Mortismal Gaming looks back at the Witcher: Enhanced Edition:

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition - Retrospective Review (2023)

Eurogamer has asked the question of Doug Cockle, voice of the Witcher, about whether or not the voice acting for the Witcher 1 Remake will be recast.

Cockle, remember, is the voice of Geralt in every main Witcher game. It's him you hear in The Witcher 1. So if CDPR wants to re-record or expand that performance, it's Cockle they will need to call.

"I'd be there in an instant," Cockle tells me, if CDPR did phone, but it hasn't rung yet.

"I know as much as you do about this at the moment," he says. "All I know is that CD Projekt Red has announced that they're going to remake Witcher 1 in Unreal [Engine] 5, and that's what I know. So I don't know if they're going to bring me back in to do re-recording of the dialogue, I don't know if they're going to use dialogue from Witcher 1 as it exists. I don't know."

But the more we talk about remake, and what things were like when he recorded The Witcher 1, the more apparent it becomes how much things have moved on since then. And the more convinced I am that re-recording the performances is precisely what CDPR will do.

There are a few reasons why.

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The Witcher will get an Unreal 5 remake:

Twitter:

We're thrilled to reveal that, together with @Fools_Theory, we're working on remaking The Witcher using Unreal Engine 5 (codename: Canis Majoris)! 

We want to do this right, so please be patient - it's gonna be a while until we can share more details. 

The Witcher Remake is in development!

We are thrilled to announce that The Witcher Remake is being worked on! That's right, the game that started it all is being rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5. 

The game is currently in the early stages of development at the Polish studio Fool’s Theory, where veteran Witcher series staff are involved. We, as CD PROJEKT RED, are providing full creative supervision. 

The Witcher Remake is what you might know by the codename “Canis Majoris”. It’s still early and we want to ensure that the game is created with the utmost care and attention to detail, therefore, while we’re excited to share the news with you, we want to ask you for patience as it will be a while until we start talking about this project in detail.

“The Witcher is where it all started for us, for CD PROJEKT RED. It was the first game we made, ever, and it was a big moment for us then. Going back to this place and remaking the game for the next generation of gamers to experience it feels just as big, if not bigger,” said Adam Badowski, Head of Studio, CD PROJEKT RED. “Collaborating with Fool’s Theory on the project is just as exciting, as some of the people there have been previously involved in The Witcher games. They know the source material well, they know how much gamers have been looking forward to seeing the remake happen, and they know how to make incredible and ambitious games. And although it will take some time before we’re ready to share more about and from the game, I know it’ll be worth the wait.”

Thanks Couchpotato!

PCGamesN asks what if CD Projekt RED remade The Witcher and what would it look like?

There’s also the game world. TW1 is far more like TW2 in that it doesn’t feature a completely open world; instead, we’ve got world zones for each chapter and very little backtracking between them. It’s probably expecting too much to add a full open world, not to mention the restructuring of the story that would be required to support one, and in any case the zonal system works pretty well for the game’s opening and concluding chapters. You don’t need a lot more choice, but what if there were a compromise for TW1’s main chapters?

Vizima, across its different segments, hosts most of the game’s chapters. It’s the capital of Temeria – a fortified city nestled safely in the middle of a lake, and built on the foundations of an ancient elven settlement. This doesn’t really come across in the original because of its small-scale zones, lifeless streets, and unremarkable landscape.

But what if Vizima opened up into one huge world space, with buildings that reflect Temeria’s culture and history, and the opportunity to go dungeon-crawling through those elven ruins? What if we could travel through all of the city’s regions (including Old Vizima and and the swampy areas beyond) without being hamstrung by loading screens or story progress? What if Vizima’s simple streets were replaced by a labyrinthine network of passageways and shortcuts to explore, each packed with people from all walks of life?

[...]

GOG is offering The Witcher: Enhanced Edition free to all those who use their Galaxy launcher.

Starting today, all GOG GALAXY users can claim a FREE GOG copy of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut, if they decide to stay in touch with us.

How? Download or update your GOG GALAXY application. Go to the "Recent" view and check the banner at the top. Click the giveaway button if you agree to receive news, updates, and GOG offers. After a while, the game will show up in your games library inside the application and in your GOG.COM collection. 

@GamesIdealist A new book about the making of the Witcher games will be coming to Amazon.

Amazon has put up a listing for The Rise of The Witcher: A New RPG King, revealing a few details. The upcoming book provides a behind the scenes look at the development of The Witcher, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. If you are interested, you can pre-order the hardcover with this link from the online retailer; furthermore, you can also check out an image of the front cover directly below this paragraph.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Sick Critic looks back at The Witcher from 2007:

Throwback Review: The Witcher

The Witcher is an Action RPG developed by CD Projekt Red, released on PC in 2007. The beloved series has been played by many, but I wanted to explore CDPR’s first outing. I tend to find that the first game doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the other two, most likely because of its PC exclusivity.

Let it be known that I am playing The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, a version of the first game that came free to buyers of the original. The enhanced edition added a few improvements, most notably a plethora of new character animations and a larger variety of color to NPC clothing.

The Witcher is based on a series of fantasy novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. Sapkowski’s books are a household name in Poland, with some referring to him as Polish Tolkien. I am a big fan of The Witcher series as a whole, so I was excited to see how the first game holds up today. I was also looking forward to seeing how CDPR would adapt the rich world of The Witcher into a video game.

 
Adapting Sapkowski’s World

Unlike most book adaptations, The Witcher doesn’t directly re-tell the stories from the books, with the game’s narrative being set after their events. The game has you playing as Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher who has recently lost his memory. A Witcher, to put it briefly, is a mutant who kills monsters for money. At a young age, they are experimented on and are trained to kill. While amnesia in fiction is quite a tired trope, I feel that CDPR made a good decision having Geralt lose his memory; it allows the player to learn about the world along with him. There are a plethora of characters from Geralt’s past that book readers will recognize, a lot of the dialogue involves them re-introducing themselves to our forgetful Witcher.
[...]
The Witcher took me around 45 hours to complete. I did find that a low part of the game was Act IV, where the story slows down a little bit. However, I felt satisfied with the conclusion of the story and the narrative has a good level of escalation, especially in Act V which I won’t spoil. It’s mostly the games underwhelming main villain, needless running back and forth, and lack of inventory options that weigh this game down. While simple and satisfying. the combat could have more to it, and customization options are a little slim. For those reasons, I can’t wholeheartedly say this game is for everyone, but if you’re a fan of The Witcher series you should definitely check it out.

GOG is offering The Witcher: Enhanced Edition free to all who sign up with their newsletter.

FREE CARD KEG

Subscribe to the GOG.com newsletter to claim a free GWENT Card Keg and a copy of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition!

PCGamesN tells the story of CD Projekt Red and The Witcher:

How CD Projekt Red found the road that took them to The Witcher

Crossroads have been a fixture of The Witcher for ten years - present in quest names, implied by the signpost markers on Wild Hunt’s map, and of course, seen everywhere in the meandering highways of the games themselves. They have become the defining image of a Slavic fantasy tale in which adventure lies just down the road. A series which began, fittingly enough, with a fork in the path.

CD Projekt had existed since 1994, as a distributor importing CD-ROMs into Poland. Their job was to localise games like Baldur’s Gate, and it was not an easy one. The company was competing with the huge free market that held sway in Warsaw at the time - selling PC games to an audience unaccustomed to paying.
[...]

Thanks Farflame!

There is a documentary about The Witcher game in Polish but has English subtitles available.

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This video is in Polish but English subtitles are available. Use the ⚙️icon to enable. The original "Witcher" PC game was released ten years ago. We present our humble summary of Geralt's long journey from the pages of his books to computer screens. Today "The Witcher" is a world famous series. But at the time no one expected it to have such a great impact on the Polish video game market as well as worldwide.

The Witcher RPG series is 10 years old - Congratulations!

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Witcher

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Time flies when you’re in great company. Join Geralt of Rivia as he reminisces about the 10 years it’s been since you’ve first joined him on his adventures in The Witcher series of games.

@GamePressure The first Witcher could have been a hack n'slash game according to Sebastian Zielinski, former head of CD Projekt Red.

Here’s a chance we don’t get often. Thanks to Sebastian Zielinski we played the 15-year-old demo of The Witcher game by CD Projekt RED that… had nothing in common with the RPG title eventually released in 2007. Would this game become a hit as well?

That’s right, folks, here’s yet another article about the history of The Witcher series. Today’s menu, however, is different. We go back 15 years, to the very beginnings of CD Projekt RED – and no, it’s not about some long-forgotten interviews or dusty old discoveries from the ancient depths of the Internet. Today, we are dealing with living history. Courtesy of Sebastian Zielinski, former head of CDPR, we were given a playable demo version of the first Witcher game, created shortly after the dev team was conceived, but long before it became the biggest Polish game developer, and one of the most notable ones in the world.

And once again, no, this is not the same build our fellow editors from the Polish website tvgry.pl presented some time ago along with Ryszard “Ryslaw” Chojnowski (you can watch it here in Polish). What we got our hands on is the 2003 version. What’s so different about it compared to the title that hit the shelves four years later? Almost everything. And did it also have the potential to become a worldwide hit? Well, about that…

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[...]

Rjshae spotted on Blastr that Netflix will produce a Witcher TV series:

Netflix to adapt The Witcher as a TV series

Netflix has announced it is going to develop and produce an English-speaking drama series based on Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher fantasy book series.

[...]

Farflame spotted a trailer for the first fan made Witcher 3 movie on Gamepressure:

Fan-made Witcher movie with professional actors got its first trailer

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There is an interesting fan-made film project in the works set in the Witcher universe. The team managed to hire some professional actors for the roles of Dandelion, Triss Merigold and Lambert.

[...]

GamePressure takes a look back at the first Witcher game:

The first Witcher 10 years later - RPG retrospective

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Gwent isn't just a card game, according to Game Informer.  The upcoming game will feature strong elements of RPG adventure.

Despite offering an expansive open world filled with monsters, political rivalries, and loot, many players of 2015 game of the year The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt spend more time in taverns littered throughout Temeria playing a creative card game called Gwent. CD Projekt Red noticed the intense following the pub game got, so it took the natural next step in creating a standalone digital card game that doubles down on the formula.

Gwent: The Witcher Card Game plays much like the version that appeared in the original game, but with a few minor but important tweaks. First, you are allowed to mulligan up to three cards at the start of every competitive match. Second, your deck is limited to four heroes. From there, the developers rebalanced the action to make sure certain play styles (like aggressively relying on spies in the first round) aren't overpowered, while improving the visuals and user interface. Each card has a premium version that is animated and interactive, allowing the player to change the angle of the card with an analog stick or mouse to appreciate the model.  New abilities, cards, and mechanics are coming to Gwent as well. 

Competitive play is grouped by skill tiers that players can climb or descend based on their performance while in the groupings. Beyond head-to-head play, CD Projekt Red is fleshing out the experience with offline, 10-hour campaigns for each of the four decks (Northern Realms, Scoia'tel, Skellige, and Monsters) complete with top-down maps to explore and untold stories starring both new and well-known characters from the universe. The stories play out in fully voiced comic book style cutscenes. As with any Witcher game, choice and consequences play a role in the adventures.

In the demo we watched, Geralt is tagging along with a mercenary named Falibur and an elven guide named Milaen. The group is escorting a small girl named Torina who they find next to a slaughtered guard in a tavern. From here they set out in the open world, heading to an old elven ruin. Here the player can choose to explore or disregard the ruin. Exploration yields a new Gwent card called Scorch, which is an ancient elven recipe for a fire bomb. 

As the group approaches a town, the girl transforms into a demon named Zaphire. A Gwent battle ensues in which the player can test out the new card. As the battle plays out, characters placed on the board will react to certain situations with voiced dialogue. 

The depth of the Gwent experience for this standalone game is impressive for a free-to-play game. CD Projekt Red says it's still fine-tuning the microtransaction model, but stressed that they don't want it to turn into a grind fest for those who choose not to spend money. 

Gwent is scheduled to move into a closed beta for Xbox One and PC in September, with a PlayStation 4 version to come at a later date. To sign up for the beta head here.

Rumors abound this summer.  If this one is correct, a Witcher card game has been trademarked.

Website NerdLeaks has spotted a very interesting trademark and logo registration on the European Union Intellectual Property Office. Gwent: The Witcher Card Game might well be a standalone title based on the card minigame of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which many have clamored for since the game's release. Some more details on the trademark application:

The trademark was filled with class 9 and 41 (videogames, software, etc.) into the European Union Intellectual Property Office two days ago (June 6th), with what seems to be the official logo.

CD Projekt previously hinted to Eurogamer that they might announce something Witcher-related at E3, and this might very well be that announcement:

Under plans for 2016, CDPR mentioned, "A new type of video game format previously unexplored by the studio." That doesn't necessarily mean it's a game and doesn't necessarily mean it's coming out this year. But it could be both. When I asked Iwinski if it will be this thing at E3 he said, "We will see." When I asked if we'll find out what it is at E3 he said, "Well, hopefully." And when I asked if it had anything to do with The Witcher he said, "Time will tell."

I'm usually pretty cautious with trademark applications, but in this case I'd say all signs point to this being real. Still, you should assume this is unconfirmed until the game is announced, as per usual.

Geralt almost wasn't the Witcher's main protagonist, says Jakub Szamalek, senior writer for The Witcher 3.  The Examiner has more.

The Witcher has ended up being as successful as it has been due to the care and consideration CD Projekt RED has given the franchise every step of the way. Their priorities and choices have largely been based on whether or not gamers and fans of the series would approve, and that has turned out to serve them very well, especially when thinking about who the main protagonist of The Witcher 3 should be.

"One such option is to not use as protagonist Geralt. In the initial plans was Berengar, the witcher that guides you through the early stages of The Witcher, the main character. We tried to make it work but this choice, after all, nobody liked. There are many Witchers but only one is THE witcher. In our heads the saga of The Witcher has always been that of Geralt of Rivia, then we got to the point where we said 'ok, we will use Geralt,'" Jakub Szamalek, who is a senior writer on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, told Eurogamer.

It's difficult to imagine The Witcher starring anyone other than Geralt of Rivia, particularly when those who played the third iteration begin to think about it. This goes back to how closely CD Projekt RED knows what its fans want, as well as the things that might cause some disruption among them.

More information.

First a book, then an RPG and now a movie will be made:

Have you been enjoying The Witcher games and really wishing your non video game friends would get into it with you? That is about to get much easier.

Production on The Witcher movie is now moving forward, with Platige Films gaining an official partner in the Sean Daniel Company. SDC is known best for their work on The Mummy films. Word spread discreetly on a Witcher film last year when Platige’s creative director, Tomasz Baginski, revealed he was working on it in an interview. This seems to be the first time we are getting a formal English press release on the film.

The movie will be based on two short stories from The Last Wish, namely, The Witcher and Lesser Evil, and is intended to be an introduction to the Witcher universe. Of course, the Andrzej Sapkowski novels all this other media come from have become international bestsellers in their own right, often compared to Game of Thrones. [...]

Veteran Watcher Dark Savant spotted some interesting videos made by Ryslaw (=Ryszard Chojnowski ) about the beginnings of The Witcher:

The Witcher History #1 - First Demo from 2002:

The Witcher History #2 - E3 2004:

No, the gif below is not another Wild Hunt graphics downgrade, it's a prototype version of the original Witcher from 2002. Former project lead Ryszard Chojnowski has taken to YouTube about his time with the franchise in its early days.

Kotaku reports:

The demo was a point-and-click action game directly inspired by Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance,which itself was a riff on Diablo. CD Projekt RED was shopping this around to publishers, and hastily built their prototype using the engine for Mortyr, a World War II shooter from 1999.

The original plan was to have players create their own characters, rather than play as Geralt. Instead, Geralt would show up as an NPC for players to talk to and interact with.

GB Buford of Kotaku has posted a new article about The Witcher, and writes about how the games fourth act takes RPGs to the next Level. Here is a small sample of the article.

If you've played a role-playing game in the last several years, be it Mass Effect or The Elder Scrolls, chances are that most of the game involved people asking you to go places, bop things on the head, and return with items for a reward. Unless you've played The Witcher.

As The Witcher 3 starts catching more eyes, friends who haven't played the series inevitably end up asking me "should I play the first two games in the series?" Many people will recommend playing The Witcher 2, a great game with solid controls and a unique twist that effectively gives the player two games in one. While I'd agree with that, I'd also add that everyone should play the first game, because it is one of the best role-playing games of all time, maybe even better than The Witcher 2. It's a true RPG, one that focuses on choice and consequence, rather than character-builds or parties, and to that end, it's one of the finest examples of the genre… but there's a caveat.

In just about every conversation I've had regarding The Witcher, someone always admits to quitting, usually during the game's extensive opening swamp section. It's hard to blame them. That's where I originally quit, too.

The more I played, however, the more I found myself sucked in. Originally, I'd intended to ignore most of the side quests, but I soon found myself shopping by proxy for elves, brewing potions for bakers, giving gifts to people, making peace between races, and, yes, busting a few monster heads along the way.

The Witcher shows that there can be more to RPGs than just fighting people. When the third game comes out early next year, I'll be there, day one, all thanks to Act IV.

RPG Site posted an article were they ask for your opinion on The Witcher series.

If you weren't paying attention to our Twitter account this past week, you may have missed out on the fact that we have hired ourselves a new Video Editor, Justin. He has already built up quite the reputation over the years producing videos over a lot of different games and subject matter.

Today, he has posted a video covering The Witcher series, in which he is looking to finally jump into the series, but wants your thoughts and opinions on the manner. With that, you can either comment below after watching the embedded video or post on the video page. A lot of his videos will be posted to our channel first and foremost, so make sure to subscribe if you want to stay up to date with a lot of the great content coming your way.

Well this came as surprise to me did you know The Witcher once had two expansions being developed. It's no wonder they were canceled either based on this Eurogamer article.

That's right CD Project was almost bankrupt at one time. Anyway here are the expansion details. Feel free to discuss this in the comment section.

The Witcher: Scars of Betrayal

The Witcher: Scars of Betrayal is a canceled add-on for The Witcher. It was in development by Ossian Studios for some time in 2008 but was canceled due to issues on CD Projekt RED's end.

Very little is known about Scars of Betrayal. It took place in a troubled mountain village, with the kind of problem that only a Witcher can solve. The add-on was to shift the gameplay focus further to choices and outcomes.

The Witcher: Outcast

Outcast was going to be released as DLC in most countries and have a disc release in some countries, like Poland and Russia. It was in development from late 2007 until around mid-2008, when it was canceled by CD Projekt RED.

The story takes place in the early part of Geralt’s life, before he is established as a Witcher, during the reign of King Videmont of Aedirn (around 1190). It takes place in the Skellige Isles off the west coast, on an island ruled by jarl Harald. Many years ago, a monster attacked Harald’s pregnant wife Morganna. In return, Harald went out to slay the monster, with the help of the gnome Shiltzen. As payment, Shiltzen demanded Harald’s firstborn, but when Morganna gave birth, she bore twins. Seeing that the second child was monstrous, Harald gave that child to Shiltzen instead of the firstborn Astrid.

A man by the name of MrBtongue has posted a new youtube video as part of his Tasteful Understated Nerdrage video series. In his latest video he uses The Witcher as an example of Realism vs. Heroism.

Thanks go to RPG Codex as I never heard of his video series.

Hardcore Gamer has poted a new article that compares The Witcher and The Witcher 2. So which one is better I leave that up to you, or you could just read the article.

The two Witcher games from CD Projekt RED were some of the best role playing games of this past generation. Based on a Polish series of novels, the world of The Witcher presents a more mature and morally gray take on the traditional fantasy setting. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the most anticipated games of next year and based on trailers, it’s looking fantastic. Interestingly, The Witcher and The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings are both very similar and very different in some major ways, so let’s compare the two and see which is the better game.

Overclockers Club has posted a new review for the original Witcher, and as the name of the review implies it's five years late.

In 2007, the video-gaming world was introduced to Geralt the White Wolf by CD Projekt RED with its first game, The Witcher, which is based on the literary work of Andrzej Sapkowski. Since then the developers have released an Enhanced Edition of this game and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (plus an Enhanced Edition of it), with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt targeted for a 2014 release. As some gamers may only be discovering the series with the latest game, we are going to take a look at where it began.

Witchers are warriors who have undergone training and mutation to make them the most effective monster hunters possible, as they are the only defense humanity has against these monsters. Or at least they were, as new groups have formed to protect the people, supplementing and replacing the Witchers, whose numbers have been dwindling due to time and war. Sometimes though, it still takes a professional monster hunter to get the job done.

The Witcher is a role playing game filled with complex characters with secrets to hide and lies to share. Geralt, having lost his memory, is exposed to all of these anew as he struggles to recover that which was taken from him. Fortunately his friends have not forgotten him, so there are helping hands along the way.

The Witcher has an M rating for blood and gore, violence, nudity, strong sexual content, and strong language. Trust me, it has earned that rating, so if you should not be exposed to such content, you should probably not be reading this review.

If you have never played a Witcher title before, but are now interested in the franchise for any reason, is its origin story worth your time and money, or should you save both for something else? About time we find out.

A team of fans have released a short film based on The Witcher called "‘Following The White Wolf’.

"Following The White Wolf" project is a fans' thanks to Andrzej Sapkowski and CD Projekt RED for creating "The Witcher".

All material for "Following The White Wolf" movie was realized in one day of shooting. The realization was possible only thanks to the funds, passion of the authors and the engagement of everyone taking part in the project.

GameInformer has a new article listing the top ten games that have adapted from books. I wasn't sure if I wanted to post it but they mention The Witcher at spot #1.

The Witcher saga took root in the 1980s, when Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski penned “The Witcher” (Polish: Wiedźmin), his first short story starring Geralt of Rivia. Several short stories and five novels later, Sapkowski’s narrative finally made its way to the video game world in 2007. The author doesn’t consider CD Projekt Red’s RPG series to be canon, but virtual Geralt is still the stoic, Sign-wielding, badass mutant beast hunter that he always has been. 

2007’s The Witcher received mostly praise from video game critics, but it was The Witcher 2 that really put the franchise on the map outside of Poland. Assassins of Kings polished the best elements of The Witcher, like atmosphere and character development, and successfully introduced new ones, like additional weapon types and a more real-time approach to combat. Both games in the series, and likely The Witcher 3 when it comes out next year, turn staple RPG elements and traditional fantasy themes on their heads. Instead of drinking healing potions after a battle, players drink them beforehand as a form of planning. Rather than the wise, gentle-voiced elves we’ve come to expect, the Scoia'tael are tribal guerilla warriors. As fantastic as The Witcher series is, it’s a shame that Andrzej Sapkowski doesn’t play video games.

The Witcher site notes the Full Combat Rebalance Mod (original, not the sequel) has been updated:

Flash has just updated his Full Combat Rebalance MOD for the first Witcher. The update along with the complete list of changes can be downloaded from project’s official website, where you can find more information about the modification itself. Don’t forget to leave your feedback in the special thread on our forums and to check out the trailer for FCR. 

