The Witcher - Enhanced Edition Live!

I sympathize Dez. I also found the old Leo to be better. And despite the fact that Triss is still the same voice actress, she has lost a lot in terms of delivery. The scene in the upper bedroom when she is describing a dream and hearing Lambert say "Don't go dying on me, Merigold" used to be colorful and comical to hear her imitate Lambert's sarcastic tone. The re-recorded version has absolutely no personality, to the extent that the meaning is largely lost.

Imho the EE has improve dialogue 110%, but the voice acting has largely digressed. What a shame.

I do appreciate the small additional improvements, such as the inventory system, the improved combat responsiveness, and the additional narrative cutscenes, such as the transition from the prologue to chapter 1. They really flesh out the game more and give a sense of location.

You mean the voice acting is even worse now?!?

Yes, bad as I hate to admit it. Keep in mind I am one of those who thought the voice acting was pretty decent from the get go. Everyone has their own standards I guess, but I felt it was on equal level with the average game if not better. But now, it's weird - it's like the same actors came in and completely forgot what was going on in the scene and were provided no direction to boot.

I'm 3/4 through with the Vizima Outskirts section and have yet to encounter an 'awkward' dialogue that felt incomplete or didn't make sense. They did a tremendous job there, much more intellectual than the average game, but the voice-overs were better before.

I also don't see an improvement in body movements and gestures. The characters seem even less mobile than before, which strikes me as odd, as I thought most peoples' complaint was the stiff awkward movements.

All things considered, if you enjoyed the game before, you will appreciate a lot of welcome improvements (Load times are like lightening compared to before), but if you were a hater to begin with, the EE probably won't change your mind. It delivers in most of the ways they promised, but I am pretty underwhelmed by the character 'improvements.'

Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
Yes, …

sadly, qft

Reminds me of Beyond Divinity …

I playing it in Polish, which rules. I understand enough Western Slavic to catch parts of it, and the English subtitles mean that it wouldn't matter even if I didn't. The voice acting is clearly better than in English, even if it does occasionally get a bit wooden too.

Playing the french version personally and found the initial voice acting pretty good.

For the EE… well, I have yet to try it. Activision(if I remember well) had a problem with its canadian manuals and they didnt print the key code. There's a long thread about it on the official forum. Doesnt matter to play the game but it's necessary to register the game… and registering the game is necessary to install the EE. Wrote a mail to their support service last sunday but got no answer so far. *sigh*

Amazon.co.uk has an excellent deal for witcher EE - just £17.99 / €23. Cant go any lower than that for new games unless they start giving them out for free. You can also pick the first witcher novel collection "the last wish" for 7 euros.

Okay, yeah, seriously … time to start a petition for CDProjekt to put the old VO's back in or re-do them again (like that would happen).

Are we just remembering it wrong? Maybe it gets better later in the game than we remember.

It's really dull now.

I switched to the Russian VO's, and they're pretty good, almost as good as the Polish. I've been traveling to Russia lately on business, and my Russian is awfully rusty, so I figure this way this counts as language lessons. Heh.

Atmosphere-wise, the Polish and Russian VO's fit the game better than the American-accented English IMO, although Polish is clearly the best -- "Pan Chivay" just has a better ring to it than "Gospodin Chivay," let alone "Mr. Chivay." I think "Herr Chivay" would work well too, whereas "Monsieur Chivay…" uh, I'm not sure about that…

1UP review praises the EE ability to mix speech and subs:

I'm not gonna lie: I like anime. And when I watch anime, I watch it with the original Japanese voice actors, in the original language. Why? Because the American voice actors typically suck like a hole in the fuselage of a 747 at 50,000 feet. And, as we all know, the same is oh-so true of videogames.

Thus, we must offer many blessings upon CD Projekt for the tweaks they've made to the Enhanced Edition of their debut role-playing game, The Witcher -- the best of which is the ability to mix and match voice and subtitle languages. I went with the original Polish voices with English subs, but you can choose French with Spanish, Czech with Czech, or whatever strikes your bilingual fancy. This little tweak alone does wonders to ameliorate (or at least mask) the bad acting and writing in the original version, and it represents a stroke of simple genius that all overseas game companies should consider (I'm looking at you, Japan).
http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3170100

I think Ill try the different voices too if they are really noticeable better (or in the least leave more room for imagination).

I remember playing Gothic II Night of the Raven with original German voices and English subtitles. (That was the only option for a long time) It was quite enjoyable! I don't know why I didn't think of doing that for TW. Is it too late? I probably have to reinstall the game, huh?

Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
I remember playing Gothic II Night of the Raven with original German voices and English subtitles. (That was the only option for a long time) It was quite enjoyable! I don't know why I didn't think of doing that for TW. Is it too late? I probably have to reinstall the game, huh?

The way I understood the instructions, you can just download a the language pack and install it on top of your enhanced edition.