The Witcher - Trailer Excerpt
 

Apparently GameSpot will debut a new 10min Witcher trailer in a few days but the official site has kicked up an excerpt (direct link - .zip) in advance with this detailed description:
More information.

Did you say a 10 minute trailer?!! :faint::drool:

That's what he said and I follow your example: :happycry::tears::excited::faint::drool:

Well, I hope then trailer is less cliche than the excerpt…

"You don't know, who your dealing with!" o_O

That is what I was thinking … I am so numbed with bad dialogue in Two Worlds that I thought this would be a breath of fresh air. It wasn't.

You guys gotta be kidding me!! Seriously!!! That wasn't cool?!! o_O
Voice acting of the bandit aside, that dialogue rocked! It was way more original than most of the jargon you see in games today. There's just no pleasing you kids today.. ;)

There's already a discussion going on about this clip here: http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2763

"I piss on your juvenile scorn."

:rotfl:

That's too good. Well, that's the danger of trying to write "serious" dialogue for a fantasy game. It usually ends up sounding like a bad action flick written in someone's second language. Folks complain about the TW dialogue, but I think it's better to take their approach of balancing just enough tongue in cheek against not breaking the mood of the game. But I guess they didn't really have that option with Witcher, what with the books and all. Ah well. Guess it will just provide a little comic relief between choppin' up the baddies…

P.S. "hardened assassins" Is there another kind? ;)

I dont think this is in any way as bad as Two Worlds, but that is just my opinion
ofcourse…

Still it does sound a bit "forced" (like trying too hard to be mean :) )I am afraid
(just not as contrived and ridiculous as TW)…

Wha..? The whole thing was terribly contrived and ridiculous. Way worse than anything I've heard in TW (other than the silly "forsooth" and "mayhep", but those are just words, not entire lines). It's like they tried to cram 3 character's into the bandit's short dialogue:

- a dumb, overreacting thug: (what's so offensive about "I have some questions" that makes him feel he needs to make the ridiculously over-wordy threat of "a dozen hardened assassins" showing up in some confusing amount of time between "one word and three seconds"????)

-a Wiseman orating on "contempt"

- an all bark but no bite wimp who "pisses" on the Witcher, but is still interested in what he wants? Huh!?!?

Seriously. That was some of the most mangled, confusing and poorly written dialogue I've seen in quite a while.

Are you psychoanalizing the character or commenting on the dialogue and its
delivery. ?!

Do you know his background and why he would respond as he does ? Why
could he not be something like a bandit with delusions of sophistication (like a streetwise gangsta type :) ) i.e just having some upstart giving him lip in his
turf ? …This is a rather pointless debate don't you think ?

I think we'll just have to disagree. I played the TW demo for approx 6 hours
and I found the dialogue and Voice acting to be uniformly badly written and
delivered in the same impressive combination of the deadpan and the pompous
by all the actors…

Mind you the Witcher might just turn as bad or even worse !
I just cant see it from this bit…

I guess that is my point - I'm really looking forward to the game and have enjoyed all of the little tidbits I've seen. And then this … if they were going to take a snippit from a 10 minute segment, why THAT?

My point is that one of the main functions of dialogue is to convey character. One of the horrible things about the bandit snip is just how bad a job it does at portraying anything close to a coherent, let alone believable, character. It's just a mess.

Isn't that what the internet and forums are for? ;)

Ah yes, not very promising as a highlight… I'll have to agree here.

Oh, well I'll have to remain hopeful (nothing else on the Horizon now that
I'm finishing Bioshock anyway).

And if it turns out bad I'll still get the books eventually…

And I just disagree with your analysis that one character cannot have those
responses. Even if that was true it wouldnt constitute bad writting necessarily.
Dialogue is a valuable tool for characterization, true. But they are not the same thing and can (and should) be judged separately.


sure, just not when it seems that we will both fall to nitpicking to essentially
just justify our differing tastes…

I have a solution for that …

Since I game frequently while the house is sleeping I almost always use headphones. Playing Two Worlds I have taken to just leaving my headphones laying around. The dialogue isn't better written without sound, but without the double whammy it seems better …

if it had been done in a comic book format, i'm sorry i mean "graphic novel", it would have probably seemed better. Still, I dont think it looked and sounded that bad. I accept that game dialogue is patently absurd anyway, therefore I have a hard time judging it in the first place unless it's just flat out annoyingly delivered in a high pitched tone or something.

Maybe the thug should have been yelling his lines toward the end or something, losing his cool.

Comic book = kids.