CDPR reminds us to head over to GOG and secure the free Witcher digital backup:

The Witcher Community Site is highlighting a new community mod for the first Witcher, titled Medical Problems 2 (you may remember the frst part back back in March 2010). Here's their description and the link:

Corylea, one of the most active members of our community, has recently released her new adventure for the first Witcher game. Titled “Medical Problems 2,” the adventure can be downloaded here. Reading the short summary attached to this adventure, we will find Geralt puzzled as Vesemir and Eskel get sick, and it is up to the White Wolf himself to find out what’s going on. The adventure has several different endings, depending on your choices of course.

Thanks, Cory.

Irian writes a frustrated email about the authentication servers for The Witcher 1 still being down despite promises to get them back up a couple of weeks back. This is preventing people who recently installed the game from updating the game and, Irian points out, is ironic given CD Projekt's stance on DRM. Thread on GOG, as an example.

Update:

It seems CD Projekt uploaded an updated The Witcher 1 patch 1.4 and successfully kept it a secret. Authentication is no longer necessary and the patching process works as advertised. Check the news discussion for more details.

Forum and game registration is still down, but since it's no longer mandatory it can be considered a minor problem.

With The Witcher 2 two weeks away, Rock, Paper, Shotgun looks back at the original game to examine How The Witcher Dealt With Choice (spoilers apply):

We need to begin with an example from the game. So let’s try this: You’re out at night, slaying monsters by the shore for a local merchant, when some elven guerrillas come up to you, asking about the shipment of goods – nearby goods – they were expecting from your temporary employer. They can’t risk being around for long, so they need you to make the decision of whether to take them at their word and let them haul away their goods, or tell them to bugger off.

Do you:

Let them have the goods, which are potentially weapons, and could very well help the guerrillas carry out acts of terrorism against the populace of Vizima?

Or

Inform them that you have no idea whether they own the goods or not, and they could very well be trying to steal them?

Consider that either decision has potentially grave ramifications. You don’t know what the goods are, but if they’re desirable for these freedom fighters, there’s a good chance they’re essential for their resistance. It could be food, meaning that they would starve without them, or it could be weapons, meaning they’d be poorly equipped and more likely to get killed if they don’t get them.

Eurogamer looks back at the first Witcher game in a retrospective article:

On returning to the game now, it's the stories within stories that impress most. Those narrative mini-arcs that show the game's tagline to be more than idle boast: "There is no good, no evil – Only decisions and consequences." There's the expected branching storyline, but with very little of the blatant good vs. evil choices that are so clearly signposted in other RPGs. As long as you choose the path that is best suited to how you're playing Geralt, rather than that which you estimate will net you the most loot, you're never made to feel that you've made 'wrong' choice.

GameFront has a small list of mods for The Witcher, most of which we've covered before.  Thatsaid, Roxtar's Extreme Immersion Mod is an interesting idea if you've already played the game through a few times:

The Witcher Extreme Immersion Mod is not for the faint of heart. Modder Roxtar stripped almost all of the HUD elements out leaving the player to rely on observations and wits alone. Geralt’s stance is the only indication of which fighting style he’s taking and your enemy’s wounds are the only health bar you get. For a more detailed description of The Witcher Extreme Immersion Mod, check out Roxtar’s post on The Witcher Enhanced Edition Forum.

The promo browser game Witcher: Versus is heading to iDevices, according to this PR we received:

Witcher2Game.com sent in their article about Must Have Mods for the first game.  Unfortunately, it's a very short list with only the Full Combat Rebalance we've covered before, Flash's Scabbard Mod and a Texture Mod - no story/quest mods.

Witcher2game.com writes in about their article about which version of The Witcher to play while you wait for TW2.  In case you were wondering:

Sometime after the Enhanced Edition was released and bemoaned by North American gamers the Director’s Cut found it’s way onto the internet. This, again, was the work of CD Projekt in response to fan demand and removed all of the North American specific censorship. This version is exactly the same as the European Enhanced Edition and can be brought either from Steam. Additionally, those who already own the North American Enhanced Edition can download the director’s cut patch from CD Projekt’s Witcher site for free!

The Witcher official website has been updated with this announcement. The Platinum Edition of the original the Witcher game can now be bought in Europe. The difference between this edition and the Enhanced edition? It includes the fan-made adventures and the 1.5 patch as well as all uncensored content. 

Details have emerged of a cancelled Addon for CD Projekt's The Witcher.  News originally broke via Unseen64 of The Witcher: Outcast, in development by roXidy (hit the link for lots of concept art).  You may know roXidy as the former DLA (Dragonlance Adventures) mod team for NWN and Steel_Wind, who posts on our forums.

GameBanshee goes a step further by coming up with an original design doc with quest flow charts, character summaries and so on.  Here's a snip showing the Act 1 outline:

Act I: Kaer Karreg, Lublow & Woodland:

Geralt begins the story recovering in the Sanctuary of Freyja in Lublow. Ylva the priestess tells him he is healed, and that jarl Harald, who employed him, can be found up at castle Karreg. Both Harald and Ylva will also point Geralt towards Ingrid, the pregnant woman that Geralt was trying to save in the opening cutscene. Ingrid confirms that she also saw the Masked Woman. As Ingrid begins to show signs of illness following the attack, Geralt tracks down another woman who was attacked many years ago by the beast. Her story is similar to Ingrid's, and she suggests that Ingrid may suffer the same fate as she did – to give birth to a monster. Ylva is unable to offer a cure for Ingrid, and in desperation, Ingrid and her husband beg Geralt to visit the Wise Woman in Han Cross. This opens Act II.

In parallel, Geralt investigates Lublow and its surroundings and takes on regular contracts. Astrid, Harald's daughter, fearing that her father will continue to blame the non-humans for the disappearances around Lublow, offers her help to Geralt, becoming available for several of the monster hunts as the game progresses.

Gisla, Lord Harald's second wife, also urges Geralt to find the monster and the Masked Woman he saw. The villagers confirm to Geralt that Gisla has hired Bounty Hunters to do the same task in the past, and Gisla confirms this, telling Geralt that the Bounty Hunters were killed or that one, a woman, disappeared. She asks Geralt to purchase swords quietly from the smith in Han Cross, in order to form a militia to defend Lublow from the beast. Geralt must be circumspect however; thralls are not entitled to bear arms, and Gisla would rather not have to explain herself to Harald until such an action has proven its worth.

The Witcher site is pointing out a new adventure mod called Medical Problems, hosted at ModDB.  Here's the description:

Description:

Shani needs help fighting an epidemic of a new, unknown sickness. But what could a monster slayer possibly do about a medical problem?

The game has several different possible endings, depending on which choices you make while playing. Three choices each have consequences, making eight different paths through the game, and which ending you get depends on the combination of choices.

Geralt has monsters to kill, human lives to save, a mystery to solve, and witcher contracts to fulfill. There are also some ladies to woo, though all but one of them are optional. :-)

Features:

* 12 quests (only 11 of which can be completed in any one game, since two of them are mutually exclusive)
* 45 NPC's, all of which have names and conversations of their own.
* 18 explorable areas plus three special areas, with 19 new loading screens
* 40 monsters to kill
* 6 sex cards to get, including one new one and 5 recolored ones
* Many, many recolors of clothes
  * Approximately three hours of gameplay

I'm a bit surprised we don't see more Witcher mods, but perhaps we're just not looking for them.  GameBanshee points out the v1.1 Final of the Full Combat Rebalance Mod, which sounds just the thing for a new play through.  Here's the description from Mod DB:

The Full Combat Rebalance mod was published on the 8th of July and it is, so far, the biggest modification created for The Witcher. The combat system basis has been rebuilt and it has been done single-handly by Andrzej "Flash" Kwiatkowski. The aim he was motivated by was maximizing the realism of the gameplay, this way making it more similar to the world created by Andrzej Sapkowski and maintaining the gameplay to the highest possible standard at the same time. The fights have became more brutal, they need more tactics and strategy, but on the other hand the combat system rules have become more logical. We warmly encourage you to test the modification on your own – and experience a completely new game!

Seems CD Projekt and TopWare read the same marketing manual, with a Witcher flavoured Advent Calendar contest also on offer at The Witcher site.  Prizes for this one are Witcher medallions and dice.

Shack News writes that Steam now sells The Witcher at a reduced price. This game is now digitally available in all regions of the world. Note that is the Enhanced Edition: Director's Cut version of the game.

The Witcher site has announced a Halloween pumpkin-carving contest, so if that sounds like your thing, head over for the details.

From The Witcher site comes news an Adventure Card Game - currently available in Polish - will soon be released in English and Spanish:

We are very happy to inform you that “The Witcher” card game – already known to Polish players – will soon be published in English and Spanish. The Spanish version will be available in August, and will be distributed by Gen X Games (http://www.genxgames.es). The English card game will premiere this Fall during Spiel’09 in Essen, Germany. You will be able to buy it through the KuŸnia Gier distribution network, which is the creator of the game. You'll find a list of places that stock their products here: http://kuzniagier.pl/whereToBuy.html and, as KuŸnia Gier promises, that list will soon be expanded with new entries!

It’s worth mentioning that there are intensive talks being held about translating the game into other languages. More information soon.

The headline is all you need to know.  Official PR for TW:EEDC follows:

DIRECTOR’S CUT OF THE WITCHER: ENHANCED EDITION NOW AVAILABLE IN NORTH AMERICA

 

Who:                Atari, Inc., one of the world’s most recognized videogame publishers, announced today that new content will be available for The Witcher: Enhanced Edition for Windows PC.

 

What:               The game as the developers, CD Projekt RED, intended with mature content only released outside of North America – until now! The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut is now available for download at www.atari.com and other major digital distribution outlets.  This new Director’s Cut content is available as both a patch for The Witcher: Enhanced Edition as well as a full game download.   

 

                        The Witcher, originally released October 2007, has won more than 100 awards and has sold more than 1.2 million copies worldwide. The Witcher: Enhanced Edition brought the game close to perfection, with more than 5000 lines of re-written and re-recoded dialogue, more than 200 new dialogue animations, a new character differentiation system for NPCs, an enhanced inventory with improved alchemy, reduced loading times, improved combat responsiveness and two new adventures. AND NOW, with the release of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut, the game is available in its entirety to North American audiences.

 

When:              The downloadable content is available starting today JULY 31, 2009

 

Where:             The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut game and patch are available at ATARI.com, Steam (steampowered.com), Impulse (impulsedriven.com) and Direct2Drive.  The patch is also available at TheWitcher.com.

 

Why:                Representing the pinnacle of storytelling in role-playing games, The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut shatters the line between good and evil in a world where moral ambiguity reigns. In a beautiful, rich game universe, the player takes on the role of renowned monster slayer, Geralt of Rivia, in an epic, action-packed narrative in which his decisions have a major impact on how the story plays out. The Witcher emphasizes story and character development in a vibrant world, while incorporating tactically-deep real-time combat like few games before it

CD Projekt has announced the release date for The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut:

The Witcher site has a FAQ on The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut, which should be available shortly.  Turns out the Director's Cut is simply a North American release that combines v1.5 and the original uncensored content.  Here we go:

• What is The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut?
  The Director’s Cut is the version of the game our developers originally intended for you to play. It is essentially the same game that gamers around the world have experienced – now available legitimately for the first time in North America. 
• Where will The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut be available?
  The Director’s Cut update will be available from TheWitcher.com and all applicable digital distributors in North America, including Steam, Impulse and Direct2Drive. We will announce the release date in the coming days, but as of that date, people who buy The Witcher: Enhanced Edition from digital distributors will be purchasing the Director’s Cut, as it will replace the existing Enhanced Edition on those sites.
• Will The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut obtained from digital distribution contain 1.5 patch features (i.e. additional adventures):
  Yes, Director’s Cut version of the game will have all features of patch 1.5.
• Do I need The Witcher: Enhanced Edition to get the Director’s Cut?
  If you want to just install the patch to get the Director’s Cut content, then you do need The Witcher: Enhanced Edition. If you’re just buying The Witcher for the first time (or feel like buying it again!) then you can just purchase the product via Steam, Impulse, Direct2Drive, etc. as they will offer the Director’s Cut as a full product already patched to the latest version. 
• I don’t live in North America or I imported a copy of the game from outside of North America. Should I get the Director’s Cut?You really already have the Director’s Cut if you have the international edition of the game and have installed the 1.5 patch! 
• What is the age rating of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut?
  The Director’s Cut has received an M rating from the ESRB, with Blood and Gore, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content and Violence.

The official site for CDProjekt's crpg The Witcher announces that the latest patch, v 1.5, is now available for download:

We are happy to inform that latest patch version for The Witcher is now available to download!

Here are the features of patch 1.5:

Modifications:
- copy securities (DRM) are removed
- playing the game no longer requires the game disc in the drive
- patch solves problems with EAX and blurred graphics

Additionally:
- 5 bonus adventures made by the Witcher community: ‘Deceits’, ‘Blight of the Bogs’, ‘Wraiths of Quiet Hamlet’, ‘The Wedding’, ‘Merry Witchmas’.

In order to install patch 1.5 correctly, original Witcher game upgraded to 1.4 (i.e. The Witcher: Enhanced Edition) should be installed.

You might also want to download the new game-difficulty modification, "Flash Mod", prepared by our community member Andrzej "Flash" Kwiatkowski. Now surivivng in the world of The Witcher will be much more challenging than ever before!

You can pick up the patch at the link above, and also at Action Trip, Worthplaying, and The Patches Scrolls.

CD Projekt sent out this PR announcing the DRM-free v1.5 Witcher patch for July 8th:

Patch 1.5 coming for download on July 8th!

Starting on the 8th of July, you’ll be able to download the next update for The Witcher, version 1.5.

The patch focuses mainly on removing troublesome DRM, allowing you to play the game without the disc, while providing additional hours of fun thanks to new adventures created by the fan community. Patch 1.5 is the next stage of The Witcher’s life, and is also a means of expressing our thanks to the modding community for their hard work on creating the adventures. The update will also be included in forthcoming The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut; more info on that product will be released shortly.

Patch 1.5 features:

Modifications:
- copy securities (DRM) are removed
- playing the game no longer requires the game disc in the drive
- patch solves problems with EAX and blurred graphics

Additionally:
- 5 bonus adventures made by the Witcher community: ‘Deceits’, ‘Blight of the Bogs’, ‘Wraiths of the Quiet Hamlet’, ‘Wedding’, ‘Merry Witchmas’.

In order to install patch 1.5 correctly, original Witcher game upgraded to 1.4 (enhanced edition) will be required.

The Witcher site is pointing out a new community adventure mod titled Entrapped:

Exhausted after a long journey through Temeria, the witcher arrives at a village which to be no different from any other in the region. All he wants is to spend a night in the nearby inn and set off in the morning… but suddenly he finds himself in serious danger. He’ll be trapped in the village and the way out won’t be easy...

Enjoy!

You can download the adventure here.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition version 1.5 will soon be released by Project Red. The new version will include all bonus content from The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and five additional fan-made adventures. Most importantly, The Witcher: Enhanced Edition 1.5 is completely DRM-free! Moreover, the 1.5 version will remove the disc check, allowing you to play the game without the DVD in the drive.

All available versions of the game will be upgraded to 1.5, including the forthcoming The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut for North American gamers.

As usual the patch containing the additional content will be available to download for free  for all registered The Witcher and The Witcher: Enhanced Edition owners!

Thanks ton_hur for letting us know.

We missed this interview with CD Projekt's Michal Kicinski last week at RPG Codex, which was written before the news of the cancelations broke.  The conversation covers some RPG staples, the successes and failures of The Witcher and hype:

In the gaming industry and the gaming press there's a noisy opinion that certain game mechanics and design aspect featured in more traditional RPGs (e. g. tactical turn based combat, isometric perspective, skill based gameplay) are things of the past, things that the evolution of gaming left behind. What's your take on that and how are chances we might ever see such a game from CD Projekt.

Hmmm... you probably won't see an absolutly classical RPG from CD Projekt. Designing The Witcher we discussed that repeatedly. We reached the conclusion that we want to keep close to the values of classical RPGs (a well developed plot, possibly realistic depiction of the world), but we shouldn't clutch outworn formulas. Instead, we wondered what could be refined and change in order to achieve the overriding aim, that is, immerse the player into the imaginary world and allow him to identify with the hero. That seems to be the essence of the problem. That how specific elements are realized is less important than if the way they work brings us closer to the superior aim.

An example (no necessarily the best) might be the real time combat system used in The Witcher vs. typical turn based combat. TB combat has one huge advantage: it gives a lot of tactical possibilities and the outcome depends entirely on intellectual effort. For a lot of players, and that's the drawback, it might look too statistical and play out too slowly though, which is far from realistic. When designing The Witcher we tried to merge tactical possibilities (preparing to fight, alchemy and the use of potions, choice of weapons and styles, use of magical signs, use of dodging moves and combos, pause) with a dynamic depiction of the whole process. I have to add that the more sophisticated tactictics are needed and more visible when playing on higher difficulty levels.

Thanks to that the combat system in The Witcher allows, despite its apparent simplicity, for a lot of tactical possibilities while at the same time being more dynamic and realistic in its presentation. More realistic because real fights take place in real time ;). Obviously we might not have managed to make combat as deep a TB system would have allowed, but that example illustrates a little bit our approach. It's more important to have realistic combat with tactical possibilities than a specific combat system.

I feel it's worthwhile to build on technological progress. Since the appearence of the first classical RPGs the possibilities to design games have evolved drastically. It's worthwhile to stay faithful to what's most important in in RPGs, but that doesn't mean that you have to stay away from refining the formula in order to make playing a role more realistic. For example in The Witcher lots of RPG mechanics are interwoven into the game's inside and the player doesn't even realize they exist, but thanks to that the world and the NPCs populating it are more believable.

Fantasy fiction site Fantasy Fan posts an article discussing the relationship of author Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher books to CDProjekt's cRPG, The Witcher:

 I can't stress enough how important it is to remember that the game was created based on the brilliant writing of Andrzej Sapkowski. The books are not mere extensions of the successful game drawing from its success. Remember, the books were first...

..The last concern I want to touch on in this article is the consistency between the game and books. I was worried that the Witcher game would disappoint me and instead of bringing fun it would negatively impact the memory of the saga. I'm happy to announce that it didn't happen. The independent story brought Witcher back to life and the strong links to the books which exist in the game made it seem like you're simply reading another chapter from Geralt's life. But more importantly, the brutal world of moral ambiguity, difficult choices and sarcastic humor was preserved. Andrzej Sapkowski was involved in creating of the game and it really shows.

The official site for CDProjekt's 2007 crpg, The Witcher reports it's sales figures for the game place it on the list of Top 100 Best Selling PC Games in History:

First of all, I would like to apologize to all of you, as we’re going to brag once again. Yes, yes – I know we promised not to do that again, but on the other hand the occasion is so important for us that we couldn’t avoid mentioning it. So what’s all the buzz about? Well, according to our latest sales data, The Witcher has sold more than 1,2 million copies around the world! “More numbers,” you might say, but let me finish ..Because of those numbers, The Witcher has jumped onto the list of the 100 bestselling PC games in history! Not bad, huh?

Nevertheless, bragging is not the most important thing here. What’s important is the fact that we would like to thank all of you - our fans. We did it once before with the anniversary movie, and we just can’t stop thanking you for making The Witcher a popular choice among PC games. You are the real proof that sometimes going upstream, no matter what people say, is worth taking a risk. Without you, none of this would be possible and none of our dreams would ever come true.

The Witcher Official Website now offers a hotfix for The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, addressing two specific problems in CD Projekt RED's action/RPG. Word is: "The hotfix resolves problems related to EAX technology, which did not operate properly in conjunction with the game and generated critical errors when activated in the Game Options panel, and also eliminates the blur remaining after cut scenes and dialogue sequences on certain system configurations."

Head over to The Witcher site for a Christmas Contest that will see you creating dishes for a witchers' feast, such as the provided example of Drowner's Fricasee.

CDProjekt has posted some obscure hints on the official Witcher website inviting everyone to hunt across the internet for some unspecified development news:

Are you eager to learn our deepest, darkest secrets? Would you really like to see what we're working on before anyone else?

Then take part in the Hunt! Be the first to find all the clues and you'll be rewarded with... something.

You'll have to be very smart and perceptive. Keep your eyes wide open as you search for the hidden clues.

So, why are you still here? Go visit http://www.gog.com  to find the first clue!

The official site for The Witcher has a new user-created adventure available for download called 'Tribute':

This time you play as a muscleman drunkard and your task will be to save the inn from being burned by evil Basar.
You must prevent the only place to sell and consume booze in the neighbourhood from being destroyed!

The adventure has two different endings.

Gaming Nexus has a post-release interview with Maciej Szczeœnik, project lead for The Witcher Enhanced Edition. There's nothing new but CD Projekt expresses a desire to work with the RPG genre for the moment:

Is CD Projekt planning on specializing in RPGs or are cross-genre games or even titles from a completely different genre possibilities?
At the moment we plan to stay with RPGs, but we aren’t shutting out different genres. As designers, programmers and artists, we play all kinds of games. Most probably we will try different genres, as well, but first we want to establish ourselves as a top RPG developer.

In other Witcher news, PanKarol's blog at IGN has a new entry looking behind the scenes at the PR team.

The Witcher site has roundup of new reviews - here's a list:

• ComputerGames.ro - 88/100
• GamingTrend - 91%
• PlainGames - 5/5
• The Gamers Temple - 90%

The Witcher site is promoting a new mod called John's Diary:

We are pleased to announce the release of the new adventure for The Witcher - "John's Diary"

John, a drowned dead, wants to take revenge on the Witchers. You need to lead him in combat with Lambert, Geralt and Leo, win the fist fight with Bob and take part in an unusal 'tournament'… ;)

You can download the adventure here.

Edge Online talks to CD Projekt co-founder Michal Kicinski about their success with The Witcher with a relatively unknown IP and only on the PC.  Not pandering to the mainstream is one of the answers:

In hindsight, the reason for the game's unlikely success is clear to Kicinski: Know your audience and make a game for it. Maybe even throw a little respect their way and make them feel special. Basically, wine them and dine them.

Game makers these days are adamant about making games for the masses. It must be cross-platform. "Accessibility." Proven storylines in proven genres based on proven IP released on proven platforms. That's the mantra, and what many publishers will say is the best way to get return on investment.

But CD Projekt, which spent $11 million to develop The Witcher and its "Enhanced Edition" follow-up, found success by narrowing its focus from a spotlight to a laser beam, and making a game for a certain kind of gamer instead of trying to be everything to everyone.

CD Projekt's PanKarol has kicked up a new blog entry at IGN, celebrating the 1-year anniversary of The Witcher and 1 million sales.  He goes on to hint about their next project...all stuff we know, so far.  Underneath the text is a diagram showing The Witcher in 2007, The Witcher EE in 2008 and a question mark over 2009.  So, an expansion / addon / sequel coming soon?  Your guess is as good as mine:

So, you’re probably asking yourself: what next? I’m still not in a position to tell you (though I’m still shooting for that quick string of promotions that’ll get me there). I can promise you one thing: we’re not one of those developers who make one game and retire. We created The Witcher, but there’s so much more we want to achieve. They say the sky’s the limit, and we couldn’t agree more. We’ve got a lot to show the gaming world and we’ll do our best to make some more noise in the industry in the not too distant future.

