The Witcher - "Making of" Day 3 & First Reviews

Day 3 of The Witcher's "Making of" series of videos is up at GameTrailers:

Explore the art of The Witcher in today’s “Making of” video at GameTrailes. Developers speak on the game graphics engine and the process of main character creation. You’ll also see how the game world looks and how it was designed. Find out about the idea behind the artistic concept and how it was transferred into a 3D environment.

…and the official site has posted news of the first European reviews:

European games magazines and websites begin to publish first reviews of The Witcher, and so far reviewers reactions are nothing short of delightful. Two largest and very strict in their opinions French magazines – PC JEUX and Joystick gave The Witcher 90% and 9/10 as well as awards. The biggest norwegian game website X6 rated The Witcher even higher - for maximum 6/6. It is basically the beginning, and we believe it will be even better!
* Joystick review 9/10 + Megastar award
“Forget everything you know about RPG’s. Intense and deep…The Witcher is the new reference for RPG’s”
* PC Jeux review 90% ‘Hit PC Jeux’ award
* X6 (x6.no) 6/6
“The Witcher sets a new standard and is a fresh wind in a genre that has been still for many years when it comes to development.”

Thanks MikeZZ, who also sent this in.
More information.

Sweet! Love to see something positive about a PC only game once and awhile.

I hope witcher 2 wont be consolized too much.

Another year? PC's will be pretty far ahead by then. The 360 will be dusted soon and the PS3 probably will have lost all support.

Does the game have all voice dialogue or does it include text-only too? Just wondering.

EDIT:
Apparently it has 100% voice dialogue:

Or maybe it's because you just have to admire a game that so thoroughly knows what it is, and isn't afraid of playing it all up to gloriously overblown effect. Sure, the 100% voice-acted dialogue is uneven, and at times badly written, but how can you not dig a line like, "Finally! This place makes my flesh crawl… Did you bring wine? Thanks, I'm not scared now."

For long there has been discussion on the major drawbacks of all voice dialogue (i.e fallout/oblivion). I guess witcher isnt that perfect after all.

I thought I read somewhere that you could enable text so you can click through dialog, I'll probably only enable that feature for the second play through though.

You can interrupt the dialogue by clicking. Personally, I'm quite happy with partial voiceovers but you won't get too many of those for games that aspire to be AAA titles, because the broader market doesn't find it "cinematic".

Hm… the complete voiceovers in the Gothic games took a big part in making the overall atmosphere so good (at least in the original german version ; - ).

it also contributed much to the atmosphere in the english version: remember Mud or diego, or the lonbg talk with Lee or the first time you speak with xardas?

GameStar gave it 73%.

Originally Posted by Gorath
GameStar gave it 73%.

Could you Gorath translate for those non-german what they liked and what they didnt like in the game?

Originally Posted by nessosin
Could you Gorath translate for those non-german what they liked and what they didnt like in the game?

There were few things that lowered the score considerably:

"balance" 4/10
"atmosphere" 7/10
"Operation" 5/19

EVALUATION
Diagram pretty architecture
beautiful light effects, day night changes
Animations
exchangeable interiors
Nose
8/10
Sound good speakers
tendencyful music
atmospheric effects
no Surround sound
not lip-synchronously
8/10
Balance three degrees of difficulty
Charm and Alchemie unnecessarily
Group style too powerfully
strange cube AI
4/10
Atmosphere alive play world
often illogically
misleading translation
arbitrary level delimitations
Nose
7/10
Operation two control modes…
… however none perfectly
complicated interface
kleinteiliges inventory
Load times
5/10
Extent long play time
in great quantities orders
Repetitions of level
always-same character models
badly play world limited
8/10
Quest/Handlung hid tasks
multipart Quests
exciting basic action
Decisions and consequences
partly konfus
9/10
Character system numerous talents
Specialization possible
regular of ascents
Effects not always clearly
8/10
Combat system Tactics necessarily
good mixture from thinking and Action
hakelig
no remote fight
only five charms
8/10
Items spassige Alchemie
massively added
Weapons improvable
few articles of equipment
8/10

Thx zakhal!

Its just a rough babelfish translation. You can translate the entire review with it:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Just stick the http address into the babel and it does all the work.

Originally Posted by zakhal
Its just a rough babelfish translation. You can translate the entire review with it:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Just stick the http address into the babel and it does all the work.

Yeah, you probably need to replace all 'noses' with 'bugs'

I wonder if the review version was patched. There was a patch mentioned somwhere just yesterday.

Originally Posted by zakhal
I wonder if the review version was patched. There was a patch mentioned somwhere just yesterday.

I wont be betting my head on it, but from what I know patch should be online tomorrow.

I have received my copy of Witcher on Monday and I am having a good time and I am not forcing myself to play what was the case with NWN2 (to a lesser extent) or Gothic 3 (wasted time).

f anyone has questions please ask them and I will give my best to provide an accurate response. But take into consideration that I am just few hours in to the game so far.

Originally Posted by Gorath
GameStar gave it 73%.

How much GameStar gave to Borelivion? If it would be more than 70% we have nothing to talk about here…

Gamer.no, one of the biggest sites in Norway also has a review out. They gave it 7/10, and said it was a great roleplaying experience, if somewhat unstructured (questwise; sometimes you lose quests because you progress the game. Not always easy to know in which order to do things to get it all done). Also confirmed that the game is very large, and were talking about 100+ hours of playtime.