RPGWatch Feature: The Witcher Review
 

It's taken us a little while but we finally have our review of The Witcher up. This time, Prime Junta joins us as a guest writer, taking us on a journey through his unusual perspective:
Read it all here.
More information.

And you guys called us unabashed fans? :lol:

Great review, but one key thing I don't like…

This is wrong. They are perfectly capable of fitting this fact into their review, it's just that they don't want to. They don't want to because the people reading their reviews don't want to read about it and might not actually notice it when playing the game. These reviewers know their audience, and they know that for their audience this is an 8-out-of-10 game, not a game which you can only describe by rambling on about philosophical underpinnings of game design or waxing poetic about the current state of game design and the way this game kicks it in the nuts.

This review is definitely a Watch-specific review, and that's good, that's what you're writing it for, but it's kind of weak to then switch into a mode of somewhat looking down on other reviewers

unless I misread that bit

PS: all the last times this kind of game happened it was flash-in-the-pan followed by another period of steady decline of the genre. Still, as I've been saying for some time, Europe holds the future of RPGs, and any kind of mildly intelligent non-casual gaming

Wow, this game does indeed sound awesome. I must admit I stopped playing after I was forced to go hack-and-slashing in some caves and sewers in order to get some foozles to open a wizard's tower. Not very involving stuff, though now I'll try to slog through and get to the juicy stuff you mention in the review.

That's a valid point--for a great many readers traveling the info superhighway reading game reviews, you do need to present a case they can easily digest, and an 8/10 score is a reasonable course. I don't think the point was so much to blame the reviewer as to differentiate the game from one that's easily and completely summed up that way--but hell I don't know. I could have misread that part too.

The flash-in-the-pan concept doesn't worry me so much --the genre spins up and down on a spiral it seems--but I do worry about the challenge CDProjekt now faces to live up to what they've already done. Hopefully they won't burn out like sixties rockstars and they have a plan, because whatever they do next is going to be measured against this one.

Edit: Thanks for saying "unabashed fans" instead of fanbois. That was very civilized of you. :)

I haven't played The Witcher yet (my computer isn't good enough), but as a fan of Sapkowski's Witcher books (which I recommend to everyone!), the one thing that bothers me about this game is its cliched starting point - you wake up with amnesia after having seemingly died. I actually hope they explain it in some way with a major twist in an add-on or sequel.

Good work, Prime Junta and all involved. :)

I agree, at the very least a milestone in gaming history and certainly a rare gem.

It's funny how people see things differently. This isn't the high point of the game but I remember the sewer in Chapter 2 as…four or five short intersecting corridors? And there is one short cave (I guess you could add the cemetery)?

Dogar, I highly suggest you wait one week for the patch as it sounds like it will address some of the frustrating parts. :)

Great Job Prime Junta and all involved! :)

I totally agree with the reviewer(s). Witcher is like a breath of fresh air..one of the best games I've played.

Yeah, by saying "caves and sewers" I was just sorta lumping together all the simple hack and slashy parts of the chapter. Though the sewers are actually fairly large, including the cult hideout.

Greater than the sum of its parts is exactly the way I described it, as Corwin did.

When you take it apart, piece by piece, it doesn't seem like there's a great game in there. When it's put together it works very well, especially in the atmosphere department.

I'm usually not a big fan of hack n' slash. Oblivion's combat bored me within an hour or so, but The Witcher's combat never became so tedious that I felt I needed a break from it. It requires your attention often enough so that your eyes don't glaze over as you click away.

Thanks for a review that probed the deeper meanings behind the game design, PJ. Good job.

Having played through chapters one and two, I can tell that this is a gem of a game, and it's going to be one of my all time favorites. However, I have shelved it for the time being. The translation is poor - there are times when the game is incoherent. I can fill in the blanks for myself (context is a wonderful thing) and in soem ways, it is a good thing- sort of like how books don't have pictures so you have to imagine it for yourself.