Dag writes in to point out a one-year anniversary trailer for The Witcher that celebrates their recent 1-million copies announcement.  The more interesting thing is the "And we're just getting started" message towards the end, followed by a fast sequence of images.  It's hard to pick everything out but, presumably, we're seeing cinematic snips from a future Witcher title (and a shooter gets mixed in).  I'll let you interpret and let us know in the comments.

That's into players hands not shipped to retail. It's the current news of the week on the official site and there is an article up at Gamasutra as well. So congratulations to the team.

All the ghouls, vampires and wenches in the world couldn’t stop the white-haired Geralt from conquering the world! CD Projekt RED is proud to announce that The Witcher, the epic RPG that puts players in the morally lenient boots of the aforementioned anti-hero, has sold more than a million copies to real, live people since its release twelve months ago. Scientific research has proven that those sales numbers are quite good for a debut game based on a relatively unfamiliar IP from an unknown studio on a “dead” platform.

Aussie site games.on.net has a review of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition.  As with most critiques, the article is highly positive despite a few niggles remaining.  The score is 5/5 and here's a snip:

The narrative presented in the game is a highly mature tale that addresses many themes. The scope of the main quest is magnificent, and is progressed primarily through your own actions whilst controlling Geralt. While a lot of it is scripted heavily, you're left with an illusion of freedom, which allows you to either be friend or foe to any NPC. The game world is not comprised of black and white decisions with everything instead tinged with grey.

This is made evident throughout the game. Your decisions do effect things, and not just in a superficial way. For instance, if you agitate a particular character in the world, their influence amongst other NPCs will either tarnish or enhance your reputation amongst their allies and colleagues, while gaining you favour with their enemies. This is portrayed foremost in dialogue, though dialogue is sometimes let down by poor translation, even after a thorough rewrite of the script.

Another review for The Witcher: EE, this time at ComputerGames.ro, where the score is 88/100.  We've taken so many positive quotes, here's a bit on bugs:

On the other hand, despite the improvements brought, the frequency of the CTDs still remains a serious motive for hitting the table and swearing for the lost time since the last save. At the same time, although the game is generally more fluid, the framerate drops are still severe during the scenes populated with many NPC, which shows the technological limits of the Aurora engine related to its scalability against to the increased performances of the actual PCs.

An new adventure for The Witcher has been released, titled Blight of the Bogs:

We are proud to present new adventure for The Witcher - "Blight of the Bogs".

This time we'll have to lead Geralt through his 'swamp' adventure, solve a riddle and (to what Witcher got used for sure) make a difficult decision.

Click here to download the adventure.

Follow the first link for installation instructions.

Another score of 8.5/10 for The Witcher Enhanced Edition in Games Radar's review.  Since we've covered everything else so many times, a grab on the free modules included:

The enhanced addition also has two additional missions to go along with the five chapters of the original game. These missions are sort of stand-alone stories that involve Geralt and have very little to do with the main game itself. In one chapter, "The price of neutrality," has our man Geralt investigating whether or not a princess is cursed and how to deal with the situation. This was the better of the two new stories and it was really only around two and a half hours long. The second story "side effects" has our man Geralt attempting to buy a friend out of debt by raising 2,000 gold (orens in this game) by playing errand boy. Not much of value was added to the game with these two quests, the first could have been more if it had been fleshed out fully and the plot, more accurately ended, but the second really needed to be so much more.

The Witcher site is promoting a new adventure / mods titled Poet's Pride:

Here comes next adventure for "The Witcher" created by our community!

In "Poet's Pride" Geralt has to help Dandelion retrieve his lute.

After the poet insulted an elven lutenist, the latter took the instrument and hid it preparing some very interesting puzzles to solve.
In this adventure, time matters greatly. If we don't find the lute till midnight, the instrument will be lost.

Click here to download the adventure.

Stage 5 of CD Projekt's D'jinni Adventure Editor Contest is under way:

Gamebanshee's Steven Carter takes a look at the recently released Enhanced Edition of CDProjekt's cRPG, The Witcher and stresses this article is more an examination of the effectiveness of the patching of the game than a review. On the dialogue improvements:

I know there are some players out there who would prefer scripts and scripted events to be as terse as possible so they can concentrate on killing things, but the changes to The Witcher’s script are actually more subtle than I expected them to be. Conversations flow better, NPCs are more conscientious about telling you where they’ll be and what you’ll need to do to complete their quests, and all of the nonsensical comments have been removed. Better yet, CD Projekt Red achieved this without the script seeming much “wordier.”...

On dice poker:

Another nice change is that CD Projekt Red improved dice poker. When the game was initially released, the dice poker opponents were monumentally dumb, and they’d often roll dice at random, without any regard to whether they were helping their hand or actually hurting it. But now the opponents are both smarter and luckier, and so it’s much tougher to get through the dice poker quest in the game. It also means that you can no longer use dice poker as a source for easy money. But on the downside, dice poker also isn’t as much fun to play any more. Opponents constantly roll full houses and six-high straights, and you’re now much more likely to lose than to win (I lost to Dandelion 10 times in a row before I finally beat him).

It's been a while since we linked to Frictionless Insight but now they have a new review of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition.  The score is 4.5/5 with praise for the overall design, despite some remaining quibbles.  On consequences:

It's wonderful to play a game with consequences. A game in which the developers are willing to allow you to make decisions that will prevent you from seeing some of the content they so lovingly created. There is no perfect path, only the path that most appeals to you. Geralt's gruff amnesiac identity and the legacy of Andrzej Sapkowski may appeal to a few fans, but meaningful choices should appeal to everyone. The main story stays similar, but the available side plots merit at least a repeat play of the game.

The official site for The Witcher has a new review link posted  for the recently released Enhanced Edition. Videogamer.com gives the game a 9/10 and has this to say:

So, how much difference do all these changes make, you might ask?...Obviously the most noticeable difference is due to the script. With five thousand lines of restored dialogue and a re-recorded voiceover (which is better directed than the original version), the game world now feels richer and more vibrant and believable than before. One of the things we liked best in the original game was the way the world was presented in shades of grey, with there being no obvious right or wrong moral choices. This aspect is even more apparent and better detailed with the revised script. Some characters that were merely dislikeable first time around are now utterly repellent, as are the decisions they ask you to make.

8.5/10 is the score for The Witcher: Enhanced Edition in GameSpot's review:

Where this enhanced Witcher takes a welcome turn is with its story and presentation. Although the plot of the first game was a remarkably mature tale that ditched traditional black-and-white RPG morality for a gray universe, the story was sloppily adapted from its original Polish. In it, you took the lesser-of-two-evils approach and found a common cause with rapists and murderers. A bizarre decision to cut back the English dialogue preserved only chopped-up portions of the full script, leaving plot points hard to understand and cut-off conversations in midstream. All those issues have been corrected here. Thousands of lines of English dialogue have been rerecorded, fully fleshing out the storyline and removing the awkwardness of the original game. The English translation has been gone over with a fine-toothed comb to get rid of some jarring word choices from last year. The game is still a lot more modern sounding than some would probably like, throwing around F-bombs and curse words in ways that just don't seem to fit with swords and sorcery. But at least the script has been smoothed out and given a unified voice. Any way you look at it, this is a huge improvement over the first Witcher, which veered wildly between formal D&D-speak and New Jack City.

Another mod announced at The Witcher site:

The GRAVEYARD PARTY: "Pick your Poison!"

Welcome, warrior - today, you have been challenged to survive the Graveyard Party. There is no sense here! There is no getting out alive! There is only honor and glory of smashing your way through hordes of foes using the skills you choose!

Now, there are no limits to your choices. We’ve conveniently selected defensive, offensive, and evasive options for you to choose from. NOT ENOUGH? Fine! Go ahead and build it up yourself, start from scratch! It’s up to you. This is all about choices in this party! Dress up as anyone you want for the harvest season: a growly dwarf with a wicked axe and an AARD to thrust away your foes… a Red Knight with a holy hammer to pound undead flesh into the soil and casts Yrden to become invulnerable… a sorceress who can summon ifrits to attack and defend her while her spells devastate the enemies… or, a witcher with his legendary steel and silver swords!

Get in here, and beat the Graveyard Party to a pulp! Pick your poison and see how long you can last!

1UP contributes their take on the recently released Enhanced Edition of The Witcher in this extremely short review, giving it a "B" and seeming mainly taken with the language fixes:

...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...

Bit-tech is the latest site to review The Witcher: EE, spending quite a bit of time on the added modules and other content, although bizarrely wasting time with dead cat analogies for other games.  The score is 8/10, although they think this is for the hardcore-est of the hardcore:

Much of that threat though is by-the-by, because despite how things look on the face of it, The Witcher isn’t the type of game that is going to appeal to all RPG gamers. It’s more niche than Mass Effect or Fallout 3. Instead, The Witcher is, now more than ever, a game for the old-school, hardcore RPG players. This isn’t for people who drifted through Baldur’s Gate and thought it was OK – this is for the people who dived into Planescape Torment, completed every sidequest, came out the other side and started writing fanfiction.

Praise for the story in The Witcher: EE with a review at Wired:

I use the words morality play to describe the plot of The Witcher, because simply calling it a story would be disingenuous. Throughout the game, you're forced to make choices that are rarely "good versus evil" -- instead you're choosing between various levels of moral justification. During the introductory mission, for instance, you're asked to either stand and fight a behemoth monster that has just burst into the castle, or hunt down a wizard in the depths of your dungeon. Wanting to be rid of the wizard (who was almost certainly the leader), I went with the second option, grabbed the rookie of the group, and headed down the nearby stairs. Everything was going fine until the rookie caught a crossbow bolt to the chest and died shortly after.

That sort of "delayed-result morality" makes The Witcher extremely interesting, if only because it will leave you questioning every choice you make, until you eventually realize that life sucks and something terrible can happen no matter what you decide. Personally, I prefer this realistic slant to more traditional "knight saves princess" stories. You might feel otherwise, but you can't deny that it's a unique take on the genre.

The news at The Witcher site switches away from the EE edition and on to the community, this week.  First up is news of the first major mod release - Deception:

"Throwing daggers, custom models and areas, new items, side-quests to play, sharing ideas with the community is what builds camaraderie to be proud of"

Deception is the first community adventure for The Witcher game, introducing not only a new story for the player but also unique locations, characters and functions.

The town of Carreas has been designed from the bottom up, with its own structures, textures and geographical area. Everything was kept at as high a quality as possible to reflect a society that would have actually existed and functioned in its own right. The main aim was not to let the mod lose any of the charm the original game had, not only in terms of the setting but also story. Geralt travels the land in search for more jobs to fill up his empty purse and he arrives in his journeys to Carreas. There he discovers that his all-time companion Dandelion has landed in his usual bog, out of which only Geralt might save him. The player will have to solve a murder mystery, questioning suspects and looking for clues. But in the end not only Dandelion’s but also Geralt’s fate will be decided through a number of different possible endings.

Red Flame is a team made up by more than 50 persons from around the world (Graphics, Script writers, Concept Artists). With support from whole Witcher Community they worked hard to eclipse everything created by Witcher fans to this moment.

You want to see fruits of their labor? Simply click here and get it!

317Mb .zip file, for those planning to hit the link.

You should all be playing The Witcher instead of reading blog entries about it but just in case, PanKarol has a new entry as they say goodbye to this project:

As they say, every end is the start of something new… The Enhanced Edition is done, RED has brought another chapter in its history to a close. You can finally try it and decide if spending an additional year improving The Witcher was worth it. In my opinion, it was. That’s why we did it – since the beginning we’ve believed there’s a method to this madness!

You can now download The Witcher: Enhanced Edition patch! CD Projekt has a simple illustrated guide to the process - although the actual file link goes to a Polish site, which might be a bit disorienting.  Hit the big yellow-ish button, then again on the second page, then wait for the 10 seconds for the fle download to appear.  We'll update as mirrors pop up.

[Update] We've been a bit slow with mirrors but here we go.  Main update:

• AtomicGamer
• FanGaming
• FileShack
• Gamer's Hell
• The Patches Scrolls
• Softpedia
• ComputerGames
• Fileshack

...and the English language pack:

• AtomicGamer
• FanGaming
• FileShack
• Gamer's Hell
• Softpedia
• ComputerGames

Thanks Blue's, Skavenhorde, Bossman and Mute.

A small snafu means the North American version of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition is missing a file and players won't see any blood.  Apparently it's a very minor issue and the missing file just needs to be replaced.  Grab the 500k file from:

Voodoo Extreme
Fileshack
Worthplaying

Again, this applies to NA only (and not the download patch)!

A bunch of new stuff at The Witcher site today, such as two new gameplay movies, focussing on the character differentiation, the Enhanced Edition will ship in Germany on Sept 25 and then several Versus updates - head to the site for all of them.

PC Gamer UK supplies this review of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition.  The score is 8/10 and here's a bit on the sccript improvements:

However, all this is just bonus content compared to the big addition – the new script. For reasons too silly to go into here, the original version’s translation didn’t so much get cut down as slashed to bits with a machete. Since then, the developers have scraped together the cash to pull the actors back into the studio, re-record a few thousand lines and slot them in. It’s exactly what the witcher doctor ordered... as far as it goes. The replacement lines are a massive improvement, but they’re resolutely a patch-job, not a full rewrite. Where before a question might be simply “Murderers?” you now get “Why do you say I work for murderers?” or extra flavor text such as “that flea‑ridden hick” instead of simply “Odo.” Go in expecting Geralt’s adventures through the land of tits and racism to suddenly smack of a Chris Avellone/Dostoyevsky tag-team, and you’re going to be disappointed. There are plenty of rough edges and dodgy conversations left over, not least the incoherent innkeeper from the very start of the game. They’re just not constantly shoved in your face any more, letting you focus on the bits that actually matter.

Lots more stuff at The Witcher site as they continue to pump the Enhanced Edition.  The thing today are some specific examples of the new script, such as:

Dialogue 1 (Conversation between Geralt and the Rich Merchant - Act3) - 

Old:
-    Why are you here?!
-    None of your business!
-    Do you know who I am?!
-    I don't. But I do know lots of ways to kill a man.

New:
-    Why are you here?!
-    This is none of your business. Get lost.
-    How dare you?! Do you know who I am?!
-    I don't, but I do know this cut that leaves the victim with one ear, one cheek and half a jaw. People survive it, but playing the flute is just one of the things they can't do.

The old threat was just cliche. Though perhaps uncharacteristically verbose for Geralt, the initially intended threat is far more original. Call it a rare verbal flourish for our hero.

The links are actual examples on YouTube.

The second item is premium content for their web-based game, The Witcher: Versus.  Here's the press release they send over:

Exciting premium content coming to The Witcher: Versus

Warsaw, Poland – September 17 – Eager to drink from goblets of gold and eat from plates of platinum, one2tribe and CD Projekt RED are excited to announce plans to introduce premium content to the tremendously popular and incredibly addictive browser-based game, The Witcher: Versus. Oh, that’s a joke. The reality is that operating and continually developing a game with more than 60,000 players tends to cost a bit of money.

Later this year, developer one2tribe will add premium content to further enrich the deep gameplay of The Witcher: Versus, based on the hit PC RPG from CD Projekt RED and the wildly popular fantasy books from Andrzej Sapkowski. To avoid riots and hate mail, one2tribe reassures cash-strapped gamers around the world that they will not be shafted by this new content, as those who indulge in premium content will not gain an advantage within the game. The core gameplay of The Witcher: Versus will remain free of charge, and will continue to evolve in parallel in the coming months.

Premium content will be added gradually; the first premium access package will contain new features intended to ease account and character management; they include a rucksack for items that are not currently equipped, a history of fights against a certain player (for ultimate bragging rights), as well as a private duels archive. The designers will reveal additional details over the next few months.

Future changes in The Witcher: Versus will not focus on premium content only, and will serve to make the free-to-play game even more enticing; leagues, tournaments, challenges, a full-featured RPG world and much more will begin to find their way into The Witcher: Versus in the later part of the year.

Gamers who wish to hack, slash, and uhh… magic their way to victory over friends and strangers on their lunch breaks (or anytime, really) can visit http://versus.thewitcher.com to get in on the action.

Other miscellaneous goodies include more footage from the Leipzig GC and another PanKarol blog - hit the official site for everything.

Unspectacular but welcome is Eurogamer's verdict on the changes in The Witcher Enhanced Edition, with Kieron Gillen's review scoring 8/10:

All that's been tweaked, thankfully. Apparently over 5000 lines have been re-recorded, plus there are extra character animations. The results are not exactly overwhelming. The character animations are far better, but it's a case them now being acceptable rather than impressive. The translation changes are subtle and welcome, and result in rather less foot-in-mouth moments. To give one example, there's a scene in the original where the Head Witcher tells the others they should treat Love Interest Number 1 with more respect, before calling her "babe". In the new version, they've use the word "child" - so the paternalism they were aiming for now comes across.

The official site for The Witcher has a few new items up on their news page today, including the notice that the Enhanced Edition has shipped to North America, with the free downloadable version for those who already own the game available on September 19th.

There are also links to some Witcher ringtones and a video at Gametrailers as well as the usual full description of everything included in the EE and two reviews.

CD Projekt is celebrating the imminent release of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition with week-long updates.  Today's major feature is a decription and screens of the free module, The Price of Neutrality:

We would like to present you the first new adventure that was developed for The Witcher: Enhanced Edition. It is titled ‘The Price of the Neutrality’. The story starts when Geralt returns to his home at Kaer Morhen to spend the winter with other witchers. He believes that it will be another calm winter, with a lot of sleeping, resting and feasting. Unfortunately, destiny has other plans.

Things start to go wrong at the very beginning of the adventure, when he finds a small camp near the stronghold. Kaer Morhen is a rather secluded place that no one knows about – at least until now. What’s more, the camp is full of soldiers… and you know how it is – if there are soldiers nearby, trouble is sure to follow.

TW:EE will also be released across all three major digital platforms (Steam, Impulse, Direct2Drive) and PanKarol has a new blog update, this time with a more positive spin.

A bunch of updates at The Witcher site and elsewhere in ancticipation of the imminent Enhanced Edition release.

• A video comparing old and new dialogue samples
• Article at GameDaily on redoing the dialogue
• Diary entry at IGN from PanKarol on teamwork at CD PRojekt Red
• Video diary from Maciek Szczesnik, project lead on the Enhanced Edition, introducing some of the major changes

...and specific details on the download edition:

Wipe away your tears, little one, because we’ve got a nice treat for you. If you bought the original version of The Witcher and registered it at thewitcher.com, you’ll be able to download all of the great content from the Enhanced Edition for free starting September 19!

That’s right – FREE! No strings attached, just good old-fashioned FREE. Log in and download.

You may be wondering – “What do they mean by ‘all’ of the content”? This is what we mean:

-    Patch 1.4 (which turns the standard edition into The Witcher: Enhanced Edition)
-    D’jinni Adventure Editor v1.4
-    Two new adventures (“The Price of Neutrality” and “Side Effects”)
-    Making-of videos
-    ‘Inspired by The Witcher’ music CD
-    Official soundtrack of the game
-    Game manual
-    Official game guide
-    Map of The Witcher’s World
You may notice that “all” in this case doesn’t include the short story that is found in the retail version… unfortunately getting that released online would be some sort of massive undertaking involving numerous book publishers around the world. So it’s almost everything.
Pretty impressive, isn’t it?
So, let me suggest you that visiting www.thewitcher.com should be – no, more than that - it must be the very first thing you do on the 19th of September!

Know-how to installation of Enhanced Edition
1.    Download the Patch file (it’s something about 1GB)
2.    Download the language file/files  (more or less 500 MB)
3.    Gather them In one folder
4.    Start the installation of the Patch.
5.    Enjoy  The Enhanced Edition :)
6.    (Optional) Download bonus content & soundtrack

Finally, if you haven't yet bought The Witcher, the EE version has been added to Stardock's Impulse digital service.

Keen to get our grubby mits on The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, we fired off a missive to ask exactly when the download option will be available from the official site.  CD Projekt told us to keep things simple, the download version will be available to everyone on the 19th.  Time to clear some hard drive space and watch that download limit.

In other Enhanced Edition news, the official site has some mini interviews with three developers:

Which changes in The Witcher: Enhanced Edition will be the most and least visible for players?
It's hard for me to speak for all the players, so I will tell you which changes are most noticeable for me. First of all, the new inventory is far clearer than the original. It's more pleasant to use and it's easier to find items you need, thanks to the sorting buttons and a separate space for alchemy components. Similarly, I like the diversification of monsters and NPCs, which makes the world around Geralt more real and definitely less repetitive. Personally, I like to play in Russian with Polish subtitles, so I enjoyed the mechanism of free choice of text and voice-overs. German and English players will surely notice the difference in the quality of dubbings, as we re-recorded the whole German version and over 5000 English dialogue lines. As for more subtle improvements, I would point to the possibility of switching off the automatic game saving, as well as the more natural dialogues found in the game, as we recorded over 250 new gesture animations. There are loads of improvements, and I believe that every player will have to answer for himself which changes he notices or likes the most. It's impossible to list everything we corrected; I will only add that apart from the completely new mechanisms, we were able to fix over 1000 smaller and bigger problems, the most significant of which were stability and level-load times.

About time, too.  CD Projekt has announced the official dates for The Witcher Enhanced Edition and they're just around the corner:

We know that you‘ve been waiting for this all year… and we are not talking about Christmas or your birthday. The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, the ultimate version of the best RPG in years is done and will soon be in your hands! We’re serious – we actually finished it. The game will ship to stores on September 16 in North America and September 19 elsewhere in the world.

Shortly after the release of The Witcher, some of the greatest minds in the universe (the developers at CD Projekt RED, of course!) got together and collected tons of feedback from fans and media about the game. They used that feedback to craft a huge list of things they felt they could improve to make The Witcher even better. New inventory, voice-overs, models, adventures, gestures, animations, languages, alchemy and sex cards, as well as improved stability, reduced loading times, and many more enhancements have found their way into the game… frankly, we can’t remember all of the changes. Blame it on the Polish vodka, long work hours, or whatever.

What’s more, we’ve prepared what we think is the richest “standard” edition in the history of games! Together with the game, you will get bonus DVDs with re-mastered “Making-Of” videos, the official soundtrack of the game, the “Music Inspired by The Witcher” album, a game guide, manual, map of the Witcher’s world and a short story from Andrzej Sapkowski. Start clearing room on your shelf now… you get all of that stuff for the price of a regular game.

Oh, one more important thing – because we’re – ummm… well… crazy – we’re giving all of this away for free to anyone who already purchased The Witcher! Yeah, that’s right – FOR FREE!!! Just login on our page and download it directly to your hard drive.

If you haven’t played The Witcher yet, though, keep it quiet! There’s nobody less cool than someone who didn’t buy last year’s PC RPG of the Year. Just head over to the closest store and pre-order it if you can. Buy a copy for your mother, brother, grandpa, aunt, lover and even for that old lady that lives next door! They will love you for it.

So mark the date – September 16 in North America and September 19 everywhere else. Rock on.

A couple of new dev diaries are out from CD Projekt devs.  PanKarol's IGN blog has been updated, discussing the challenges of game development and the official site has a video diary from Marek Ziemak released as part of the Leipzig Enahnced Edition fanfare on the D'jinni editor.