Graphic Novel = adults pretending not to like comic books :D

OK, now I better understand why Bioware highly recommends this game ;) It's just like Mass Effect. It is Jack Bauer, not in space, but in the Middle Ages of Europe ;)

Maybe this is a little harsh, but the conversation between Geralt and the -ehm- one-eyed man seems to follow the same jack bauer type thing that bioware seem to to exposing in ME; showing of Geralt as no-nonsense guy who just likes to use threats and violence to get the job done….

What's wrong with using threats and violence to get the job done? Were you planning on having the bandits over for tea and crumpets? :smartass:

I'm with JoNik and Sammy… I don't see how it was that bad, and in fact, I enjoyed it. It was different from the usual fare, and is making me look forward to the game more.

Oh, and I'm also proud to say that I like comic books!! :]

The Assassins maybe have reason to be weary of Witchers, we in the English language world, don't really know the context and it maybe mostly in line with the way the books were written for some characters. ;)

Here is the full version, I set it to Dhruin and in case he can't get to it for awhile, link it here. :)
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/thewi…ml?sid=6179649

The download is the exclusive moive, I just entered a birth date, didn't need to register or login.

Thanks Acleasius. I definetely like what I see btw.

-ehm-

What I meant was that in an rpg you usually have the option to persuade even the bad characters if you have high enough speech or persuasion skills or hight enough intelligence. From what I saw, it just looked a 'pissing' contest to see who could most bad, Geralt or the bandit (leader). Where's the choice in that?

Good point, aries100 I haven't heard anything about persuasions/charm or such only bribes, maybe those don't exist in the Witcher world?

Everything is so out of context, it's seems this guy was much more than an average NPC, maybe butt ugly assassins can't be persuaded or charmed. :p

Btw, does every male have face scars in Witcher world? :)

If you look at this link:

http://au.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/thewit…ml?sid=6179649

you get to learn that the Polish devs. didn't want to make Geralt a normal or typicall D&D or RPG-like character. They went another route instead. So, yes, I don't think, Geralt even has a Wisdom, Intelligence, or even Persuasion skill or ability. What he has is 'trait trees'.

Whatever that is :S

edit:
yeah, post # 300 :)

I think saying you "usually" have persuasion options in an RPG is a big overstatement but I know what you are trying to say.

Geralt does have an Intelligence skill tree but it's more to do with the Signs (spells) and does not have dialogue skills on it. You can gain influence with at least some people with "gifts" but I'm not sure how widespread or how much effect this has.

The only guys with scars I've seen are witchers - the game makes it clear becoming a witcher is *very* dangerous - I forget the details but there are three trials and only 40% of people pass the first and then only half of them survive the second, or something like that. In other words, witchers have gone through a *lot*.

Maybe that isn't a scar on the assassin, maybe just a birth mark or some-such.

Too bad, all this gritty realism like scars takes away from the "Alice in Medieval Europe Wonderland" feeling I got in oblivion and hope to get in F3, when will these upstart indie developers get a grip on what gamers really want, where's the Yellow Brick Road. :p

I should clarify, sorry. I haven't actually watched this video, so the assassin or whoever may indeed have a scar. I'm just saying they aren't as common as some of the videos might make it seem.

40% is much to many :), I'd say 20% or even less(I dont remember exact numbers). As you can see in trailer witchers can use various strong and poisonous potions. For a normal person they would have been deadly, but for witchers they are not, because they where given those potions when they were small and always only few from a dozen survived.

As for the assassin attitude thowards Witcher. You must know that witchers are despised by other humans. They are mutants, they are not a humans anymore. So they are treated with suspicion and fear. And in Sapkowski's world if you are different from others then you must expect cold(like iron) welcome:) .

My question is how obvious is it that The Witcher isn't human? Everyone immediately calls him a "Freak." But why? Does no one else in the world have white hair? I noticed in some screenshots or vids somewhere that he has cat eyes, but I didn't think they were like that permanently. If they are, then I just answered my own question. Does anyone know if they are always like that?

Geralt has got cat-like eyes, so, it is quite obvious that he looks alien to genuine human-being.

I haven't read any of Sapkowski's works but if the theme is the most ugliest monsters exist inside of humanity, then, it would work for me. I hope that the defects in dialogs would remains only in superficial level but I cannot but wonder why CD projeckt needed to make a similar mistakes with some Russian products when they reckon that the content is so important. I guess I have to wait for reviews at least.

good amount of choice in the dialog tree…very atmospheric environment… animation a bit stiff in dialog scenes.

Impossible to tell from a single video, of course -- but I did get the impression that the bandit boss was ready to hire Geralt -- "I could use someone like you for wet-work" -- but Geralt chose not to pursue that line.

If so, that would be a very genuine choice -- just as genuine, if not more so, than the possibility to resolve the situation without fighting by having invested points in persuasion skills.