The reason I've put it aside is the combination of all the running around, the load times, and most annoying of all, the constant auto-saving. You often have to pop into someone's house to report something to move a quest along. What should take 20-30 seconds in total ends up taking several minutes. A near instant load on the way into the house, but then a 30 second auto-save, followed by five lines of dialouge, which triggers another auto-save on the way out. The load times aren't too bad if you fiddle things around, do a proper defrag (that is - make sure you actually defrag your page file, simply having Windows defrag the drive with your paging flie(s) will not result in a defragged page file) reduce texture quality etc - I can load the big areas in 10-15 seconds usually, which is not a big deal.

Anyways, I've returned to dopamine gaming in its purest form for the time being - World of Warcraft. That game gets me high like no other. It's great, because it completely satisfies my dopamine gaming needs.

If you want to defrag your page file, you can do it by following these steps:
1. delete your page file and create a new one on another drive
2. restart (Windows will only change your page file on restart)
3. defrag the drive that you originally had your page file on
4. move your page file back to the original drive
5. restart again

If you don't have two hard drives, or don't have your one hard drive in partitions, you can get special defragging apps that will defrag your page file.

Excellent (and very entertaining) review Prime Junta :)

I too have to agree with some of the posters above that I cant see the Witcher
starting a trend of new games of this scope and quality. Even if it manages to
prove that games like this are not a niche afair sales wise (which I believe its
in the process of doing ?).

I am more interested in seeing CD Project trying to equal or top their
achievement in an addon or sequel by keeping the same design philosophy
and learning from the (few) mistakes they did as a startup studio (and hopefully
choose a better partner for the localization/international distribution).

For now I'll bask in my fond memories of the game untill 1.2 comes out and its
time for my second playthrough…

Very good review - eloquently written. I agree that The Witcher is more than the sum of it's parts, but the bits and pieces of game design aren't so bad either.
Let's hope CD Project continues to produce high quality games and if they are successful other game developers will follow automatically and copy them. :)

I agree with an earlier comment. I'm through probably about half of the game and am enjoying it quite a bit but there are two moderate-sized negatives which have been mentioned by many:

1) load and autosave frequency -- it hurts my ability to become immersed when I'm so frequently just waiting, the times aren't that long but the autosave often doubles the time to load an area and is unnecessary considering that I manually save anyway

2) non-sequiter conversations (probably due to translation) -- some conversations are just baffling to me and even when I can determine what's supposed to be going on the wording takes me away from immersion

I'm going to keep playing, though, instead of waiting for a patch. I doubt that a patch can fix the conversations as there's so many of them and I can deal with the load times.

In any case it's a very enjoyable game (so far).

Well written review. Hope it isn't Prime Juntas last appereans as a reviewer.

I put The Witcher on hold due to work related stuff. And then i heard of a patch that was focusing on the load times. (i don't think it will be much better, but i will wait for it to arrive - not to be negative, just to not have my hopes up! :) )

Beeing in chapter 3, after the first chapter slow, ordinary start, flung into chapter 2s opening, and immiediatly starting to love it. The presence of a living world. It really captivated me. And as PJ and everybody else wrote. The witcher is not the sum of its part its more like the product.

And what brother none wrote above about the scoring, i must say that the review i seek everywhere is reviews that let me read between the lines. Just focusing on parts on techincal, gameplay mechanics and then slap a grade on it, just don't make me read the reviews. I must be able to form my opinions.

Yet again. I prefer 8 hour games with focused story line (COD4 - ahh) and i only leave those games for games like this. Focused, still opened, with a world i just can do "just another quest" and then stop - get back - do another, and never loose track of the game, the setting or my own gaming experience.

As i wrote above. Well written. And i guess the reviewers view of the game is spot on with my own, helps me to like it. :)

As always.

OK OK OK.

Buying it this weeekend ='.'=

I could resist the Bioshock juggernaut, but this one's hitting me where it counts.

Here I was, thinking I was being controversial. Damn. Thanks for the praise, folks.