From The Witcher website:

How far would you go to get something you really want? What would you do to possess something so awesome that others will crumble at your feet and beg for your friendship?

Do you remember how irritating it was when you asked your friend at school to lend you a pen and he’d reply, “What’s in it for me?”!
Let’s go back to that lovely immature time and play the same game:

Head over to the forum and tell us what you’re going to give us in return for The Witcher Ultimate Swag Pack!

• The Witcher Figurine
• The Witcher Medallion
• Book – “The Last Wish” by Andrzej Sapkowski
• The Witcher Dice Game

We'll choose the most creative one to win!

Hit the link and post a comment to participate.

News from The Witcher site that an event called The Outbreak has kicked off for their Versus multiplayer minigame.

The Witcher official site is pointing out a feature on the Enhanced Edition at Polish site Gram.pl, which serves as a reminder to our existing knowledge of the improvements:

One of the most noticeable changes is the differentiation of in-game character models. Now there is a greater variety due to the color of NPC's clothing, also the monsters have a wider skin color range. Moreover, second - plane characters have been altered. Such persons as Carmen, Hairy Bear's Innkeeper and Jethro the jailer are noticeably different.

They also have four new videos from GC - an EE promo trailer and short (English) interviews with designers Katarzyna Kuczynska and Marek Ziemiak and project lead Maciek Szczesnik.

CD Projekt Red has sent out the latest newsetter, covering The Witcher at the Leipzig CD.  I can't see anything new but head over if you're a dedicated fan.

You may recall Twenty Sided's Shamus Young had been dissecting The Witcher (see Meet Geralt and Presentation) and after a delay, we have the Final Thoughts.  Shamus has decided to avoid actually critiquing the game, other than the obvious inferences in his sarcasm-laden post:

It turns out I never really took the steps needed to enjoy the game. I’ve been unfair. Luckily, people have provided me with lots of helpful tips on what I’ve been doing wrong. It turns out that to really enjoy the game you just need to:

   1. Read a 72-page manual.
   2. Read the series of books on which the game is based. (You need to learn Polish first, as only the first book is available in English.)
   3. Wait until the patch comes out in a few months that will fix up all the annoyances and problems with the game.
   4. Spend hundreds of dollars upgrading your computer. Only a fool plays a game with mid-range hardware, anyway.
   5. Play for several hours until you get to the good parts.

I admit, I just jumped right in and expected it to be fun. Seems kind of crazy in retrospect. I’m going to discontinue this series until I can complete the tasks in that list so that I can give the game a proper review.

CD Projekt sent out this PR on the packaging for The Witcher Enhanced Edition:

THE BEST REACHES PERFECTION WITH 'THE WITCHER: ENHANCED EDITION'

Improved, Enhanced and Expanded Edition of CD Projekt RED's Acclaimed PC Role-Playing Title Coming September 2008

LYON, FRANCE – 19 August 2008 – Atari today announced the forthcoming launch of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, the PC role-playing opus from Polish development studio CD Projekt RED, which continues to garner high praise and new fans the world over thanks to its unique blend of mature fantasy universe, tough decision making and intense tactical combat. The Witcher: Enhanced Edition is an improved, enhanced and expanded version of the game considered by many players and media as the best PC RPG of 2007, and is scheduled for release across Europe in September 2008.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition will be presented in a high-quality package, bound in a luxury embossed box set featuring a wealth of high-value extra content including additional adventures, music from and inspired by the game, re-mastered making of feature, a short story by the creator of The Witcher Andrej Sapkowski and much more. Numerous enhancements have been made to the widely acclaimed original game to deliver an experience second to none in the PC RPG genre.

“We always have the fans’ best interests at heart so we have listened closely to their comments. The Witcher: Enhanced Edition has given us the opportunity to put their feedback into action as well as offering something totally new with exclusive content,” said Adam Kicinski, CEO of CD Projekt RED. “We believe that The Witcher: Enhanced Edition is a product of exceptional quality – packed with gameplay improvements and additional physical value – that should come close to being the ideal game for fans of PC role-playing.“

Technical enhancements include faster loading times alongside improved combat responsiveness and precision. Following feedback from fans, the English script has been re-worked, while extensive amounts of the voice-over has been re-recorded for the English and German versions, all to deliver an even more immersive and involving story experience. All of the enhancements will be available as a free download to existing game owners via the game’s official website, www.thewitcher.com.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition will be available in a highly desirable, content-packed box set, the full contents of which include:
• Multilanguage The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, a reworking of the best PC RPG game of 2007;
• DVD bonus disc including the D’jinni Adventure Editor and two brand new adventures created by CD Projekt Red:
- the D’jinni Adventure Editor: allows players to create or modify their own adventures in the world of The Witcher;
- "The Price of Neutrality": the adventure tells the story of Geralt coming back to Kaer Morhen and finding a mysterious camp near the stronghold (featuring 3 new quests);
- “Side Effects”: the first ever release of this new adventure which focuses on Geralt's close friend, Dandelion, and his troubles in Vizima City (featuring 5 new quests);
• Remastered “Making Of” documentary with never-before-seen bonus material;
• Soundtrack CD of original music written specifically for The Witcher;
• CD of original music inspired by The Witcher;
• Instruction manual and game guide;
• Short story by Andrej Sapkowski featuring new art from the Monsterbook;
• A map for exploration throughout The Witcher ’s world.

GameZone posts a press release from Atari confirming the September release of the Enhanced Edition of CDProjekt's The Witcher which includes a 63.9 mb trailer of gameplay footage. You can also download the 1.36 min video at GamersHell.

The official website for CDProjekt's The Witcher has posted a link to an interview at GameCyte with Maciej Szczesnik and Tom Ohle about the ins and outs of the soon to be released Enhanced Edition. The article also has some screenies and a couple of short before/after voiceovers.

GameCyte: How did the decision first come about? Whose decision was it? Was there any particular resistance to/enthusiasm for the idea on the part of either CD Projekt or its Western publishers?

Tom Ohle: Don’t get us wrong; we were very happy with The Witcher and were confident in the game we released. However, as Maciej said, we wanted to deliver the game that fans deserved. We were grateful for all of the feedback we got from fans and media (and horribly angry at the reduction in review scores brought about by the issues raised… the anger still builds up inside me sometimes, so bad I can hardly stand it!!!) …breathe, Tom, breathe.

Okay, so we had two options: just release a typical patch that would let us fix only a few of the issues, or whip a larger team together, spend some more money and make a lot of changes that would ultimately give us the best game possible. Our publishing partners have been very enthusiastic about the idea; rather than just churning out some “Game of the Year” edition, we’re giving them a much more polished product that will help us reach a lot of people who never played the original....

CD Projekt's Tom Ohle has sent out a Product Fact Sheet PR for The Witcher Enhanced Edition.  I can't see anything new but just in case, here we go:

PRODUCT FACT SHEET

PLATFORM: Games for Windows
RELEASE DATE: September 2008
DEVELOPER: CD Projekt RED
PUBLISHER: Atari, Inc.
GENRE: Role-Playing Game
ESRB RATING: RP (Rating Pending)

Game Description:
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition is the ultimate version of the ultimate role-playing game. The Witcher, which was released in October 2007, has won more than 90 awards and has sold more than 800,000 copies worldwide, and The Witcher: Enhanced Edition brings the game even closer to perfection with a number of technical and visual improvements jammed into the value-packed retail box. The enhancements introduced in this version include more than 5000 lines of re-written and re-recorded dialogue, more than 200 new dialogue animations, a new character differentiation system for NPCs, an enhanced inventory with improved alchemy, reduced loading times, improved combat responsiveness and much more.

In addition to the in-game updates, The Witcher: Enhanced Edition will feature premium packaging loaded with value, including the multilingual game disc allowing you to play with any combination of voice-over and subtitles, two new adventures with full voice-over, the D’jinni Adventure Editor, the Official Soundtrack CD, a Music Inspired by The Witcher CD, an official game guide, The Witcher short story by Andrzej Sapkowski, a Making-of DVD with behind-the-scenes video footage, and a map of The Witcher’s world.

The Witcher represents the pinnacle of storytelling in role-playing games, shattering the line between good and evil with a world where moral ambiguity reigns. In a beautiful, rich game universe, the player takes on the role of renowned monster slayer, Geralt of Rivia, in an epic, action-packed narrative in which his decisions have a major impact on how the story plays out. The Witcher emphasizes story and character development in a vibrant world, while incorporating tactically-deep real-time combat like no game before it.

Along with the site refurbishment Dhruin posted earlier, CDProjekt also has put up a product page for the soon to be released Enhanced Edition of The Witcher here.  If you haven't scoped everything out yet, this will give you all the details, complete with pictures.

CD Projekt has spruced up The Witcher site as we get near(ish) the Enhanced Edition.  Can't say I noticed it much but here's the blurb:

If you came here today and thought, “hmmm… am I going totally insane or does something like different?” you can probably relax… you may very well be crazy, but things actually have changed here at thewitcher.com! We’ve given the community site a bit of an overhaul to prepare for the launch of The Witcher Enhanced Edition, allowing you to find a bit more info about the upcoming version; it’s just a little over a month away, so we thought you might want to actually know about it!

Shamus Young continues his experience with The Witcher, this time discussing performance and presentation. As before, Shamus has nothing positive to say, although the article is marred by an inaccurate description of the interface and complaints about terminology clearly discussed in the manual.  Here we go - on performance:

So I fire up The Witcher and it’s the same damn nightmare from Oblivion all over again. This game does not look appreciably better than Oblivion. Okay, the character models look better, but the Oblivion models were notoriously ugly. You didn’t need technology to improve on those. You just needed decent art direction.

But The Witcher runs like an inebriated John Madden trying to run in the Boston marathon while pulling a busload of other John Maddens. The game is unplayable at the default settings. If I turn everything down I can get the game to look very terrible and still stutter quite a bit. Let me make this clear: At these settings the game looks far worse than Oblivion and yet still somehow runs slower. Considering that Oblivion was an appalling glutton when it came to GPU cycles, that’s really saying something. What is the game doing with my processor? Building fractals? Trying to find the last digit of Pi?

Shamus Young has a piece on The Witcher titled Meet Geralt, in which he discusses the preset character, amnesia and sex cards.  Shamus intensely dislikes all of these elements as you can see from this sample:

Does Geralt sound like someone you want to play? A lot of your enjoyment of the game hinges on your answer to this question. Some might like it, in a “playing-the-flawed-good-guy” sort of way. Heroes with faults are usually more interesting than their more idealized counterparts. Maybe his ugliness or awfulness will give the game a certain novelty for you. There are lots of tabletop gamers who play the horribly scarred, brooding, but inexplicably promiscuous adventurer who collects sexual conquests the way other players collect notoriety or magic items. He’s certainly a break from the square jaw goody-goody medieval superman knockoffs that have been foisted on us over the years. I would give the game full points for allowing you to inhabit this archetype, if not for the fact that this is the only character you can play.

For me, inhabiting the role of Geralt was about as much fun as shuffling around the house in Hugh Heffner’s nasty old bathrobe, which forever stinks of booze, smoke, Ben Gay, and Old Spice. As Geralt I was more interested in finding someplace to take a bath and get a haircut than I was at bedding all the dirty peasant women I met.

It's important to note Shamus is clear this shouldn't be seen as a traditional review.  Based on the comments section, further articles will be forthcoming with a similarly negative point of view.

With the launch of The Witcher Enhanced Edition coming up in a few months, CDProjeckt is asking for input from game owners on how they'd like their upgrade. They've already made it know that the new features will be available as a free download, but due to the size of the package and number of improvements, they are checking to see if fans would be willing to pay for a physical copy:

We remember the promise we made, so of course, anyone who has registered a copy of the game will be able to download a free update to turn the standard version of The Witcher into the Enhanced Edition. Because of the many technical improvements and additional content (audio files of all language versions, new adventures, D’jinni editor, etc.), we realize that this will likely be a rather large file to download. That’s why we’ve come up with the idea to meet our players’ needs halfway and preparee something special for people who don’t want to download it from the internet.

The idea is a sort of “Upgrade Version” that would allow them to enjoy all the wonders of the Enhanced Edition without buying another copy of the game.

When we make decisions, we always take into consideration the opinions of our fans, and that’s why we would like to ask you about one thing. Would you be interested in buying this set, if it were available in shops?

Content of the set :

- New game box
- Patch that turns standard ‘The Witcher’ into the Enhanced Edition
- Bonus DVD with new adventures and D’jinni e editor
- Game manual
- Game guide
- Remastered ‘Making of The Witcher’ DVD with additional content
- ‘Inspired by The Witcher’ Music CD
- Soundtrack CD
- Map of the world
- Andrzej Sapkowski’s short story

You can vote here after you log in. The estimated price would be about 14.99 euros. 

Worthplaying has five screens from the Enhanced Edition of The Witcher, although I can't see anything about them that particularly sets them apart from normal Witcher screens.

The official site for CDprojekt's crRPG, The Witcher, announced that the contest to create an adventure with the D'jinni Editor has reached the quest and dialogue stage:

Our contest has reached the crucial stage of creating an adventure, i.e. making a quest and dialogues. You face a difficult task, just as your mod is starting to gel! With this stage completed, the adventure actually should be finished, there will only be one more stage for tests and final cuts.  

More first-hand coverage of The Witcher Enhanced Edition.  Let's start with GameSpot:

The gameplay remains largely untouched, but you will notice a bit more diversity among Temeria's many inhabitants. Previously, swarms of enemies of the same type looked exactly the same, and citizens in town were nearly all identical twins. CD Projekt has since been able to randomize many elements of these character models. Although the models themselves will remain the same, clothes will be generated at random so each person has a different look. We watched our character take out several drowners that each looked slightly different from each other--some brown, some green--a nice improvement over the original game.

GameSpy doesn't have much to say but here's a sample:

There's a new inventory system which allows you to not only auto loot monsters but also sort items in a much more streamlined way. Basically the idea is to keep you out of fumbling through your satchel and more into playing Geralt and killing monsters.

The game editor, which is currently available for download, will be in the new version as will two new mini-adventures designed by CD Projekt complete with new voice work. In all the new content equals about five hours of gameplay. Rounding out the new stuff is a soundtrack CD and a new short story from Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of the "Witcher" novels. Finally, you will also be able to play the game with several subtitle language options from Russian and Polish to Italian and Chinese.

IGN has a nifty preview of CD Projekt's Enhanced Witcher.  We already know all the new features but it's nice to read about the details:

Aside from more load time improvements and other technical improvements, one of the best improved features will undoubtedly be the inventory system. Player inventory has been reconfigured to be split into two categories: alchemical items and everything else. There's also now a button to auto sort your items by further category so that all like items (scrolls or potions or books) will move next to each other and any duplicate items will automatically stack. There will also be buttons that can be used in the alchemical items section that can be pushed to highlight substances with specific ingredients so that you don't have to click through them all. This system should definitely make the stash inventory much more manageable. Combined with a small improvement to the alchemy system that will allow players to see which of the ingredients needed to create a specific potion isn't in their inventory should make the extensive potion gameplay features much more fun to use.

CD Projekt Red has a sample solution for Stage 2 of their D'jinni Adventure Contest if you'd like to use that in preparation for Stage 3.

The official website for The Witcher posts this announcement today: 

Pick up your sword and slash your so-called friends into submission in The Witcher: Versus, the web-based dueling game formerly known as The Witcher: DuelMail. In The Witcher: Versus, players can finally fulfill their dreams of challenging a friend or complete stranger to a duel without having to put their real-world lives on the line. The game is free to play at http://versus.thewitcher.com.

The Witcher: Versus should be considered a serious hazard to productivity for anyone with computer access at work, due to its “just one more fight and then I’ll quit for today” nature. As a sorcerer, witcher or frightener, players challenge others to head-to-head battles with magic, swords, claws and more at their disposal. Winning a duel earns the player experience and money, which they can then use to upgrade their character’s attributes, learn new skills and buy new weapons in hopes of reaching the upper echelon of the game’s online leader board. The Witcher: Versus will be continually supported in the coming months with special events, competitions and more.

...and you can check out a preview on combat at IGN that presents the different classes and abilities.

The Witcher site advises their DuelMail web game has been renamed Versus:

With an upcoming release of a free-of-charge web-browser game produced by creators of The Witcher in cooperation with one2tribe company, we have decided to launch a special edition of newsletter addressing only The Witcher: Duelmail. It is also the right moment to introduce changes that are coming along with the game release, the most important of which is a new game title! From now on, "The Witcher: Duelmail" will be replaced by "The Witcher: Versus"! For more information concerning the game release, title change as well as newly introduced features please visit the newsletter site. The Witcher Versus newsletter should have been received by everyone, who have registered account at our forum.

CD PRojekt Red has released their June newsletter for The Witcher, with a news roundup of recent events and coverage of three mod efforts.  Here's REDFlame's Deception:

REDFlame started out as a group of friends who had a collective dream to be a driving force in today’s game market. Tied by this common goal they sought out hardy, creative and loyal people who would join REDFlame on their first project: adventure for one of the best book-based games ever made, The Witcher.

Their first step was working with the developers of The Witcher, CD Projekt RED, and presenting them with a dose of their ideas and talent. REDFlame added intriguing and original features to the game and proved they were capable of creating an interesting storyline, thematic artwork and keeping the high level of quality set by CD Projekt RED.

“Deception” hopes to rock the world of The Witcher harder than a horde of Strigas by allowing the player to choose his own path in the mod’s complex storyline, complete with multiple endings. Expect new and original content such as a new form of attack, Knife Throwing.

The writers, artists, programmers and designers under REDFlame’s banner plan to make Deception a mod worthy of its predecessor.

The official website for CDProjekt's The Witcher  announces that stage 3 of the D'jinni adventure editor contest has begun:

We officialy start the third stage of The Witcher Adventure Editor contest!
 
Deadline for this stage is 18 July...

The winner of stage 3 will collect:
 Logitech G15 keyboard

STAGE 2 RESULTS WILL BE PUBLISHED AFTER 4th OF JULY

Please notice, deadline for sending stage 2 projects is friday, 27th of June!

The official website for The Witcher has some information available for those who may be interested in testing REDflame's  new adventure, Deception:

REDFlame Interactive, The Witcher modding group, announces community closed beta test of their new adventure "Deception".

"Deception is the showcase module by REDFlame Interactive: a demonstration of ability and desire to create custom content of The Witcher computer role-playing game for the fans and community of Andrzej Sapkowski's world and stories. Deception contains custom abilities (throwing daggers), models (houses and terrain), textures, and a plot which challenges a puzzle-solving, exploratory mindset. With this custom town and its quest, Deception is given to the community to both enjoy and learn from to promote and enhance the custom content of the Witcher CRPG. With regards and pride, REDFlame Interactive presents Deception to you the fans and critics."

The full details for signing up are available here. 

From The Witcher site on the Adventure Editor Contest:

Due to big amount of requests we decided to give you additional week to submit stage 2 projects.
Another good news is that we decided to give award to stage 2 runner-up!

The final date to submit your projects is now 27th of June.

GOOD LUCK!

Stage 1 results are up for CD Projekt's D'jinni adventure editor contest - head over for the winners and links to their project outlines.

The official site for CDProjekt's cRPG The Witcher, announces that a release date for all language versions of the Enhanced Edition is set for the second half of September, 2008: 

CD Projekt RED would like to announce that the release date of The Witcher Enhanced Edition has been finally set.  Consequently, the vastly improved edition of the acclaimed CD Projekt RED’s magnum opus has been set for the first half of September 2008. Setting the release date for September results from  the requirement of polishing all ten language versions and releasing The Witcher Enhanced Edition in all languages at the same time. The Enhanced Edition by itself will be a deluxe one, containing a lot of additional content not available in the basic version of the game.

The exclusive edition of The Witcher apart from the game dvd will also consist of a video dvd, a bonus materials dvd (among all D’jinni the adventure editor and 2 official adventures “The price of neutrality” and “Side effects”), the game soundtrack as well as a music cd with music inspired by the game. The new content and improvements will be available to registered users of the game free-of-charge.

If you're planning to enter CD Projekt's Witcher mod-making contest but can't find the inspiration, they've put up a sample plot at the official site:

Here you can download sample plot written by Katarzyna Kuczyñska, designer at CD Projekt RED.

Please remember that You can still participate in the contest!
Write your own plot and attach it to your second stage task submission or you can use the sample plot and base second stage task on it.

Information about Adventure Editor Contest can be found here.

Good luck!

I don't think we have too many Japanese readers but just in case, CD Projekt has news of a Witcher version for you:

We would like to inform proudly that "The Witcher" is reaching the most distant corners of the globe. After a Chinese version, a Japanese one has been shipped to shops in Asia, due to which now also inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun can enjoy the adventures of Geralt. Photo of the Japanese edition of "The Witcher" can be found below.

Stage 2 of CD Projekt's mod-making contest for The Witcher is now up:

The Witcher Adventure Editor Contest Stage 2

So, we begin the second stage of the Witcher Adventure Editor contest!
Quick reminder of the main aims:
Your task is to create a new Witcher adventure, named as you choose, with the plotline invented solely by you, keeping to the established rules and realities.
Each stage of the contest will be completed by picking the best project and at the end we will select 3 most interesting adventures which shall be awarded with unique prizes. Best works of each stage shall be rewarded with gadget sets.
As it is stated in this document, describing whole contest, today we begin working on preparing all elements necessary to implement the location in the right way.

Remember that you can join the contest at every stage, providing you complete the tasks from previous stage(s).
The moment a stage is completed, we present exemplary solutions.
We await the applications at adventures@thewitcher.com. Each application shall be confirmed with return e-mail.
 
The results of stage 2 shall be presented after 23.06

Head over for more, including links to tutorials and the like to help.  Stage 1 winners are due to be announced tomorrow.

It must be international special game edition day.  Tom Ohle from CD Projekt writes in to point out some sample ad copy on his blog for the upcoming Enhanced Edition of The Witcher.  It's an image of a Polish print ad but you can see a picture of the game contents with it's five DVDs and multiple booklets.

An interesting one from The Witcher site with news of a new mod close to release:

We are happy to announce that creators of the upcoming "Strands of Destiny" adventure, REDFlame Interactive, are close to the release of "Deception", their first mod created for The Witcher using the D'jinni adventure editor, action of which take place in the town of Carreas. Apart from a competely new town, mod will introduce a new story, new artwork and even new weapons (throwing knives)! For more information please visit REDFlame Interactive site. Moreover please don't forget about our D'jinni's contest!

CD Projekt Red has released their May newsletter for The Witcher, with details of the v1.3 update, D'jinni editor and contest, Enhanced Edition delay and so on.  Nothing new I can see but check it out if you haven't been watching our news.

The official site  for The Witcher has posted a snip about some of the prizes on offer for the winner of the first stage in their D'jinni Adventure Editor Contest. Here's a look at the featured swag: 

• - Leather mousepad signed by the team.

• - Dice Game

• - The Witcher Medallion

• - "Last Wish" book by Andrzej Sapkowski

• - Totally Unique Silver Sword-like letter opener

Witcher guru Ausir writes in to let us know about a tongue-in-cheek contest up on the The Witcher forums to create the best poster of Geralt as a U.S presidential candidate. There are some pretty impressive examples up already--enough to make me wish Geralt was really running.

