! ;)


Hey, Corwin I will trade you two fitful mating vixens for one innocent farm girl or 3 bar room babes! :p

It wasn't just media with Bioshock. It took over virtually ever gaming-related forum on the internet for a couple of weeks. Qt3 was totally Bioshocked, and even RPG Watch nearly turned into Bioshock Watch, despite Bioshock not being an RPG at all.

I don't think I've ever seen a game get the kind of 'mind share' that Bioshock did. The Witcher won't come close in that regard. The dude at my local EB didn't have a clue what I was talking about when I asked about it. I get the feeling that it could turn into 'the surprise hit of 2007'. I was looking at some videos on YouTube, and it really looks impressive. The 7 minute intro was really good. The choices and consequences demo was nice too, it looks like we'll be getting a lot of multi-layered choices with serious consequences. They seem to go way beyon just simple good choice and evil choice as well. Also, there seems to be good reasons to want to make some not-so-good choices beyond being a jerk soley to get 'evil points'.

You take a prisoner, a spy who is scoping out your castle. He's defenceless when you capture him, but then you have to decide what to do with him. Do you let him go, even though he knows too much? Do you just kill him in cold blood? Torture him? Try a truth potion on him even though it might kill him?

I think this will be something of a minor hit.

But I'm sure he was happy to offer to pre-order it for you and sell you the strategy guide, though …

I really hope it turns out good. I try to keep expectations low, but still, this is one of the games I have the highest hopes for right now. And if it is good, I hope it does well, too. Not like Gothic 1 and 2 in the US.

I'm predicting it will be the next Gothic.

There, I said it!!! Whoa, can't believe the words escaped my mouth. Well… too late now.

Badesumofu
"The 7 minute intro was really good."

The actual into of the game has been released?
Humm, linkage?

It's footage from GC on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi-iLIiLxoA

There are a few other videos demoing combat, choice and consequence etc. interesting stuff, but some of them are loaded with spoilers.

That looks great, I tried to find it on Gametrailers with no luck.
There is spose to be away to download the YouTube videos so you can watch them on your own player.
It's so small it was hard to understand what's happening, so I am gonna try to convert that tmp file of the movie YouTube makes in Doc and Sett \Admin.

Thanks. :)

Got the file with this.
http://www.techcrunch.com/get-youtube-movie/
Then have the nice package from free-codex which has the Media Player Classic.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/…Codec_Pack.htm

To play the .flv files, as well as most all audio and video formats. :)
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Ok so this opening trailer is the backstory from the books bringing us up to date before the game begins?

A little confusing since I am not familar with the Witcher world, if it's the opening trailer I guess there are no game spoilers, so I would like to ask a few questions. :)

I doubt that there could be any spoilers in this intro. Indeed it illustrates the first story written by Sapkowski about Geralt(titular Witcher). Whats worth mentioning is the fact that this story take place several years before the main plot in books, not to mention the game. So I guess the purpouse of it is only to show one of the many "problems" witchers have to overcome in hope of payment :). But to truly understand(for those who want or even need to) this intro I think it would be wise to read the story, cause 7 minut film cannot hope to describe everything as it should be.

I think I heard a line amounting to "That's how Geralt became famous" in the intro. So the opening vid doesn't spoil the plot of the game.

I cannot agree :).

Geralt became famous especially from relationship with Ciri, which Jaskier spread out by his poems.

I am confused, even more now but your answers are welcomed. :)
Are the books available in English?

I read or watched a video (iirc) of the devs giving an explanation of when the game would take place, after the books.

They said after the big ending in the books, once he was reunited with guild (can't remember if they said Witchers are a guild), he was asked to or chose to investigate a group/person trying to kill, Witchers.

So your sure it's before the books?
I may need to try to rewatch/reread everything.

In what market? Europe-wide, games sales figures are not that different from USA sales (that surprised me), and they have a higher proportion of PC sales vs console than the US. :)

The Witcher looks good, but you already know I'm a fan. I think RC1 will most likely pass - the only things I can think that'll get tweaked now are translations/dialogues etc.

Of course, but the point is people can watch the vid without the fear of being fed any spoilers.

Actually - on a serious note that is a really good point!

If I am not mistaken, you wonder if plot from the game comes after or before events from the books? If I am not, then the answer is: after.

But the vid is showing event few years before game plot. As Elwro wrote, it purpouse is only to show one of the events from Geralts life. But aforementioned event will not influence plot from the game it is only for showing witchers background, their "daily" life.

Hope I didnt mixed everything up for you:), I am not the best at explaining people things, especially not in my native language.

Ace, as far as english translations of Sapkowski, this is a short story that's been translated by a fan, The Lesser Evil and amazon.com UK has The Last Wish available in English from Orion Press, which is a collection of Geralt short stories? or at least something about Geralt--;)--but I haven't found anything in the U.S.

I must have been half asleep when I read this thread last, looking forward to reading this, thanks magerette! :)

A minor note: The Lesser Evil is one of the stories included in the Last Wish
Collection.

The first story of this collection is called The Witcher (the introductory story to
the series) and its "main event" you have seen in the impressive 7 minute intro video floating around the Web…

Thanks for the clarification, JonNik. I hope someday to be able to read all The Witcher material. Sapkowski needs a U.S. publisher. :)