@BN: you're right, that paragraph does come down as condescending. However, I can only judge game reviewers by the reviews they write, and I have seen no mainstream review, even a positive one, that goes beyond the "blender or TV" approach to this game. Sure, it could be that the reviewers could but don't want to, or their editors won't let them, but I can't know that, can I?

Therefore, I stand by my observation: most game reviewers miss the point of a game like The Witcher because they're not capable -- for whatever reason -- of properly addressing what the game is actually "about."

You cought the spirit of the game - I rarely read such deep reviews. Too many reviewrs focus only how many camera angles I have and sum up games: graphic 9/10 and music 9/10 - and I add in mind: pleasure from the game 3/10 ;).

Some do, sure.

But for others the logic is different. These aren't stupid guys, Jeff Green mentioned it as a GotY candidate some time back, often the reviewers themselves can see it for what it is.

But how many of the people that grew up with Diablo, Oblivion and WoW as their main RPG experiences do you expect to "get" this?

The reviewers don't have to write what the game is about because when their readers play through the game they won't get what it is "about". They'll just see another RPG with action-y gameplay, great setting and some annoying flaws, an 8/10 game. I'd say it's unfair to the reviewers to just assume they can't see it's more than that, considering they're writing for people who simply wouldn't "get" it even if they were told.

To pick a nit, I didn't actually say they didn't get it. I said they're not capable of fitting it into their review-writing conceptual framework. You're doing a pretty good job of explaining why the conceptual framework is what it is.

But you're right, I should've rephrased that to be less condescending.

Semantics.. I'm with PJ though. I think.

What it boils down to, for me, is along the lines of "Hollywood" vs. "Independent" movies. Or "A vs. B" movies. Superficial glamor vs. deeper grittiness. Elder Scrolls vs. Gothic. :p

Most reviewers only evaluate the "standard" quality of a game (read: score = polish + instant fun - bugs) rather than it's meaningfulness or for lack of a better term, its "classic-factor" (score = fun + "aboutness" in PJs terms + special sauce). In the latter equation, polish, instant fun and bugs are negligible.

The thing is, most people probably only care about the standard quality. To take a movie example again, I found Waterworld (imdb rating: 5.5) to be very enjoyable, because it was as far as I'm concerned… "about" something. Others obviously disagree. Other hollywood movies are usually well made but ultimately ordinary, in my opinion.

In the end, I'm not sure how I would change something about the way reviews are made or if I'd change something at all. I would, however, like there to be "about" scores as well. The inherent problem is that it's not really a tangible quality…

… well, and the holy grail are, of course, games that are exceptional on all fronts.

Review got some notice on the offical site:

http://www.thewitcher.com/community/en/

Great game no real doubt about it - hope they can spend a little more money on the english voice acting in their next game. The delivery is a little broken in places and probably one of the things that stops them getting 9's on the major sites.

About translation
 

I liked the review very much!

Some of you complain about the bad translation and incohereces in the game. This game was made in Poland, so the source language was Polish. I haven't played the English version, but after playing the original I can say that translating this gme, full of texts that have Polish culture background, must have been a real challenge. So, what's the conclusion? Hope the translators will do a better job next time (with the add-on, or the next part) or… as many Poles like English versions of games (meaning is sometimes lost in translation) - "just" learn Polish language, not an easy one ;).

PS. And I highly recommend Sapkowski's books about the Witcher! Esepcially to those who plaed the game! If you loved the game, you'll definitely love the books.

Playing the french version and it seems fine.

Might be just the english version or just havent spotted what these people talk about.

I suspect the main problem with the translation was the budget Atari wanted to allocate. ;)

I think I can calm any fears about future titles from CDP: if these guys have learned anything with The Witcher, it's what to focus on fixing in any future projects (expansions, sequels, totally separate titles, whatever). I think Witcher proved they have a great grasp of what makes a great RPG, and now they have overwhelming amounts of feedback about what doesn't quite work. I'm already giddy thinking about a game with all of the positive elements of The Witcher, minus load times and crashes, with better inventory management, more consistent dialogue and VO… and who knows what else they could jam in there.

Enjoyable read, and a review I entirely agree with. Top stuff.