You can check out the thread here. 

 Thanks Ausir. You made my day.

From The Witcher website:

A special virtual tavern was created on our forums for everyone who would like to discuss about creating new adventures for The Witcher game. We give opportunity for every modding group to have it's own hall (tavern subforum) where they can discuss everything about D'jinni and adding modifications to The Witcher. We encourage everyone to ask questions to modding teams. For people interested in creating or joining a modding group we created a special announcement thread called “recruitment hall”.

You can find the Modding Tavern forum here.

CD Projekt has kicked off a D'Jinni adventure contest for those itching to flex their creativity with the editor:

Today, we begin the first stage of The Witcher Adventure Editor contest for everyone interested in making new adventures for The Witcher game. The contest will have 5 separate stages (each stage will last 2 weeks) which will form the integral whole. 

 

The aim of the contest will be to solve 5 tasks which will be released for you in stages every 2 weeks. You will be obligated to obey basic rules and guidelines. In stage one we will focus on creating the main plot.

 

The best project chosen in every stage of the contest will be rewarded. At the end (after stage 5) we will also reward the best 3 overall projects (some super unique stuff is waiting!!! – further details soon).

After 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th stage we will publish official solution templates made by designer from CD Projekt RED.

 

We wait for your ideas at community@thewitcher.com

 

Here you have some useful links:

Document describing the contest

Document describing first stage task

D'jinni Wiki

D'jinni Forum

Contest Rules

 

Stay tuned, stage 2 will begin in exactly 2 weeks!

News at The Witcher site that a Russian version of D'jinni is available and they are seeking info on community mod projects:

We are pleased to inform that the community which gathered around D’jinni Adventure Editor is constantly getting bigger and stronger. This week we’ve started Russian version of the D’jinni Wiki (thanks to the courtesy of superfans from Russia). Everyone fluent in Russian language is more than welcome to contribute and form new modding teams.

We invite you also to have a look at new tutorials and articles on English D’jinni Wiki, part of which was created by our friends from REDFlame Interactive. We are also waiting for information from new modding teams – write at community@thewitcher.com!

They're sounding very busy over at CD Projekt Red and projects are getting pushed back...the official Witcher site notes their web-based online thingy DuelMail has been pushed back:

Duelmail’s premiere planned for this Friday had to be slightly rescheduled. The team responsible for the final version of the game (one2tribe and CD Projekt RED), guided by the remarks given by the players, decided to dedicate some more time to polish elements connected with balance, items and animation.

We reassure you that the delay in Duelmail’s premiere will not be long. This time it’s the case of a few days of adding some finishing touches and perfecting elements, which were asked for by the players.

At the same time, we do not give up the beta tests, so all the players are more than welcome to continue their duels! Precise information about the final date of the premiere will be given next week. Tomorrow, we will give you details concerning Thursday’s chat with the creators of the Duelmail!

On a related note, we fired off a missive to enquire about the official status of The Witcher's Enhanced Edition following yesterday's news via a Polish site of an August-September release.  We're told there's nothing firm to say yet but details should come soon.

Not strictly about The Witcher but Tom Ohle dropped us a line with this press release, announcing the release of Sapkowski's The Last Wish fantasy novel in NA:

"People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves.” – From The LAST WISH

Orbit is thrilled to announce the first U.S. publication of THE LAST WISH, the fantasy novel from internationally acclaimed Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski

Geralt de Riv is a Witcher – a killer-for-hire. Geralt possesses magical and alchemical powers, a deadly blade, and a mordant wit. He is a hitman sent after the creatures of myth and fairytale.

But the lines between good and evil are never straightforward. In a world rife with racism, terrorism, and corruption, every motive is suspect. Hired to rid the world of its demons, Geralt often find that the demons are less guilty then their prey.

THE LAST WISH is available in bookstores nation-wide on May 1st.

ActionTrip posts a link to Worthplaying, which in turn quotes (what looks like) a Polish site, GRRR.pl to the effect that release of the Enhanced Edition of CDProjekt's The Witcher has been pushed back to August/September. A console edition for XBox 360 has also been confirmed. Here is the WP snip:

'The Witcher Enhanced Edition' Coming Aug/Sept., Console Edition Confirmed
Posted on Monday, May 05 @ 02:30:45 PDT
The Witcher Enhanced Edition, CD Projekt's action/RPG, adds changes to the game's mechanics, better graphics, shorter load times, improved stability, the recently released D'jinni mod editor, two new adventures, making of DVD, two soundtracks, etc. Originally scheduled for May 16th, it has been delayed until Aug/Sept., the previously revealed console version is making good progress according to product manager Maciej Sachmacinski, but still too far off to pin down a release date.

No word as yet as I post this from the official English language site. 

It doesn't come as a huge surprise but CD Projekt Red has pushed back the release of The Witcher's Enhanced Edition, saying the exact date will be "announced in the upcoming days":

CD Projekt RED announces that the release of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition has been delayed. The delay can be attributed to the company’s goal of making The Witcher: Enhanced Edition as close to a flawless product as possible. CD Projekt RED is dedicated to a simultaneous worldwide launch, and is taking the extra time to polish each language version to meet the high standards of the global games market. The exact date of the premiere of the Enhanced Edition will be announced in the upcoming days.

CD Projekt RED decided to edit some language versions to meet the highest standards. Work continues on the English version, in which a significant amount of dialogue is being re-recorded and over 5000 lines of the script were rewritten, as well as the German version, in which the translation is being improved and many characters are receiving new voice-overs.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition will be free of the majority of criticisms noted by fans and media in the original version of the game. The enhancements cover two major areas: removing technical issues (loading times will be reduced by 80%, stability of the game on various operating systems will be improved, and numerous improvements will be made to enhance fighting precision) and the aforementioned changes in language versions. Additionally, the product will ship to retail in a value-packed bundle that includes all language versions on a single master disc, the D’jinni Adventure Editor and two official adventures, the official soundtrack, an album of music inspired by The Witcher, a game guide, a map of The Witcher’s world and more. All of the enhancements will be available as a free download to existing game owners.

The exact date of the premiere of the Enhanced Edition will be announced in the upcoming days.

The Witcher site has a short message on upcoming support and info for the D'Jinni toolset, starting with these links to a video and the Wiki:

As we are totally aware of the fact, how extensive and comprehensive D'jinni is, we are supplementing previously posted content for The Witcher Adventure Editor. We invite you to watch the movie presenting features of the editor as well as invite to visit the Official D'jinni Wiki, thanks to great cooperation with Wikia.com. D'jinni Wiki will be constantly expanded, on Monday we are planning to add article on importing models and locations. New D'jinni content will be also available soon!

This is a long one, so just head to the bottom for the links if you just want to get under way.  CD Projekt Red and Atari have released The Witcher's latest v1.3 update, the D'Jinni editor and a free module titled The Price of Neutrality.  Here's the PR and links:

Atari today announced the release of the D’jinni beta adventure editor and Price of Neutrality adventure together with patch 1.3 for The Witcher. The first official adventure and patch 1.3 are available for free download via www.thewitcher.com, with a separate free download available containing the D’jinni beta adventure editor. The adventure editor requires the latest game patch installed. We have also launched the site, where gamers may add or download their adventures.

“CD Projekt has always been oriented to gamers’ needs, so releasing an adventure editor for the modding community is an obvious move. It’s quite a demanding tool, however, and it will bring loads of satisfaction to many of the fans. After all, we made The Witcher with this tool,” said Adam Kiciñski, CEO, CD Projekt RED.  “We’ve also prepared the first official mod with a completely new adventure which will be available to download for free.”

The Price of Neutrality is the first official adventure from the team at CD Projekt and features around two hours of gameplay during which the player is introduced to the other witchers in more detail following their brief appearance in the original game.  Populated with new NPC’s and other new graphical assets, the adventure takes the player into the little explored outskirts of Kaer Morhen in a compelling story with tough decisions and more than one possible ending.  The adventure text is localised among all in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Polish.  In the same download, patch 1.3 readies the game for playing the new adventure.

The English language D’jinni beta adventure editor will let fans craft complete new adventures for Geralt using the existing graphical assets, maps and environments in the game.  By creating new stories, cut-scenes, graphical effects, dialogue and gameplay actions, users of the adventure editor can let their imaginations run wild predicting the turmoil and tests waiting in Geralt’s future, or even filling in the missing years between the close of Andrzej Sapkowski’s last Witcher novel and the start of the game.

Links to respective sites:
Download patch 1.3  or Click here
Download D'jinni  or Click here
Site with Adventures

You can grab the patch notes on this page.

Thanks, Nevarion!

CD Projekt Red is spruiking the early success of the DuelMail open beta:

During the first 24 hours of the open beta, the record of active online users of The Witcher board (898) had been broken. In case of the community site, the attendance has reached more than 4 million views with less than 3 millions the day before! Today, only 2 days after the launch of the open beta, statistics are even more impressive, especially when taken into account the broken record of active online users (1054 guests and users of The Witcher board). The Witcher: DuelMail success can be summed up with statistical facts from the game itself - by today, which means 2 days after the launch of the open beta, the number of duels fought in the game has exceeded 50,000 and the number of active accounts 10,000!

Anyone playing this?

From The Witcher site:

We are pleased to inform, that open beta tests of The Witcher: DuelMail, the game created by CD Projekt RED and one2tribe, have been started today. The presented game version does not represent the quality of the final product, which is scheduled to be released for 9th of May. Upcoming changes should regard the final version of the help document, full support for non-standard fonts (such as Cyrillic) as well as minor graphical fixes. In open beta may participate everyone, who has a registered account at www.thewitcher.com boards. Please also visit newly opened threads at The Witcher boards. Join in the ultimate dueling experience, visit http://duelmail.thewitcher.com!

Accessibility seems to be the big point in this review of The Witcher at the India Times:

Loads of patience, hours of poring through manuals and understanding the intricate mechanisms of the gameplay are factors that detract most gamers away from the role-playing game (RPG) genre.

Now, imagine a game that is easy to play without any great effort, and provides the same excitement and sense of belonging of established games, such as World of Warcraft (WOW) or Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Welcome to The Witcher, a gripping swords-and-sorcery RPG by Polish developer CD Projekt along with Atari.

This one is only for the most passionate fans.  RPG Vault's odd series that asks developers what they got out of the Game Developers Conference sees CD Projekt Red's Tom Gop talking about his experiences:

I had been concentrating mostly on aspects concerning the story and design. It would be very difficult to mention every single valuable lecture, so I'll call out only those that are most engraved in my memory: Storytelling in BioShock by Ken Levine - for killing scientists and dogs in wheelchairs; Collaborative Writing and Vast Narratives by Ken Rolston and Mark Nelson - for disputes between old and new and evil overlord; Dialog Production for BioWare's Mass Effect by Simon Pressey and Mac Walters - for experience and procedures; A Portal Post-Mortem: Integrating Writing and Design by Kim Swift and Erik Wolpaw - for anecdotes about play tests and jokes. Those were all great lectures.

CD Projekt has released a new Witcher newsletter, discussing their recently announced DuelMail browser game, offering a fan spotlight and other tidbits. 

CD Projekt Red says the D'jinni toolset and the v1.3 patch for The Witcher will be available in a few days:

Despite our efforts, we regret to inform, that release of the D'jinni Adventure Editor and patch 1.3, which was bound for the last week of March, due to localisation issues had to be rescheduled. D'jinni, new adventure and patch 1.3 will be released at the same time, in a few days. We are sorry for this inconvenience.

The official site for the Witcher has posted the news that they are in closed beta production of a free web-browser  game called The Witcher:DuelMail. Here's the full description:

CD Projekt RED is very pleased to announce the launch of The Witcher: DuelMail closed beta, based on the company’s best-selling PC role-playing game, The Witcher. The Witcher: DuelMail is a completely free-of-charge next-gen web-browser game that offers depth seldom found in similar products.  The start of open beta is planned for April 7th, with the final version scheduled for release on May 9th.

The Witcher: DuelMail is centered around battles between two players digitally incarnated as one of three completely different character classes. Winning consecutive fights against other real-world people gains the player experience which allows them to advance to higher levels of character development, along with gaining new skills and items to use in combat. Players queue up attacks, magical spells and defensive maneuvers, then send their challenges to other players, who must create their own counter sequence in hopes of being the last one standing. In order to join, the game requires only a PC with an internet connection and a web browser with Flash installed.

What distinguishes The Witcher: DuelMail from a large number of similar Flash games is the high level quality throughout, which would usually be found in higher-budget products. The company responsible for The Witcher: DuelMail’s development, one2tribe Company, has been able to include spectacular battle visuals with high-quality animations created using motion-capture technology, as well as extraordinary special effects along with full sound implementation.

The Witcher: DuelMail is further distinguished by special events and regular updates that will keep the game alive and constantly expanding. Besides fighting for the top spot on the game’s ladders, top players can also expect to collect precious rewards in battle. To avoid feeling rampant loneliness, players can invite friends via e-mail in order to play together.

CVG talks to Michal Madej about The Witcher in a short retrospective-style interview:

 If you read the books, the witchers fight in a dynamic, fast-paced way. We wanted to have the same impression as in the books: that you're playing as a professional. He's not excited at all, he's a fighting machine trained to kill in the most efficient way.

It took about a year of different prototype fighting systems to create something that was based on timing, which focuses on what's happening on screen in real time, and add some very simple choices to, in the end, create a complex, enjoyable system.

We wanted it to be simple, fluid, and focused on what's happening around you, reacting tactically and intuitively. It's there to make combat fun, cinematic and exciting - very much part of the story.

The Witcher Vault over at IGN has posted a short Q & A with Mateusz Kanik, designer and D'Jinni Team Lead at CD Projekt Red, about the  soon to be released  modding tool for The Witcher. The fact that the toolkit is for the experienced modder is stressed, and that it basically consists of the same tools used by the devlopment team to make the full game. The interview concludes with this question:

Finally, do you have any words of advice for anyone wanting to attempt to make a mod with the toolkit?

    First is [to have a] good idea. You should have really splendid idea. When you have it very important is to build the quests around this idea, psychological traits, and relationships of the NPCs, and getting them involved. There should be cohesion with an idea - for instance even side quests should be logically connected with main plot. When main idea of your adventure is love - put love everywhere you can! Second thing is modding/scripting experience. If you don't have it - learn it! It's not so hard, really. Read forums, tutorials, and try to experiment by yourself. And Third thing - your first adventure shouldn't be hudge. Try to finish small one at the beginning. Master the toolset and then start with something more ambitious. So basicly it's enough to have a lot of ideas and suitable motivation. The rest will come itself for sure!

The official site for The Witcher has posted a link to the recently completed walkthrough of the game in the extensive Gamebanshee Witcher database.

You can lean on them for help in your off-course moments here.

CD Projekt Red's Michal Madej has spoken with Rock, Paper, Shotgun about The Witcher and the upcoming Enhanced Edition.  Here's the definitive answer about the translation in the original release, which is improved in the new version:

What caused the significant, let’s say “differences”, between the Polish and English dialogue in the original game?

It was hard lesson to be learned for us – the localization process. At beginning of the development we had to make production estimates for the amount of English text to be recorded, and we based it on our experiences with Polish localizations. The assumption we made was that, as Polish text after translation from English is usually about 20% longer, the reverse translation would be shorter by a similar amount. We just didn’t realize that we were using different measures – number of pages and number of words. Because of how the English language works out, the resulting translation was way too much for recording, which came into play at the very last stage of development. We had a really short time to edit all of the English dialogues, shortening them by 30%. So basically, the original translation was really good; it was just trimmed due to production.

The official site for CDProjekt's RPG, The Witcher  has posted links to their latest developer blogs. Here's the text:

 This week a trio of developers have posted updates. Check them out below:

Kasia Kuczynska introduces the dashing design team. Ladies, no need to rush; there's plenty of designers to go around.

Daniel Sadowski talks about some of the unexpected challenges of game development... like having big holes in your office. That sounds dirtier than intended.

And finally, Piotr Chomiak details a few of the new animations you'll see in The Witcher Enhanced Edition. No longer shall Geralt stare blankly into the eyes of a damsel he's hoping to bed. He'll use hand gestures and all sorts of stuff sure to make the ladies swoon.

Stay tuned for more tasty updates as Spring descends on Warsaw and the team keeps chugging away on the Enhanced Edition and other uber-secret stuff.

The official site for The Witcher has posted an announcement stating that the D'jinni editor and the first adventure module "The Price of Neutrality" have been delayed to the last week in March:

We would like to apologize everyone, who impatiently awaited today's release of the D'jinni adventure editor and the first official adventure "The Price of Neutrality". Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances (legal issues concerning making and publishing of mods), the release of the adventure editor has to be delayed until the last week of March. We are sorry again and we thank [you] for understanding. We will also make all possible efforts in order to avoid any other delays and to provide new additions, that will meet your expectations.

Both the adventure editor and "The Price of Neutrality" mod will be free downloads for registered owners of The Witcher, and also part of the Enhanced Edition planned for May release.

Not directly game related but the official Witcher site has news that Gollancz will be publishing Sapkowski's Blood of the Elves in English this September:

After a very positive reception of the first collection of short stories created by Andrzej Sapkowski "The Last Wish", we are very happy to inform, that another part of A. Sapkowski's prose is announced to be released in September. The first part of The Witcher Saga - "Blood of the Elves" translated by Danuta Stok - will be published, the same as with "The Last Wish", by Gollancz publishing house.

CD Projekt's Tom Ohle, Katarzyna Kuczynska and Mateusz Kanik speak to GameBanshee in this interview about the Enhanced Edition of The Witcher.  Here's a reminder of their plans:

GB: Tell us more about the recently announced Enhanced Edition. What can we expect from the two new adventures being included in the revised version and how will they tie into the original storyline?

Tom: When The Witcher was originally released in October last year, we got a lot of important feedback from fans and media about the issues they had with the game. For the most part, gamers were able to look past their concerns to get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but in some cases, those problems — long load times, inconsistent dialogue and stability, among others — meant enough to have a very negative impact on how some people perceived the game. We’ve made things better through patches we’ve released since launch, but we really want to fundamentally improve the game and give gamers the ultimate role-playing game. For The Witcher Enhanced Edition we’re fixing nearly everything that players and journalists complained about, repackaging the whole thing with some awesome bonus content like two music CDs, a making-of DVD, the D’jinni Adventure Editor and more. People who already paid for the original will get all of the in-game improvements for free in the form of a patch… which may or may not be gigantic.

Katarzyna: Both adventures take place before the events presented in The Witcher. The Price of Neutrality tells the story of a girl that arrives in Kaer Morhen and brings some trouble to the witchers’ world. She is Eskel’s surprise child and she wants to become his student. But there are some powerful people going after her and Geralt has to make a difficult choice… The Side Effect adventure is a completely different one. It focuses on interesting and diverse gameplay with a lighter, less serious plot. Geralt will have to help his friend Dandelion get out of trouble by gathering a considerable amount of money. 

New patch over at the offical site. 

We have just released Patch 1.2a, which is designed to correct an occasional compatibility issue we found between the download version of The Witcher and Patch 1.2. We suggest to download and install the new patch from our site.

Worthplaying is hosting a (hopefully new) 45Mb trailer for The Witcher Enhanced.

Jonric at RPGVault has posted  a short piece that covers no new bases, but looks at the game's development and speculates about the future intentions of CDProjektRed for their crpg, The Witcher:

Last month, the company revealed that sales had surpassed 600,000 copies in three months, definitely a solid number, especially considering the release date was in October, during the most competitive quarter of the year. A few days later, it announced The Witcher Enhanced Edition...

Naturally, I was already anticipating a sequel. The team is known to be working on an unannounced project, and what else would it be? But given all this plus CD Projekt Red's even more recent addition of a PR and marketing person for North America and the UK, there's ample reason to guess the studio has its sights set high. The most obvious guess would be growing The Witcher into a significant RPG and game franchise. Assuming this is so, I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing what's coming - and anticipating we'll see a lot more far sooner than another four years.

ActionTrip's  Ure' Vader' Paul has gotten together with CDProjektRed's Michal Madej, Chief Designer on The Witcher, to examine some of the aspects of the new Enhanced Edition scheduled for this spring. It's a two page interview, so here are just a few highlights:

ActionTrip: Generally speaking, how are things at CD Projekt right now, after the successful release of The Witcher?

Michał Madej: Generally speaking - very enthusiastic, but we're also a little puzzled. We always believed that The Witcher is an outstanding game, but still we are surprised how well it does all around the world. I am very glad that editors and gamers understand our vision of a modern role playing game. On the other hand, we feel a great responsibility, so now following titles will have much higher expectations and we can't disappoint you all. Hopefully, it will inspire us even more, but not paralyze our creativity...

...AT: It's good to hear that current owners of The Witcher will be able to get all the extra content via a downloadable update. However, you mentioned that the update also contains patches released so far. Can you tell us roughly how large an update can we expect (500MB, 1GB...)?

MM: Yeah, all additional features and adventures will be available for free; for all registered users. I can't tell right now how big it will be, but considering such a huge amount of changers like new models, dialogs, voice-overs, etc. it will be probably compared to full The Witcher game (i.e. a few GB)...

...AT: What are your further plans for the franchise? The Witcher already has a strong fan base, so I think it's safe to expect a sequel or add-on at some point in the future, right?

MM: At this point we are completely focused on The Witcher Enhanced Edition and on supporting it, so future plans still remain the future. For sure, this is not our last tribute to the role-playing genre, and we still see huge potential of The Witcher world license.

...AT: Do you consider tackling different game genres (other than single-play RPG, that is)?

MM: Not at this point, as we didn't decide what our next big title will be - as I said we still focus on The Witcher support and the Enhanced Edition. I think that some day in the not so far future we will have to start with a different project, genre and maybe a different license.

RPGWatch's Michael Anderson (txa1265) has done another review of The Witcher at Acegamz, this one more detailed and adult-oriented than his previous effort at Gamerdad. While giving the game a top score of 10/10, the reviewer is not blind to the faults of the game, but as usual with Mike, takes a close look at both the positive and negative in this in depth piece:

The problems with the game, and there are a couple, are centred on the seemingly incessant load times and issues with the translation of the dialogue from the original Polish. But let me cut right to the chase: this isn't a game that will be played and forgotten. Nor is it likely to end up like Oblivion or Halo as revered one day and ridiculed for all of its flaws the next. Nor like Bioshock is it likely to face a sea of backlash when enough time has passed for people to see the difference between the 'bestest EVAR' game in many reviews and the excellent game they actually played.

No, The Witcher is a game that will sell okay now, get decent reviews now and yet be the one on everyone's lips for 'top RPGs of all time' when they are discussing it five years from now...

Some of the flaws discussed are load times that have since been addressed in patches, character limitation, the first boss battle, and language:

The other complaint I have is with the dialogue. This was originally developed in the native Polish tongue of the developers, but alas suffers in both adaptation and translation. There are two reasons for this: first, the original Polish script had to be translated and reworked into English, apparently losing something along the way. Second, that script had to be acted out; this isn't an inherent problem like the first, and in general I found the voice acting quite good - but having heard some of the original Polish matched to the English version made me wish I had listened to my Babci and gotten off my dupa and learned some more Polish as a kid.

Having disposed of the flaws, the review goes on to list the game's strengths:

I could drone on about the technical stuff more, but in a real RPG there are three things that really matter: the story, the story and the story. Okay, perhaps that is overstating it - the combat system and quest structure also matter. So do many other things; alchemy, skill progressions and character development, to name a few. But, the bottom line is this - what separates many of the best RPGs from ones that are just very good is the depth of the story and how you fit into it as it evolves throughout the game.

My quick take on the story of The Witcher is that it takes game writing to a level we haven't seen since Planescape: Torment. You will find the usual assortment of quests, side quests, twists and turns, and other elements that keep you engaged for the eighty or more hours it will take you to traverse this massive tale. Eighty hours: they still make games that long? They sure do - games with tons of characters, loads of interesting stuff going on, masses of dialogue and just generally some of the deepest game writing we've ever seen. It all starts with the fiction of Andrzej Sapkowski, the Polish author of the Witcher novels and stories, and he is behind the story here. The style of the game is quite eclectic; it makes a choice not to present the characters and dialog and overall style in a manner such as Two Worlds that immediately suggests a time and place in existing history. Instead, The Witcher at times suggests themes associated with the whole of the European literary tradition, from Eastern to Western, ancient to modern and serious to humorous. It is this juxtaposition of humorous moments - of seemingly nonsensical pairings of characters and names and speaking styles - with a very serious set of themes associated with a world at odds with itself, one which is spiraling towards ruin.

It is this depth of moral and emotional content that sets The Witcher apart. Fairly early on you come across a village and meet up with a leader who tells you that the monsters are not just random creatures, but embody some sort of human evil and that the problems spreading through the land are the coming to fruition of those evils across the land. This isn't some sort of prototypical 'Evil Kowakian Monkey Lizard gone bad' story; it is a story of an evil and darkness encroaching that is of our own accord. In all honesty, it is the fantasy realization of the horrors that humans bring upon themselves and each other on an all too regular basis.

But don't let that make you think that The Witcher is a tale whose solution comes through recycling and biking to work; it is more that the characters you see in the game are mainly people you could see while walking through any big city anywhere in the world on a Saturday afternoon. They have just been put in that position of having years of suffering, injustice and brutality put upon them - and they increasingly come to reflect their surroundings. This ambiguous morality, of good people doing horrible things for what they see as the greater good, is just an absolutely fantastic backdrop for an epic RPG, and The Witcher takes full advantage of that setting. In this world, the choices you make truly matter and the decisions you make are not of the typical Bioware "I'll help you no matter what / show me the cash and I'll think about it / I'll kill them, kill you, and take everyone's money" sort. In those games you can see the impact of your good and bad decisions stacking up over time, such as with the 'light/dark' Jedi meter in Knights of the Old Republic. In this game however you get to make loads of small choices - give or take, be nice or cruel, help someone at the cost of a greater goal or let them suffer knowing that you are doing it for the right reasons.

Mentioning 'morality' and 'mature content' in the context of The Witcher is sure to bring a single topic to people's mind: sex. Certainly you can play the game as some sort of late-night soft-porn fantasy, but that really misses the larger point. Well, it misses the larger set of possibilities, but if that is how you choose to play then there is nothing to deter you, with the possible exception of consequences later in the game. In many role-playing games, the 'romance quest' is about as romantic as picking through a half-pound bag of M&Ms looking for the green ones, but here again, The Witcher isn't about a 'victory condition for romance'. It is about the fact that you are already a hero with a history behind you and a star-like reputation; you can use this leverage that for 'a bit of tail', you can try to be good to as many people as possible, you can seek out your 'one true love' only to find that you then need to choose between making her happy and doing what you truly feel is right.

Conclusion:

There is an old saying that basically goes "I have seen the future and it is 'x'". There have been some very popular RPGs released over the past few years that some point to as the future of the genre. I hope they are wrong and I hope this because I want more depth in my role-playing games and less glorified action games. So when I think of that saying, I hope that The Witcher represents the future; it has plenty of combat, a deep skill system, nicely integrated alchemy and most importantly one of the best and deepest stories and quests ever written into a video game, as well as looking gorgeous throughout. Now that is something to strive for.

This is just a representative excerpt, so for the full review, head on over to the link above.

Ausir writes in to give us the heads up about a slightly different review of The Witcher at the Israeli news online site The Jerusalem Post.    The title of the review is If you're timid, don't be witched, and I'll let it speak for itself:

Technical rating: 4 stars
Moral rating: 0 stars

Freed from the shackles of communism, Polish software developers feel at liberty to go as far as they want, with unrestrained violence and sex in the videogames they export to Britain and other Western countries. This adult-only role-playing game, based on a series of fantasy stories by best-selling Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, is an example of high technical skill and low morals that can nevertheless legally be purchased by youngsters.

The protagonist of the story is Geralt of Rivia, a mercenary killer ("witcher") of monsters who lives in Vizima, a cursed, gloomy and impoverished city (except for a few filthy rich who enjoy themselves). With long gray tresses and a scarred face that becomes even more bloodcurdling when he periodically swallows the contents of little bottles of potions, Geralt (nicknamed White Wolf) is a killing machine who can hardly be called a "good guy."

Geralt initially arrives at the Witchers' fortress suffering from amnesia. This forgetfulness allows the narrator to retell some of what the Witcher has been through in the past and forces the protagonist to roam the world and encounter people he previously met so he can regain his memories.

The game is offered at three levels of difficulty, with the option of using your mouse only or it and the keyboard. But you must have a strong computer to use it, and even if you do, the load time from one scene to another is very long, and frequent crashes are nearly inevitable. If you get through it all, it will take you about 45, 50 or even 60 hours to finish. The background music is stirring, voice acting believable, graphics impressive and sound effects authentic. But while there is an interesting story line, the game reeks of perversion.

As Geralt is a genetically altered human, he is sterile, but he can still seduce young women who offer to be ravished, and he takes advantage of their offer. After each sexual escapade, he earns cards showing the semi-nude image of the woman he had sex with and that he collects as a kind of trophy. The dialogue also includes plenty of filthy language.

Well, no - but it's not surprising to read at RPG Codex that a CD Projekt staffer apparently let their plans slip on a social networking site, since we know they have been hiring console staff:

We knew that CD Projekt Red Studio is looking for X360 and PS3 programmers, but there was no confirmation on whether they'll be working on porting The Witcher or some other project. As the Gry-Online Polish gaming site reports, Tomasz Jonarski, a CD Projekt employee, mentioned that he's working on technology for porting The Witcher to next generation consoles: Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 at GoldenLine, a social networking website.

Lukasz Mach is quick with the "no confirmation", "not official" line in the linked thread.

True to their word, the official Witcher site has posted the following news about new content this spring. It will be in the form of an 'Enhanced Edition,' and will include improvements to the load times and other technical polishing, the D'jinni toolkit, two new mods with 5 additonal hours of play, and significant improvements in translation for all language versions, especially the English and German. It's a very long document, and there is also an associated pdf file, so I will only be quoting a few snips:

...aside from the game DVD, we are planning to include a DVD with a Mod Editor D'jinii, as well as two additional adventures, a video DVD with extended material concerning the making of the game, a music CD with 29 tracks from the game, a music CD with 15 tracks of music inspired by the game, an 80-page instruction booklet, a 112-page official guide written by the authors of the game, and a 50-page short story written by Andrzej Sapkowski. There will also be a map of the game world. As you can see it is quite an elaborate release and it is important to us that fans all over the world be able to buy this version of the game. Especially considering it will not be more expensive than the standard edition of the game!

For those who already own The Witcher, the new content will be available as a download:

Fans that have already bought the game need not worry, however, because the new content and improvements will be available to them in the form of a downloadable update "

And a short description of the mod content:

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition does not only mean changes in the game's mechanics or better graphics, however. There's also an included mod editor called D'jinni that allows players to create or modify their own adventures in the world of The Witcher, as well as two completely new adventures created by CD Projekt RED. First adventure “The price of neutrality” tells the story of Geralt coming back to Kaer Morhen and finding mysterious camp near stronghold (3 new quests) while second one focus on Dandelion and his troubles in Vyzim City (5 quests)

Head over to the links above for more details. (You can also read the same text, but with bigger screenshots, in the forum announcement.)

Although we already have a newsbit covering this it's worth printing the full release CD Projekt sent over to highlight the "surprise" to be revealed on February 18th (last paragraph):

CD Projekt RED is proud to announce that the company's debut video game production, The Witcher, has sold more than 600,000 copies worldwide in just three months.

Adam Kicinski, CD Projekt RED Joint CEO, commented on the sales results: "We are very happy with The Witcher's performance to date. Our goal was - and still is - to reach one million copies sold during the first year. 600,000 games sold in just three months brings us much closer to this ambitious goal. It's a great success for us, made all the more impressive by the fact that The Witcher was created by a completely new team and it is our debut both as a game developer and in bringing our products to a global audience. The task was not easy, as The Witcher brand was completely unknown in many markets, and it was released in a busy season alongside franchises that have been on the market for many years. Yet, I can confidently say that we've passed this trial victoriously. Actually, only now - as we've conquered many of the initial barriers - can we spread our wings, which, of course, we intend to do. Such success wouldn't be possible without our publishers' support - Atari, Noviy Disk and the publishing branch of CD Projekt. They all put a lot of work into the game's promotion in individual markets."

The exceptionally warm welcome given to The Witcher by media and gamers around the world facilitated the commercial success of our game. This grand welcome is illustrated by 48 awards and distinctions - a number which is constantly rising - including the prestigious "PC RPG of the Year" from popular outlets like IGN.com, GameSpy, Play Magazine and the US edition of PC Gamer, as well as the award for "Readers' Choice Winner - Best RPG" at GameSpot (see the full list of awards: http://www.thewitcher.com/community/en/awards/). The game has received exceptionally high ratings from players all over the world, which is manifested in high average scores in players' reviews at sites like Metacritic (9.4/10), GameTrailers (9.1/10) and GameSpot (8.8/10).

Adam Kiciñski also hints at the developer's plans for the near future: "Our plans include continuous game support, the release of the powerful D'jinni module editor, the continued release of game updates and patches, and in late spring gamers can expect a pretty big surprise, which will be revealed at a press conference really soon - February 18th! We are still working on making the game better and we will actively support our fan community, which is getting bigger and bigger. Unfortunately I can't reveal anything further at this time, but I assure you that we won't rest on our laurels and we have very promising plans for the future. We set our standards very high with The Witcher and we surely don't want to lower them in the future."

Along with announcing a sales figure to date of 600,000 copies, the official site for CDProjekt's cRPG The Witcher posts a link to a feature article at financial site Forbes.com that lists the title among ten future classic games in an article about the future of video games. While the article focuses on console devlopment and the Wii in particular, it also has this to say:

PC games are going to grow in importance, especially for older, more educated gamers. After being widely dismissed as dead (or irrelevant at best) only five years ago, PC role-playing games have made a tremendous comeback.

They also have some comments on the future of graphics over content:

Videogame graphics will continue to grow richer and more detailed. But don't expect that photo realism alone will be enough to sell a game. Sony's face-flop with the PS3 proves gamers aren't obsessed with hyper-realistic graphics to the extent that game designers are.

Most gamers don't require characters that look exactly like actors in a movie, and don't care how realistically blood splatters; they want to play great games. Chess isn't any more or less fun in high definition; it's the game that counts.

 

As a sidenote, Forbes makes a rather interesting prediction here:

Within 10 years, guilds formed on "War of Warcraft" or other online games will become offline political forces. Especially in Asia, look for these groups to start agitating for social change...In short, the instigators of the next Tiananmen Square could very well not be students from Peking University, but members of the "Chinese Nathrezim Finger Guild."

The Witcher Vault has a short interview with a handful of CD Projekt Red developers on the Djinni toolset.  Unfortunately, I'm still not clear on the scope of the toolset but have a read, anyway:

What was behind the decision to release a Mod toolkit for The Witcher?

The Witcher was always a game with a lot of potential. We have always tried to do as much as possible with it and we feel that releasing the D'jinni toolkit to the community is a natural step for us to take. It's the only way to really let the game grow beyond anything we could do and imagine. There are many talented people in the community and it will be interesting to see what they can come up with. Personally, I'm very eager to see the results. :) - Daniel Sadowski, engine programmer

From The Witcher site comes news that a handful of CD Proket developers have updated their blogs at IGN:

We would like invite you to our developers blogs on IGN, as you can them freshly updated with a lot of new information concerning a day-to-day work in CD Projekt RED. Kasia Kuczyńska has written about some funny situations that happened during the creation of the game, Piotr Chomiak in his blog describes the creation of in-game locations, and Daniel Sadowski brings you some bugs, of course those that have been already removed from the game :).

The official site for CDProjekt's cRPG, The Witcher, has posted the results of their fan fiction contest held a while back. The winners, who will recieve a translated copy of Sapkowski's Last Wish  as prize, are listed along with links to their English language stories.

The site also notes that several earlier reviews of the game, including those at PC Games and Gamestar, have been revised upward in light of the recent patch.

A tech and hardware review site called Anand Tech has posted a scoreless review of CDProjekt's cRPG, The Witcher called 'A Study in Neutrality', a screenshot-loaded and point by point, in-depth examination of the game. As you might expect from a hardware review site, a lot of the article focuses on how the game performs on various systems. Though there is no specific score, the reviewer sums up his impressions in the conclusion:

Like many of the games that get released today, The Witcher is something of a diamond in the rough. Whether you're willing to put up with the flaws or wait for someone else to come along and polish it is up to the individual. Perhaps like the protagonist, the game is neither strictly good nor bad, but instead takes the neutral path. Depending on your own inclinations, neutrality may be just what the doctor ordered. Certainly, this isn't a game for everyone, and I imagine there are some people out there that absolutely despise it. Those people probably also hate games like Oblivion, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Ultima Underworld, and a number of other games that I absolutely loved.

If you liked any of the titles I just listed, chances are you will enjoy The Witcher, warts and all. The combat system is a refreshing change of pace, keeping things from getting bogged down in the turn-based world of Dungeons & Dragons without becoming completely twitch-based. The story is definitely compelling, and while the choices you make might not ultimately have a huge impact on the ending, I at least was left wanting more. The graphics and sound are good if not great, helping to draw the player into the rich world of Andrzej Sapkowski. In fact, after playing the game, I'm one of likely many people that will now go out and pick up his books, just to experience more of the world of Temeria and its denizens.

The Witcher ranks as the best PC role-playing game I've played since Oblivion. Then again, outside of Neverwinter Nights 2, there haven't been all that many RPGs in the past two years for PCs. If you're willing to stretch the definition of RPG a bit, games like STALKER and Bioshock enter the picture, both of which I would rate above The Witcher. However, the game is a lot closer to Oblivion than it is to STALKER, so that's probably not a fair comparison. If you're like me — an RPG fan that detests MMORPGs and is eagerly waiting on Bethesda to finish up Fallout 3 — there simply aren't that many other options out there right now. Lucky for us, we have The Witcher to help tide us over. We may be left wondering how or why Geralt came back from the dead, but you certainly won't find me complaining about his reappearance. 

So, the famous Yahtzee has The Witcher in his sights in the latest Zero Punctuation review at The Escapist. If you don't know Zero Punctuation, it's an animated video review with a humorous, cynical twist - or at least, I presume that's the idea, although the forum comments seem to indicate a lot of readers take it quite literally. Yahtzee found The Witcher "boring and stodgy" and didn't like that the alchemy required "an 8 week correspondence course" to understand.

Thanks, Melvil!

A new review of The Witcher is up at GamersInfo.  As usual for them, there is no score but it's easy to tell what the author thinks:

There is something about The Witcher that just "feels" right, and I can't describe it. Oddly, this feeling is one of the best parts of the game. Maybe it happens when a developer just nails it and creates a world, atmosphere and characters that all blend together just perfectly or creates a story that just really makes sense and is not full of sidetracks to extend the game. The Witcher has - as those American Idol goons say - the "It" factor. I kind of jumped ahead on some of the fluff there, but I felt it was very important — at least for this game — because the feel of this game is something I've encountered very, very rarely in the past.

Reviews for CDProjekt's cRPG, The Witcher are still surfacing, this one from a site called TweakTown.  It's a thorough review of most aspects of the game, and recommends it with an 8/10 score:

...There is still plenty of action and variation if you simply follow the primary quests, but there is hours upon hours of gameplay if you also choose to focus on as many secondary quests as possible, and despite their non-compulsory status, a lot of effort has gone into making them quite detailed, and not just thrown together time wasters. You can become a dice/poker profession in the game's gambling scenes (often found in taverns), you can try and score with a few of the game's female characters (adding some adult themes to the gameplay), you can take up mercenary contracts posted on bulletin boards - the list goes on. There is just so much to do in this game, at times it was hard imagining it ever ending.

And this detail isn't just subject to the primary and secondary quests, it's an evident theme across much of the game. The environments and locations you will find yourself, while featuring clear physical boundaries, never feel closed in and 'staged' like you can often see in games like this. They feel like living and breathing villages and communities, filled with different characters and identities every step of the way. While the game does recycle quite a lot of the faces and voices you'll encounter, you never really get the sense anything in how the locations and environments were constructed in The Witcher was rushed - it all feels very carefully crafted with a lot of attention to detail, ultimately creating a quality gaming experience.

A site called IF Magazine has reviewed The Witcher, describing the graphics as "freaking amazing" and generally praising the gameplay:

Like many action RPGs, your decisions do indeed make a difference in terms of how the game progresses but in THE WITCHER it is amped up to a new degree. Take one side in a battle early in the game, it may either haunt you or benefit you further on down the road. Save a witch from a town mob, you may or may not benefit down the road. Choose one side in the middle of the game and you may confront a super baddie a lot sooner in the game than you should causing you many problems in defeating him or fighting him off. Plus, all of your decisions and periods of the game are presented with painted montages of some of the action that has come or happening in the game.

GameBanshee has a press release from the Writers Guild of America nominating The Witcher for a games writing award:

WGA Announces First-Ever Videogame Writing Award Nominees

2008 Writers Guild Awards Winners to be Announced Feb. 9

LOS ANGELES, NEW YORK -- The Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) have announced nominations for the Guilds' inaugural Videogame Writing Award, honoring outstanding achievement in videogame writing during 2007.

VIDEOGAME WRITING

CRASH OF THE TITANS, Written by Christopher Mitchell, Sierra Entertainment

DEAD HEAD FRED, Written by Dave Ellis and Adam Cogan, D3 Publisher

THE SIMPSONS GAME, Lead Writer Matt Selman, Written by Tim Long and Matt Warburton, Dialogue by Jeff Poliquin, Electronic Arts

THE WITCHER, Lead Story Designer Artur Ganszyniec, Dialogue Sebastian Stepien, Additional Dialogue Marcin Blacha, Writers Sande Chen and Anne Toole, Atari

CD Projekt has opened an official board to discuss the Djinni toolset and Witcher mods:

Because the release of out toolset Djinni is coming very soon, I'd like to introduce to you our new forum for modders. We'll try to answer all your questions about Djinni and other technical or meritorical matters. I hope that as soon as the toolset is released, all of you will get to work and create many unique adventures in The Witcher's world.

This reviewer at Play.tm apparently hates fantasy and avoided The Witcher but ultimately, the game turned him around.  The score is 80%, although the short text doesn't really explain what it was that broke through his  dislike of the genre:

You might think, once you've taken into account that opening volley, that I'm not the best person to review The Witcher. I'm probably not. I wouldn't go near this game if I had to buy it. But every now and then reviewing games for the good of gaming does offer a few unexpected pearls in return (besides the free game and kudos, but forget that, we do this for the love of the culture - sort of). While certainly without being forced to play The Witcher I would never have bothered; what an experience I'd have missed out on. Indeed this review should have been in ages ago, but I couldn't bring myself to put a finger to key - there was so much to do and experience, I didn't want to utter a word with so much left to uncover and so I didn't, I waited, experienced and played.

Fansite The Witcher France has a short post-release interview with answers from a handful of CD Projekt Red staffers.  The possibility of multiplayer, Atari's role and a future X360 release are all raised but get negative or non-committal answers, so here's a bit on the toolset:

5. The release date of the SDK Djinni is drawing nearer. How difficult to use will it be and will there be some kind of tutorials to help users master it?

Djinni is a professional tool that we used for the implementation of the whole game. It was created by our programmers for internal use, but before releasing the tool for casual users some changes have been made to make it more user-friendly. However, to help the modders get used to out toolset, we prepared a manual that explains almost every aspect of using Djinni, with lots of pictures and examples. I hope that with that manual everyone will be able to master Djinni pretty soon. We will also try to support everyone willing to implement their own stories in the world of The Witcher and we'll try to be available on our forum and answer all the questions that may rise.

Please remember that Djinni is released as beta version, which means we cannot take full responsibility for any damage it can cause to the game.

A trio of Witcher article can be found around the 'net.  Here we go, starting with a review at GamePlay Monthly, who gave it a B+ and are now disappointed in North American RPG developers:

The overall story of The Witcher isn't phenomenal. However, it is, on the other hand, quite unique in its own respect, and I'm not even sure if or when another RPG will come close to The Witcher's decision system. Let me explain. You see, games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic feature all sorts of decisions throughout the game that are quite blatantly “good” and “evil.” Unfortunately, once you get to the end of that sort of game, there will be ONE big decision that determines if you get the good ending or the evil ending. This means that you can be the biggest jackass in the galaxy, murdering every single kind-hearted person you find, then at the last second, choose the good guy option and be celebrated as a hero and looked at like you're a great guy. This is simply absurd. I love KotOR, but that aspect of the game is a bit ridiculous.

...F13.net has a really short overview:

The Good: the combat and controls were reasonably well explained and easy to pickup. The game is beautiful, and has the details I expect in modern RPGs, like full voice over on all the NPCs and a very detailed journal system. While it's classified an Action RPG, it still has elements like a detailed inventory and character progression to make it feel like an RPG. I can tell early on that if I want to make a gimpy mage out of my Witcher, the game will let me. The real winning point for me though was talking to a Blacksmith and asking him if he had been helping out the local terrorists. He promptly told me to piss off and wouldn't deal with me anymore. It's nice to see a game where I have to think about the conversation, as opposed to it just being a "click to learn more" thing.

Thanks to Melvil for that one.  Finally, HardOCP has a performance article that tests The Witcher on four different video cards.

Two new reviews are around for The Witcher - let's start at BlueAlien, who scored the game at a hefty 9.25/10:

The Witcher has three possible endings that depend entirely on the actions you take in the game. On top of the multiple endings each of the actions that lead to them have different in-game consequences. Supporting one group of people over another, or taking a neutral stance, will affect the game multiple chapters down the road. For example, you are tasked by a merchant to kill some monsters that have been interfering with his business. After you are finished with them you notice a group of people are starting to run off with the merchant's stuff. How you respond to this situation will make the next chapter more or less difficult but I won't say how. The Witcher is full of little choices and paths like this. There are a number of sidequests that are not necessary to the main plot but help to flesh out the world and, of course improve your character through money, equipment and experience. There are also two minigames that can be found throughout the course of the game, fistfighting, essentially drunken brawling, and dice poker. Both are the subject of own, entirely optional quests. Dice poker is played by rolling a set of five dice, looking for doubles, triples, straights and the like while fistfighting and drinking games are accomplished as you would think - hitting things and drinking things.