Thanks Tom. I certainly didn't mean to be negative earlier--CDProjekt Red has my total respect for what they've done. It's obvious that they are perfectionists and craftsmen who set themselves a high standard. It's just hard for anyone sometimes to work under the kind of pressure and expectations of the public that a follow-up to something as big as this game can generate.

I think it's that as an rpg gamer, I've seen so many companies that produced landmark rpgs fall by the way--Troika, Sir Tech and so forth. You get paranoid.
The difference is, of course, that the world of gaming has evolved since those days, and hopefully artists with vision in gaming now also realize they need to have those with some business sense around as well to survive.

But I agree, they will also have the opportunity to exceed what they've already done--hard as that is to imagine, and I am already looking forward to it. :)

Not that I'm a fan or anything. ;)

Yeah I hear that. It's still tremendously difficult for independent developers to make an impact on the industry and continue to do so for an extended period of time. You constantly have to have at least two projects in development, meaning a bigger team and more money spent. Where CDP has an advantage over those companies, though, is that they have the publishing business to fall back on. It provides a steady revenue stream, meaning that CDP can actually take their time with projects, instead of being under forced timelines.

And I have to say it, despite any niggles some people have about the voice acting 'cuts', Atari did at least let them develop the game their way - it must have been quite a risk, especially with all the 'mature' stuff.

Most of the game was developed before they signed a publishing agreement with Atari - CD Projekt is not just a small development house, but the largest game publisher in Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, so the game was mostly self-funded.

kalniel, atari wasn't involved in the decision making project, iirc atari was signed as a publisher in the last year of development. As Tom mentioned them being independent, with some cash flow they worked at least 3 years publisher free, again if memory servers. :)

In regards to the quality of other reviews I have to agree with PJ and BN, thing is all of us are at least moderate RPG fans and many of us are nuts about them, so you can't expect everyone to be able to appreciate the finer points of a classic RPG.
It's like taking someone whom doesn't care about musicals to Les Miserables or Sound of Music, it's just about different tastes, different feelings and different activators of endorphins and there is room for everyone at the table. :)

Great points … I look forward to what they do next!

Great review. You hit the nail on the head as was said before. And the main game site is linking you. :highfive: Grats!

I got the feeling while playing that the first opening battle and the outskirt villiage stuff was merely a way to reorientate the player to not only the game basics, character build ect., but also to put you in a mind set that would make you notice the clues you needed for the main story. So don't give up until you reach chapter 2.
I don't think the real game shines til then. ;)

The best review I have read in a long time, very well written and answering precisely the right questions for me without spoiling too much of the story.

(The collector's edition is still standing unopened in my shelf due to a lack of spare time on my part. Now I am looking forward to playing it even more!)

Really nice review, but I would like to react to some things mentioned above about female characters in the game. I really find Triss and Shani quite attractive (I think this is not only my point of view) and also close to their description in the books. For Triss her sex appeal is really an essential tool for manipulation of others (e.g.: sorceresses invest about half of their magical skills into development of new cosmetics) and Shani can't be older than 30, since she was just a student of medicine some 6-7 years ago (she was really young when participating in the battle of Brenna).

I agree with this. I read a BioShock review over at gamecritics.com awhile ago. The writer praised the game for its underlying Ayn Rand objectivst philosophy but called the game not revolutionary or innovative enough (which I agree). It was probably the best and the most objective BioShock review I've read. But most of the readers dismissed the review as "dumb" or "the worst ever" just because the writer slapped an 80% score.

Anyways, It's good to have a game like The Witcher (along side with BioShock and Mask of the Betrayer). I noticed that the long loading times have garnered complaints, and some have even completely stopped playing due to it. Yes, it is long but the story and the gameplay kinda outweighed it for me. And since I've been playing the game non-stop, the loading times is only way for me to get a shut-eye.

Also, I'm new here…and it's good to be here. Been playing CRPGs since the late 90s but I only discovered RPG Watch just today. I can't believe it.

Well, RPG Watch isn't that old of a site - it's only about a year old.