...the next is at GamersInfo, who have underestimated the choices if I am thinking of the right part of the game:

There are other issues as well: I found some quests to be a bit inconsistent in the way they handled multiple moving parts. For example (and I'll try to avoid spoilers), one ongoing mission involves multiple characters whom Geralt is investigating. The game allows the player to make up his own mind as to a particular character's guilt or innocence. But, a problem arises when the next step in the quest requires the player to contradict that choice. For instance, I had determined a character's innocence; however the mission-giver then required me to kill that character in the following step of the quest. As Geralt is unquestionably an intelligent being, it makes little sense for him to betray what he knows to be true in such a way. Yet in order to proceed with the remainder of the quest, the player must kill that innocent character. It just feels broken.

The Witcher has been reviewed at a site called Avid Gamer with a score of 8/10:

The immersion is continued by the interaction with the NPC’s. Each (unique) character has its own voice and identity, its own routine and skills and its own opinion of Geralt. This means that dialogue is always novel and keeps the storyline captivating. Don’t expect the usual magical beings, like talking trees. Nearly all the characters you come across are well grounded in the banes of humanity. There are mature themes on offer in The Witcher, ranging from sex and prostitution, corruption, politics, racism, violence and torture and bad language. The effect is one of plausibility. You may be playing a typical fantasy game with magic and monsters but its world is slightly closer to home. It’s refreshing that not everyone you meet loves Geralt, and it often means that certain situations will require careful thinking. Instead of rushing through dialogue, you’ll learn to take your time as your actions can affect the story line later down the line. There isn’t a simple ‘good versus evil’ choice, and the consequences actually have a solid effect. You’ll meet a wide range of people, from warriors, politicians, tradesmen, religious figures, other Witchers, sorcerers, alchemists; the list goes on. 

Mose wrote in about a review of The Witcher at the Italian site, La Maschera Riposta. The score seems to be 5/5, so I guess they liked it a lot.

GameBanshee writes they have a contest to win one of five copies of The Witcher signed by no less than 30 developers from CD Projekt:

We've teamed up with CD Projekt and Atari to give away five copies of The Witcher signed by no less than thirty members of the development team! In the event that you didn't get the holiday gift you were hoping for (or even if you did), snagging one of these should brighten up the holidays quite a bit.

For a chance to win one of the signed copies, simply send us an email with a paragraph or two describing why you feel The Witcher stands out during such a strong year of video game releases. The winners will be chosen randomly on January 8, 2008, so you have two weeks to get your entry in.

US residents only, unfortunately. 

The official site for CDProjekt's cRPG The Witcher has announced the release of patch 1.2, before Christmas as promised. The patch is designed primarily to decrease save/load times and tweak in-game bugs:

After long and impatient awaiting, the time has come - we encourage you to download the latest version of patch (1.2) for The Witcher. We have made a lot of effort to ensure that patch 1.2 has been tested in the best possible way, and at the same time to present it to you before Christmas, as we have promised. Patch 1.2 fixes, among all, the issues of older versions that were most commented on, such as long loading and saving times, loading/saving mechanism, removes many possible random crashes, as well as several minor bugs. Patch 1.2 works with older versions of the game, starting from 1.0.

You can download the patch from the official webpage, and it's also available at the following mirrors: FileShack, Gamer'sHell, and The Patches Scrolls.

Thanks to kalniel, for posting the news on the Witcher subforum.

Thanks also to Magnus, theexar, Sythlia and Licaon for writing in.

Edit: Here are the relevant patch notes (mild spoilers could apply)-

Gameplay and text bugs fixed:
- Fixes for Alina not being at her home when she should (Act 4).
- Wife's Tears Potion fixes.
- Fixes for usable doors on the swamps (Act 5).
- Fixes for Alchemist in manufacture giving quest items to Geralt (Act 3).
- Fixes for some items to be found in Fields (Act 4).
- Fixes for a disappearing enemy in quest Haunted House (Act2).
- Fixed problems with Alvin's spawn (Act 1).
- Few minor text fixes for all languages.

Code bugs fixed:
- Loading times are much faster!
- Saving is much faster!
- Another portion of stability improvements.
- Fix for rare "red rectangle" effect on loading bar.
- Quest tracking fixes.
- Some cursor fixes connected with finishers in tight places.
- Quest now won't update when Geralt is dead causing multiple problems.
- Autosave mechanism fixes (numeration).
- Savegame files fixes – some irrelevant information was sometimes generated inside.
- The game won't make an autosave if Geralt has an effect preventing him from talking (like knockdown, stun, push) - the result would be no talking at all for the rest of the game.
- Now you can't attack neutral NPCs if you input the second (etc.) sword sequence in them, while first attacking a hostile.
- Dandelion's music won't be 'echoed' while changing location twice.
- The game can handle broken savegames now – it returns to main menu.
- Motion blur effect won't stay active despite Blizzard potion wearing off – drinking, then changing location, then cutscene.
- Final fixes for weapons disappearing from enemies’ hands.
- Grass and small stones being multiplied – fixed.
- Fixes for receiving damage from Striga while being far away.

Art bugs fixed:
- Few level decoration fixes.
- Fixes for barghest attack animation. 

4/5 is the score for The Witcher in a short review at Yahoo! Games.  It's hard to take too much out of the article, which is heavily constrained by the word count:

Many games have tried to do this and few have delivered, but The Witcher is one of them. Decisions you make early in the game will come back to haunt you, and not in the transparent light-side/dark-side format that you might have seen in Bioware games. In The Witcher, almost everybody is either corrupt, a crook, immoral, or downright insane, and you'll often have to pick between sides that are all, at best, morally dubious. If you're used to having your hand held through more conventional role-playing games, you're in for a shock.

Meanwhile, LoadedInc's much longer review calls the game a "hidden classic" and awards 9/10:

Wow: (interjection) An exclamation of surprise, wonder, pleasure, or the like. (verb) To gain an enthusiastic response from. (noun) An extraordinary success. Excitement, interest, great pleasure, or the like. All of the above interpretations of the word 'Wow' are applicable to my view of The Witcher from newcomer developers CD Projekt. First of all I am absolutely flabbergasted by the amount of non-advertising that I have seen about this game. I mean sure, you've got your obligatory banner ads on various gaming sites, but for what the game is I was half expecting to see trumpets and red carpet laid out for it!

Secondly, I was left figuratively and literally speechless by the game from the outset. As soon as I had witnessed the lengthy intro in all its glory I knew I was in for a treat. The visuals are the very best that current games have to offer and of course it's all high definition. More on the visuals later. And finally, the realisation set in that I am playing potentially one of the all time classic games...

CD Projekt has translated five blog entries from various staffers to put up at IGN.  I suspect these were meant to be out before The Witcher's release but got lost in the crunch time described below by designer Katarzyna Kuczyñska.  The official site has a list of the blog entries on this page and here's that sample:

Today I’d like to tell you about the dark side of game designer’s work (and also every other person in our team). This dark side can be reduced to only two short words: crunch time. Crunch time is a period of time (usually towards the end of the project) when everyone is forced to work more intensively, stay after hours and give as much as they can in order to finish the game on time (keeping proper quality at the same time).

Our crunch time started in June, and finished towards the end of September – full four months. For me (and probably for my colleagues as well) it was really difficult time. I started working everyday around 9am and left the studio at 7pm. I was at home after 8pm. On Saturdays I used to finish around 3pm, so I had just enough time to have a bit of rest before the next working week. It was tough – I can’t deny it. There were times when I was leaving the studio and saw many of my colleagues not even starting to go home and then I got e-mails from them sent at 3, 5 or even 8 in the morning! Sometimes, when I came to the studio in the morning, I found Karol sleeping at his desk. Then he woke up, drank his coffee and got back to work. Borys’ wife gave birth to a baby daughter and few days later I saw him sleeping under his office desk. Many of us put a lot of effort and our private lives into the project in order for “The Witcher” to be a good and polished game and that our fans wouldn’t have to wait another year for the premiere.

Gameover has posted their review of The Witcher, giving it a 78% score, citing interface issues, inventory confusion and the autosave and long load times as the main faults:

Usually when I give a game a score around 75%, it’s because nothing about it was that good or that bad, and all of the components of the score fall in between 70% and 80%. The Witcher, on the other hand, is sort of an odd game because there were parts of it that I loved, but also parts of it that I loathed. Let me start with the bad stuff.

Somehow, despite being based on an existing engine (and a fine but not great one at that), the Witcher has a terrible interface and some serious technical problems. Consider this oddity. Quick saves and autosaves always save to a new save slot. They don’t overwrite previous quick saves and autosaves. And since you’re not allowed to name your saves (you just get a tiny screenshot, the name of your location, and a time stamp), by the end of the campaign you’re going to end up with hundreds of saves but not know what any of them refer to. Well, yay.

Or consider your inventory. A lot of the game involves collecting ingredients (including things like flowers, zombie brains, and wolf pelts) and then using the base components of those ingredients to create potions and weapon oils. Well, that’s fine, except that there are dozens and dozens of ingredients, but you’re not given enough inventory space to keep even half of them...Some sort of display listing how many of each component you’re holding would have been an immense help, but even something as simple as an inventory sorting button would have made things easier...

...But here’s the big problem. The loading, saving, and transition times are abysmally long. When I said that the Witcher has a 50+ hour campaign, I think that translates to about a 40 hour campaign with 10 hours of staring at loading screens....The loading times really sap the fun out of the game, but supposedly the next patch (due out any day now) is going to address this.

Hopefully the first part of the review hasn’t scared you off, because the Witcher has some good stuff to it, too. First and foremost is the campaign. Instead of following the BioWare mold where you’re always given “good” and “evil” ways to solve quests, the Witcher swims in murkier waters. One of the themes of the Witcher books is having to choose “the lesser evil,” where you’re presented with a pair of options and neither one is right or wrong; they just have different shades of gray...

...The Witcher campaign is also interesting because it is a lot “denser” than other campaigns. In most role-playing games, when you go to a town you talk to the NPCs twice -- once to pick up a quest and then again to turn it in -- and then you move on to the next town. But the Witcher doesn’t have that many towns. Each of the campaign’s five chapters takes about 10 hours to play, but they only consist of a few major map areas each, and so you end up dealing with people over and over again through multiple quests. This helps to develop those characters so that you’re more likely to care how their quests turn out, but it also goes back to your decisions having consequences. Since you never know how many times you’re going to need to talk to somebody, you have to be careful what you say to them so you don’t burn any possible bridges.

The official site for CDProjekt's The Witcher has posted the news that a playable demo of the game is now available.: 

Atari today announced the launch of the playable demo for The Witcher, the acclaimed first game from Polish development studio CD Projekt RED and a PC role-playing masterwork which delivers an engrossing story and thrilling tactical combat, all set in a mature and compelling original fantasy universe....

Giving players a tantalizing taste of the world of The Witcher, the demo begins with the first part of the prologue in which the seeds of the story are sown and the white haired witcher Geralt learns the rudiments of combat. The prologue is followed by the entirety of Act 1, during which Geralt of Rivia will see the first threads of the story weave their web around him and be called upon to slay man and beast to stay alive and earn his keep. 

A page with links to available download mirrors can be found here.

If the demo is out, hopefully the patch and toolkit aren't far behind.

Thanks to Dark Savant for his heads up in the forums!

The official site for CDProjekt's cRPG, The Witcher, has posted news of a fan fiction contest, prizes being a copy of Andrej Sapkowski's The Last Wish, and publication of the winning stories on the website:

Prepare your pens and keyboards! The Witcher Fan fiction contest has just been launched! We wait for your stories based on the game world. Write down your story and send it to us!. There are 3 books "Last Wish" by Andrzej Sapkowski waiting for you. The contest ends by 5th January 2008....

Best stories will be published on our website.

xSamhainx writes that GameTrailers has a video review of The Witcher. 

The latest PC Gamer sees Desslock's review for the The Witcher inside.  We don't normally link to scans but since this one is at CD Projekt's official site, we'll run with this one.  Described as a "spectacular RPG", the score is 90% and you find the links on this page.

Thanks, xSamhainx!

RPG Codex poster 1eyedking has worked out how to unlock the original English dialogues in The Witcher that were cut by Atari (presumably to save money on voiceovers), sometimes changing the text dramatically. Here are the details:

1. Open Windows's Registry Editor (Start->Run->type "regedit"). Navigate towards 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARECD Projekt RedThe Witcher' . Double-click the 'Language' tab. Enter '1' in 'Value Data' without the commas. Close the Editor (it saves the changes automatically).
2. Go to your Witcher's Data folder inside the directory where you installed the game.
3. Rename 'lang_3.key' to 'lang_1.key'.
4. Rename 'dialog_3.tlk' to 'dialog_1.tlk'.
5. DO NOT rename anything else. The game will still look inside voices_3_00.bif to get the dialogue wave files, for example.

As usual, please make appropriate backups and use separate saves in case of any problems. This will still leave the (shorter) recorded voiceover in place, which may prove distracting for some players - YMMV.

Thanks, Melvil!

Update: RPG Codex notes the rather nasty side effect that some diary entries will be recorded in Polish.

Michal Kicinski also notes on the official forums for the patch that "I really believe it's very close" and has this to say about possibly releasing the uncut dialogues in an official capacity:

We know, we know. We noted it when first comments appeared. Yet, it is huge task and in comparison to other stuff, priority is not that high. But, we WON'T forget about it. Some day you'll see (surprised;)

He goes on to comment that he is disappointed they didn't get the quality level quite right but thinks it was a good effort for a new studio with such a complex project.

Update #2: Looks like 1eyedking has resolved the journal entries problem, releasing a new package that lets you switch between three different dialogue modes:

So, I've decided to make your lives easier! I found a way to get both the uncut dialogues AND english journal entries. You'll also get rid of the '[dev]' tags before each dialogue. All of this in a neat, easy-to-install package!

Instructions:
Download my fix here.

Extract into your Witcher's Data folder. Make sure everything's in its default state.

In your Witcher's Data folder you'll find three files of particular interest:

English (original).reg - Double-click and select 'Yes' to load the original, uncut subtitles into the game. Journal entries are in english!
FinalEnglish (optimized).reg - Double-click and select 'Yes' to load the original, optimized subtitles into the game. This one's dialogues and entries are slightly different to the ones above - test both and choose the one more to your liking.
FinalEnglish_Short (default).reg - Double-click and select 'Yes' to load the default, cut dialogues (just in case you want to go back...but don't know why you would ).

You can switch between each of the three whenever you like.

Enjoy!

Again, we haven't tested this so please made appropriate backups or proceed with caution - let us know in the comments how this works for you.

The Witcher patch we were hoping would arrive yesterday obviously hasn't materialised but a couple of CD Projekt staffers have commented following queries on the official forums. First, Dziadu says the date was just a rumour:

Guys, guys...

Release date of the patch was jus a RUMOR:) There was no official confirmation when it comes to dates. Plese, do not ask CD projekt to keep promises which were never made

Patch is on its way but... we won't give you any detailes until we are sure that it's working properly.

Be patient guys

...then Michal Kicinski says it is close:

Just a word on the patch. It is very close to be released. The problem with the patches to such huge and complicated games is that new version of the game has to be tested nearly as precisely as the game itself before the release. So making a patch is one thing then testing The Witcher is another big task. That's why it is not so fast (we wish it would be much faster).

..and regarding pushing for the release. We actually changed the release date twice. Once internally before the release date was even announced. First final date was June, then we moved to September and made an anoucment. Then we moved to the end of November. And that was actually the latest possible date. Next was Feb-March’08 (big titles would completely cover the witcher in Q4). And we couldn’t make such a big delay. For various reasons.

But on the other hand we compared TW to other RPGs and it wasn’t in worst shape that most of the releases. Which shouldn’t be used as an excuse, but we just had to make a decission and choose lesser evil. For sure we were in more difficult situation due to the fact that it is our first project.

But we believe in perfectly polished games:) and I’m sure that every next will be bettter:)

...and finally, Dziadu talks down changes beyond the loading times:

I think it will be no surprise if I say that our patch will mainly focus on loading times. We're trying to make it as short as we can Of course, there will be huge number of minor buges fixed.

In other Witcher forum stuff, Amfamaster writes about this interesting post from Michal that reveals the toal development cost:

Thank you guys for supporting us!!! In fact, each box sold count for us and it's greatest support we can get from You!

Regarding money/budget stuff. Game so far cost us 8+ mln usd. And it wasn't a bank loan or whatever. Just money we earn on games distribution (we are not so small company: offices in 3 countries, 200+ people, 40+ mln usd yearly turnover).

Actually, this was risky, but also good and very independent way:) Our money, our vision, our game:)
That is why we could make whatever we liked, and that's why the game is so different from the standard big corporation fare (targeted to anybody between 10-99 years old and always 110% political correct etc).

BTW: it is not obvious if we earn money on the project. Actually I believe that sooner or later Witcher will bring us profit. It seems that gamers (you!) like it:) and thanks to that the game as a product will have a long lifecycle. The most important for us is that we've learnt how to make games, good games:) And now we have short but good track of records.
That gives us very very good position for future (for example for negotiations with publishers).

Good position means also greater ease of defending our vision of the future projects. That's important as we want to keep the same direction, meaning making games out of passion not marketing analysis;)

..Speaking about marketing. I know that in some countries it wasn't as strong as it should be (US for example). We're in touch with Atari and try our best to find a ways how we can improve it. But this will come with more experience and time. As it is here in Poland.

Here The Witcher since release is no1 on all charts and since last Sunday sold through 81k units!!! Which beats all the best selling records in the market. It is more than twice as much as previous biggest seller (homm5). Similar situation is in Czech, Hungary and Russia (Novyi Disk company was a publisher there but we were involved in the process pretty much).

We know how to market games. We just need to learn how to organize it on the western markets. But this will some day come...

The Witcher site is pointing out a couple of new reviews.  The first is at Scifi.com, where they liberally praise the game apart from noting the obvious rough edges such as load times.  The rating is A+ and here's a grab:

I could go on about the combo-driven combat, arguably the best, most graceful, most visually and mechanically satisfying ever in a real-time action role-playing game. I could talk about the lovely technical enhancements to BioWare's Aurora game engine that ably translate game artist Damian Bajowski's stunning concept work into three glorious stand-and-stare dimensions. I'd love to write several pages alone on all the clever to-dos, like one where you have to scrimmage with a killer plant ... after drinking yourself three sloppy sheets to the wind. Or another, where you have to pursue a criminal investigation, complete with interrogations, bribes, cemetery spelunking, illicit autopsies and other bits of skullduggery.

...and then GamePro,  who manage six whole paragraphs (at least three more than usual) and a score of 4.5/5:

There are no clear-cut choices in the branching discussions you have with various characters in the game. Your choices are neither right nor wrong as you are faced with ambiguous situations affecting your course of action. An excellent example of this is the tutorial sequence, where you have the option to aid a Sorceress with battling a mage or face a giant monster called a Frightener. Each option will give you a completely different outcome to the tale, and it is up to you to decide where Geralt goes. 

Boomtown has reviewed The Witcher, awarding a score of 7/10 because of "a faint sense of discomfit" with a few issues:

The combat system, while a bit strange, is fairly easy to adjust to. The real problems with The Witcher lie elsewhere, and are twofold. Firstly there is a decided lack of freedom, particularly in the early chapters of the game. For a long time, events are centred in and around the city of Vizima, and feel incredibly plot driven. The Witcher is certainly no Oblivion - there are Bad Guys out there, and you must find them, now. You will not be spending 80 hours riding around on a horse in order to find the best mountain from which to view the sunset. While this focussed approach is not a necessarily a bad idea – particularly when backed up by the quality of writing The Witcher exhibits – the length of time you are forced to spend in each area becomes frustrating, as there is often little in the way of a feeling of progress.

The other issue lies with one of the cornerstones of the RPG experience – the quest for stuff. Loot is integral to practically all RPGs – weapons, armour, magic items – the constant search for something better than you already have. In the Witcher however there’s a pretty basic set of equipment which barely changes throughout the game. Geralt uses two swords – a steel one for fighting humans and a silver one for monsters – and some armour, and that’s about it. There is no longsword+5, no Boots of Speed. Instead you will mainly be collecting ingredients in order to brew potions which will help in the slaying of tougher monsters. It’s strangely circular – Geralt’s motivation for taking jobs is to get paid, but as there’s hardly anything worth spending the money on, it leaves you with a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right.

Back at the official site, Kamil writes their "A day in the life of the witcher" screenshot contest has concluded and you can check out the winners and their work here.

Seems everyone is catching up on overdue Witcher reviews.  GameShark's review describes it as "the best CRPG to come down the pike since Baldur's Gate II", with a rating of "A-":

This is hardly the first game that asks you to make choices. Bioware and others have been doing that for eons. But even games that did very well at it, most choices you make are obvious in terms of their good or evilness. The Witcher gives you far more to think about when answering most questions. Will you risk condemning an innocent man in a plot against you if you’re not completely positive of his guilt? Will you bargain with a cannibal because he has information that’s of use to you? One quest, early in the game, forces you to decide the fate of a witch. Both choices have consequences and it’s not entirely clear, even after the choice is made, which was about the greater good. One certainly feels like the right thing to do, but the body count that ensues… well, even that choice doesn’t feel good when all the ramifications of it are made clear. Not since Fallout has a game so skillfully made the choices a player makes both vague and important.

You may also recall the Steel_Wind from DLA wrote some glowing first impressions a while back.  Skavenhorde writes that those impressions were updated a couple of weeks back with observations after completing the game, effectively making it a full review; score - 4.5/5:

Well I have finished the game now. There are some issues which surface as the game moves on I would like to draw attention to.

#1 - Vista Performance: Okay, we can say this the nice way, or say it the hard way. Vista performance is buggy as all hell in full screen mode. Played in windowed mode, the game is stable. That's the fix right now.

#2 - Crashes: I had some of these as the game progressed. Nothing that cost me a game or more than a minute’s inconvenience - but it did happen.

#3 - Pacing: I think this is the largest problem in the game from a design viewpoint. The game starts on a peak in the Prologue, then comes down to Earth a little too hard in Act 1 and even II to a lesser extent. That does not make these Acts un-enjoyable. They are fun. But after the high that the game starts off on, the plot ebbs away to a very large extent.

This is compounded by a sub quest design in Act II that is so large that the main plotline is lost for a lot of players for a looooong time. Not a big deal - but worth mentioning.

RPG Codex has posted their review of The Witcher, in what could only be described as a "comprehensive" article.  It's enormous, describing the gameplay in meticulous detail.  As usual, there's no score, but they clearly loved it.  Here's an excerpt:

You know by now that you can't choose your character's class, race, or even gender: you are Geralt of Rivia. Frankly, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who can't get past that; if you think a game can't be a great RPG without letting you choose such details, then I implore you to try such masterpieces as Planescape: Torment and Ultima VII. What might be more of a problem, though, is that there's a level at which you can't choose your character's personality, and that might legitimately bother people. Often your character will speak to people without your guidance, and many of the more inconsequential dialogue choices from a Bioware (or even a Troika) RPG have been stripped out. Dialogues very rarely have two functionally equivalent ways of saying the same thing, so you're limited to dialogue responses that fit Geralt's hard-boiled, somewhat sarcastic, occasionally suave badass persona. You will, from time to time, insult people without having any choice in the matter, for example. Basically, you're taking on the role of an established character and are constrained to work within that role. You can make real, meaningful choices in the game, and you can decide Geralt's deepest values, allegiances, and even lovers; but you can't deviate too far from the character as established in the books, and you can't make him talk like either a Nancy-boy diplomat or a dumb brute.

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:

That's all true. They're there, both the good and the bad. If you rate The Witcher like most dopamine-reward-hijacking games, these flaws will easily knock off a couple of points off a perfect score. Meaning that the 8-out-of-10-ish scores it's been getting are completely deserved. If, that is, you rate The Witcher like most other games.

However, The Witcher is not like most other games. It is "about" something. Game reviewers simply aren't capable of fitting this fact into their conceptual review-writing framework, which leaves them handing out not-really-that-great grades... but with many of them nevertheless saying they liked the damn thing, without being able to say why; sometimes slapping an Editor's Choice onto it for good measure. That's because they'd really need to write two reviews -- the game review and the book review -- but they only have the capability to do one. Poor gaming journalists.

Read it all here.

An uneven review of The Witcher is up at Games32, with the author enjoying the wine and women but getting angry over combat controls.  That all comes out at a score of 82% and here's an excerpt:

The Witcher benefits from an innovative gameplay system: depending on what decision you make, you will see the consequences of your actions later in the game. This should give the player a more varied story if the game is replayed. But, having over 80 hours of gameplay, only hardcore gamers will try to create another personality for Geralt, plus our staff tested the game using different paths and in the end it all comes down to rather the same story. Despite this, the story of the game are solid, with ups and downs that will drag you more and more into Geralt’s world. A good way to make money is to play dice poker, same rules as the original poker but a lot easier. I find it very easy to make money in the game but maybe that's the developers idea, to buy booze or give it on women (yeah baby!) There is a lot of cool stuff they implemented: alchemy and everything you have to do for potions, identify and collect plants, try mixing new stuff to discover new potion formulas; drink contest to help you get more information about quests or characters, fist fights and women. No wonder this is a game rated mature. What made me angry was that the combat engine wasn’t acting like properly. If I wanted to attack a target, I had to click 3-4 times for him to start swinging the sword (not always but most of the times). Plus depending what camera I was using... he seemed to get stuck every once in a while. 

According to discussion on The Witcher forums, fan site witcher.phx.pl has word from CD Projekt Red's Michał Miąsik and Tomasz Gop that the v1.2 patch is expected December 7th if all goes well, the demo around the 13th and the editor around the same time.

Fingers crossed. Thanks, XS! 

The Escapist joins the list of The Witcher reviewers, with an article that is "overwhelmingly negative", according to the author.  There's no score as usual for this site and here's the introduction:

At the heart of The Witcher's design lies a rich and compelling roleplaying experience. Unfortunately, the rest of the game serves mostly to obscure this fact. As a storyteller with nearly 20 years of tabletop roleplaying experience, I tend to take my computer RPGs with more than a few grains of salt. I stuck with Gothic, despite its awkward control system and uneven vocal performances. I grimaced through Ultima VII's tongue-in-cheek, Olde English dialog. I spent countless hours wandering the wastelands in Fallout, despite my antipathy for turn-based combat. I even slogged through all of Neverwinter Nights and its follow up modules - more than once. Still, after spending well over 10 hours with The Witcher, I can't see myself returning to it.

9/10 is the score for The Witcher at 2404.org in their new review:

Like many RPGs, you have the main quests and several side quests that are available. You are, however, confined to certain regions; you cannot roam around to different areas whenever you wish. The regions are fairly large, but if you’re really set on a free-roaming RPG, then you might suffer from some slight feelings of claustrophobia with this game. The areas you are confined to are fairly large, so I never really had a cramped feeling. For the most part, areas are fairly open but there are some areas where there are obstructions. Being able to walk off the sides of stairways, docks, etc. would have been better, in my opinion, and there were some areas in the swamp where you can only walk along a set path.

When the game advertises nonlinear gameplay, I don’t think it’s necessarily focusing on the order of the main quest, because that does follow a fairly straight order. There are, of course, side quests, but it seems to me that the nonlinearity term is focusing on Geralt’s decisions along the journey. You have to make small decisions all the time, such as whether to help someone or not, to be friendly or not, to do a quest or not, etc., and these decisions seem to take on a ripple effect in that they change many things. 

It's taken a while for GameSpy to review The Witcher but the final result is a score of 4.5/5 and general praise:

The game nails the depressing and yet believable backdrop. The buildings look old and run down, the local inhabitants go about their routine, running inside when it rains, commenting on their mundane troubles, and so on. It's not uncommon to see a street beggar taking a whiz on the side of a building or hear a prostitute openly proposition. The language is equally gritty, but doesn't sound out of place. Sure, it might at first seem a tad odd that fantasy characters are dropping F-bombs during a conversation, but how else would the leader of a thug/pimping operation speak? Like Shakespeare?

ComputerGames.ro  posts their detailed review of CDProjekt's  recently released cRPG, The Witcher, giving it a score of 86/100:

True, The Witcher isn’t the first RPG to offer choices and consequences that influence the storyline, but in this case they are faithful to one of the distinctive features of Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy universe...: there are no “good” and “bad” characters; you will always have to choose the lesser of two evils. Moreover, the consequences of your choices won’t become apparent right away, but after a few more hours of playtime, sometimes even stretching between acts. I have to admit that I was skeptical when I first heard about this choices & consequences deal, thinking it was just a PR gimmick (and I’m sure that I wasn’t the only one).
       Fortunately, I was wrong and CD Projeckt stayed true to their word. I think I clocked at least 80 hours of playtime with The Witcher, mostly because I replayed large segments of it in order to see what other paths the story could have taken. By their very nature, some choices will probably allow you to see, at least generally speaking, what the consequences will be, but others will have surprising results.

This is one of the main novelties in The Witcher: unlike other RPGs, you can’t choose between A and B knowing for certain that you will end up at C or D. You will do so either because you will try to relate to what the developers wanted you to experience and say that “well, the other option wasn’t important, and even if it was, I can replay the game” or depending on how you want Geralt to evolve during the story. For instance, in Gothic 3 things were simple: the orcs were “bad”, so if you wanted to be an "evil" character, you sided with the orcs. If you wanted a “good” character, you sided with the human population. In The Witcher there are far more nuances: are the elves freedom fighters or can they be considered terrorists, in the modern sense of the word? Will I stay neutral or side with the humans, among which I have so many friends? This gives the game an extremely high replay value, even for an RPG.

...Thus, in many ways, The Witcher is the game which probably a lot [of] RPG fans hoped for. The story, atmosphere, the relationship between choices and consequences, the graphics, musical score and the non-linear nature of some quests clearly define it as a reference RPG for years to come. And there are also some interesting innovations, like the character development tree and the combat system. But what prevents The Witcher from entering the gallery of truly great titles is what pretty much plagues other diamonds in the rough: lots of crashes, long and frequent loading times as well as an artificially limited freedom of movement.

The Witcher official site is pointing out a wiki on the game and Andrzej Sapkowski, which may be of interest the players. The wiki is maintained by Ausir, who many may remember from his previous RPG community involvement.

Another favorable review of CDProjekt's The Witcher surfaces at Worthplaying, who give it a score of 8.6/10:

Although the fighting sounds complex, the action-oriented feel of combat works with some practice. Motion-captured moves performed by a professional swordsman behind Geralt's blade treat you to a visual show that is part Schwarzenegger's Conan and part Errol Flynn. It isn't a clickfest as you might find with Diablo or Oblivion, but your reflexes will be tested when you start chaining together attacks....Signs are also part of the witcher's bag of tricks; they act as quick and dirty magical abilities that aren't exactly considered magic, but they're useful enough to witchers. Signs range from a gust of wind that can stun foes, allowing Geralt to kill them quickly without the swordplay, to setting foes on fire, making signs a potent complement to his weapons prowess...

...Geralt can drink NPCs under the table for information; there's even a combat skill to improve his chances in combat while sloshed. As long as you can see through the blur and guide Geralt's staggering self to an inn, or imbibe a potion that clears his head in a sip, drinking friends and foes under the table can become second nature. You can also play poker dice, rolling for cash and become a professional. Thanks to the physics system, it really becomes more of a game of chance than the unseen, artificial edge that can often create your typical "ace" opponent in other titles. ...

...As fun as The Witcher can be, it does have issues. With as many interior and outdoor areas as there are, it's not unusual to wade through several dozen loading screens in only a few minutes, with each load often averaging about a minute or so. I had a book next to me to leaf through just for these instances...Saves also don't overwrite older ones, and given how many automatic saves there are including your own, the 20MB files can easily begin to add up and bog down the Load Game function...

Despite its faults, The Witcher is a diamond in the rough as a mature, gritty and atmospheric RPG that heads into territory not often explored. The modern, tongue-in-cheek additions to the fantasy tale of Geralt's journey and the choices that shape it build a unique experience that might keep you awake into the wee hours simply to find out what happens next. Games have grown up along with their players, and The Witcher is the kind of title that the genre deserves to have.

CD Projekt has whacked up a Witcher screenshot contest with goodies on offer to winners:

We are pleased to announce our special screenshot contest. All you have to do, to take part in the competition, is to run the game and express  your imagination and creativity!  Make some screenshots  while playing and freely transform and edit them to fit your vision of “the day in the life of the witcher”. You can add comments, titles or even add text bubbles to make own custom dialogues.

The best stories will be awarded with ultimate gadget sets. The set includes: high quality t-shirt, poster, mousepad with the game logo, dice game and original witcher medallion!

Your story should consist of  from 1 to 5 separate screenshots, or may be composed into a comic strip. Here you can upload your files.

The deadline date to send your story is 30th November.

...and 1Up also has a Witcher contest, offering a Sweepstakes to win a spanky Dell system.

Pixelrage is the latest site with a Witcher review and the score is 89%:

This is what makes the witcher’s universe so interesting – realism. Monsters only lurk outside at night so you don’t just simply hunt them and during the day most areas are safe and people tend to their chores. You can get drunk and finish all the quests with a shaking, blurry screen camera. You can be a lady’s man and have several love affairs (which unlock concept art bonuses) or a total loner. A thing that I would consider normal is that most NPCs in the game can actually die and this really affects the game universe, which somehow reminds me of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. For example, I got rejected several times by a beautiful gal at the local inn in Act I.

Amfamaster writes that a second Witcher project is already underway and will hopefully be released in 18 months:

Tomasz Baginski, the guy behind 'The Witcher's' cutscenes was recently interviewed on Polish news channel (TVN). He stated that CDProjekt RED is already working on a second part of The Witcher and they are planning to release it in about 18 months. He also said that he will most probably work on cutscenes for the second part as well. CD Projekt did not comment on this news.

Based on reports from Polish sites gry-online.pl and gry.wp.pl .  Thanks, Amfamaster!

Update: Lukasz from CD Projekt dropped by our forums to say The Witcher 2 is not internally confirmed at this point.  In addition, Brother None points out that Yarpen from CD Projekt told the Codex forums "do not believe everything you read".

Eriash, one of the community specialists at the official forums, has posted this bit about the next patch in the works for CDProjekt's rpg The Witcher:

CD Projekt and Atari are currently in the process of finalizing Patch 1.2 for The Witcher which is scheduled for release before Christmas.  The patch is being designed to improve loading and saving times, as well as to tackle a number of design, gameplay, stability and graphical issues and should significantly improve the overall playing experience.

GamingHeaven's review of CDProjekt's The Witcher, set in some elaborate visual formatting,  gives the game an Editor's Choice award and an overall score of 87/100:

For a fantasy RPG, the land of the Witcher is remarkably glum and dark. Towns are dying because of plagues, old spirits haunt forests and villages and even though a war has just ended another one is on the brink of starting. On top of it all, the various races that inhabit the world (humans, elves, dwarves, etc.) are involved in major feuding. You have to agree that it is not exactly common practice for game developers to create medieval fantasy worlds that closely resemble actual history with dirty cities and political problems. I personally rather like this approach and actually favour it over the more traditional, fairy tale offerings like NWN2 or Oblivion...

...Like any decent RPG The Witcher isn’t all about combat, but relies heavily on it. Being based on the Aurora (NWN) engine many expected the game to be a standard D&D ruleset based phase (dynamic pausing, dice rolls in background, etc.) combat RPG. Instead we got a more action oriented approach which relies both on statistics and background dice rolls as well as player interaction...

...As you level up (gaining experience from both combat and quests) you’ll get the chance to invest skill points into hundreds of available skills. These range from stronger attacks in various stances over the ability to knock down opponents to more pacifistic skills such as herbalism or potion brewing. You also unlock stronger versions of the spells you know this way, or rather unlock additional effects of these spells such as increased range, lower power consumption or increased duration. At first you won’t be relying on signs (spells) much, but later on they’ll mean the difference between life and death (unless you are heavily specialized in melee combat).

... 

UK site Pro-G posts their review of CDProjekt's cRPG, The Witcher, with positive overtones and a score of 8/10:

...The game world itself is a pleasing palette of shades of grey - there is no universal definition of morality - the only real definition of good versus evil is that the Witchers are opposed to the Salamandra faction (essentially a collective of high-powered bandits), but both these groups act in ways that are seen as both good and bad in the context of the wider community. This ambiguity extends to the races of the world, too. Humans, for example, are not portrayed as having Tolkienesque honour and virtue - in fact, most of them are intolerant, obnoxious and racist. This all stems from the original fiction, where there is an uneasy balance of power between humans and non-humans. Humans are the largest racial group and notionally rule the world, but the Elves and Dwarves have formed an anti-human resistance movement, called the Scoia'tel (which is Elven for Squirrels) and the politics of the world are present throughout the game. It's a very refreshing change from the all too familiar setting of the Forgotten Realms, and it's good to see challenging themes like racism and intolerance addressed so openly in a game.

The official website for the Witcher has gathered together a compendium of quotes from various online forums, showing comments from actual users of the game. Quotes from rpg codex, the Watch, Gamebanshee, Gamespot and other forums are featured.

Check it out here--some of you may recognize yourselves. 

CD Projekt has sent out a new Witcher newsletter, although it doesn't contain anything new for those watching this title.  The release, review scores and the 1.1a patch are all covered. 

1UP contributes a brief effort to the slew of reviews hitting the web for CDProjekt's cRPG, The Witcher, scoring it overall 7.7/10 :

 Still, The Witcher offers such a solid experience (and such a strong endgame) that it's worth contracting a minor case of twiddler's thumb. Combat, for example, is innovative and deep yet surprisingly simple to learn. Stringing together combos is key. You do this by pressing your left mouse button at the appropriate time -- press it too early and you'll break the chain; press it too late and you're open for a counter. You can also dodge by double-clicking on empty ground, switch fighting styles with the keyboard (crucial for dealing with different types of enemies), and throw spells with the right mouse button. Mix in a cornucopia of level-up abilities, realistic medieval fighting styles, and many funky pig-stickers, and you've got the most visceral RPG combat this side of LARPing....

...graphical foibles aside, The Witcher demonstrates the growing creative energy of European game designers, who continue to take chances with ever more innovative games, even as American developers obsess over the next Halo.

CD Projekt's Michal Kicinski has been interviewed internally about the release of The Witcher and their future plans, with the article posted at the official Witcher site.  Michal discusses the reception, shortcomings, a demo and their plans for the SDK:

We will be very active in developing updates for The Witcher. The game will have very strong and long-lasting support from our team, which means that we will release patches as long as there will be nothing left to improve.

Going back to the question: we are planning to release a toolset and demo soon. And what is even more important is that along with a toolset, or soon after its release, we will provide players with new adventures, developed using the toolset. For now we are already working on one adventure that will be free for all registered users of the game. I think — and hope — that our post-release support will help The Witcher become even more popular for a longer period of time.

Note that the site was outrageously slow for me at the time of writing.

Two more reviews have appeared for The Witcher, CDProjekt's cRPG based on the works of Polish author Andrej Sapkowski. Both are highly positive in tone.

From Gamer's Hell:(8.5/10)

Combat is deeply satisfying, even though the dodge manoeuvres which have been implemented into the combat aren’t awfully useful unless you’re really stuck in a rut. The swordplay is excellent, but lack of control on the players’ part can make it seem repetitive, but don’t get me wrong, it’s never dull to watch. It can, however, be hard to execute in the early stages of the game; before you quite understand it and before you start distributing talents. With a bit of practice though, it doesn’t have a massive learning curve...

Quickies – “The Good”

• A highly polished game at release.
• Combat is fun.
• Animations are well performed.
• World is interesting.
• Graphics are competent and efficiently coded.
• Game is resource efficient.
• Individual voice acting is superb.
• Isn’t too demanding on the system.
• Is a lot of fun!
• It’s hard to believe this game was licensed from a book!

“Quickies” – The bad
• Lots of people look the same.
• Not without its glitches.
• Combat can seem a little broken on the odd occasion.
• Combat style match-ups can seem very arbitrary at times – with opponents parrying you perfectly every time unless you use the style the game deems appropriate.
• Lots of people sound the same.
• Foreign roots show (e.g., coherency of certain plotlines).
• Difficulty isn’t awfully consistent, especially moving from Vizima to The Swamp for example.

GamesRadar, true to their usual style, posts a positive (9/10) but rather tongue in cheek take:

 Fantasy games come in many shapes and sizes, but most of them strictly follow the code of featuring the great, the good and the virtuous fending off the bad, the corrupted and the green-skinned. Sex is generally confined to a pretty elf wearing a chain mail bra, and political comment never strays much further than a Greenpeace quest in which raw magic has infected some wandering hedgehog creatures and not only rendered them mad, but also significantly upped their armour stats.

The Witcher, then, enters our midst as somewhat of a game of our times. The authorities in and around the plague-ridden city of Vizima perpetuate a culture of fear and suspicion - freedom fighters could just as easily be called terrorists and racial segregation is rife. Moral values aren't so much blurred as smudged about the place by a recently-licked thumb - even those who might openly oppose the oppressors are seeking some kind of capitol gain, the undead have a conscience, drug use is a major issue and individuals will use whatever means necessary to get their way - by betrayal, or by allowing you pump them for information.

8.8/10 is the score for The Witcher at both CVG and GameZone. CVG calls it "intelligent, adult and thoroughly compelling" and here's a short excerpt:

 It's your job to find a way to recover the secrets before they are put to nefarious use, all whilst finding out about your past and that of your dwindling clan. It's perhaps not the most exciting premise, but the presentation and pacing of the story is excellent throughout, from the lengthy opening cinematic even to the hand-drawn screens that guard the transitions as new areas load into memory.

Most noteworthy are the cutscenes, which have been storyboarded and edited with real cinematic flair and, together with the voiceovers and script, make The Witcher one of the best examples of interactive fiction I've enjoyed.

GameZone says The Witcher is a "benchmark RPG":

This is truly a refreshing game that may plague your conscience through choices you might make as your journey through the game. Focus on one goal, though, and being the fact that Geralt is a mercenary, a killer for hire that judges right and wrong from his own standpoint. Those that want to see him dead are in the wrong. Those who don’t may not be right. The only one who is right is Geralt. The Witcher offers no easy choices. This is a game that thrives on challenging players to think, not just wander through the world in a hack ‘n slash escapade.

Action Trip has posted a very positive review of CDProjekt's new rpg, The Witcher, scoring it 91/100 and also giving it their Editor's Choice award:

All of us here at ActionTrip have been following closely the development of this one, hoping that we might finally get our hands on a decent single-player RPG, a genre which once has shone brightly, but its light is slowly dimming under the heap of pretentious and short-lived games.

As the day approached, we became more and more skeptical, if for no other reason than because this industry has thought[sic: taught?] us to be cynical; to expect titles with not enough marketing clout, with not enough draw for the Attention Deficit Disorder audience...Remarkably, the Polish-based team and the ailing publisher Atari managed to withstand this pressure, to crash against the waves in their makeshift raft and live to reach the high seas.

...From a technical standpoint, there are a number of gamers who have complained about the load times and admittedly, this is a concern. The loading screen will pop up way too often and at every single instance of this game. Interestingly, after the initial annoyance that it caused, I got used to it, and I have to say, at this stage of my Witcher experience it's not bothering me as much.

The reason why my aggravation has been dulled lies in the depth of the game world. The Witcher is an immersive experience on several different levels. While technically pushing the Aurora engine like no other title, the real draw is the rather unorthodox approach to the main character's moral choices...in games like KOTOR for instance, while available, the moral choices that the player had to make were as black and white as pieces on a chess board. And while this makes sense literally, one should keep in mind that the color of the pieces doesn't stand for right or wrong. It is a fight between pawns and kings - all with their tools, means and goals.

...Another issue, which stems from this rather unusual approach to game world building, is the absence of more spectacular and diverse loot in the game. A lot of the emphasis is put on Alchemy (potion-making) for some reason, while through Chapters 1 and 2 and well into Chapter 3, The Witcher has found one really good sword and is still wearing the Studded Leather Armor from the first chapter.

Still, one can simply argue that this is due to the game's design philosophy, and this would be in part true. The same can be said about the amount of dialogue in the game. Often times, The Witcher will seem much more like an adventure game than an action game. In fact, this is NOT an action RPG by definition. This is a...true RPG where dialogue and conversations take center stage over dungeon crawls.

Strategy Informer has kicked up a review of The Witcher, oddly complaining that the RPG genre is "over-explored" and concluding that The Witcher might suit jaded MMORPG players than hardcore CRPG lovers.  The score is 7.7/10 and here is a snip:

The linearity of the game demands a few sacrifices in the expected freedom most RPG’s now boast, and many quests or characters are simply unavailable until a specific in-game trigger has been pulled to progress the plot. While this might cause consternation for a diehard role player, the subtly of the forced direction and advancement of the overall storyline is repaid to the gamer (and then some) by way of an absorbing narrative that maintains a remarkable amount of empathy with Geralt. Indeed, The Witcher could quite reasonably be accused of being an RPG for non-role players; a game of middle ground and familiar mechanics for those who don’t want to wander the countryside murdering wolves or designing their own costume.

GameSpot has posted their review of The Witcher, awarding a score of 8.5/10 and really praising the combat (while ironically getting some of the details on difficulty and combat feedback wrong).  Here's the opening:

Don't be afraid of change. Even though The Witcher may scare off some people with inventive combat that replaces comfortable old rapid-fire clicking with rhythmic sword swinging, there is no need to avoid one of the deepest, most adult role-playing games to hit the PC in years. Polish developer CD Projekt has crafted one of those landmark games that moves the goalposts for everybody, a truly grown-up take on swords and sorcery that breaks just about every fantasy tradition in the book. Once you experience a grimy medieval world so realistic that you can practically smell it, quests that reject simplistic good and evil for ambiguous "decisions and consequences," and, yes, newfangled battle mechanics that add welcome twists to left-click scrapping, you'll find it awfully hard to go back to the usual D&D rip-off.

Thanks, Melvil! 

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a volley of Witcher coverage, centred on a feature called an An Hour With The Witcher.  First, there's some discussion about Atari's editing of the original Polish script, based on claims from a poster at Gamefaqs that he worked on the translation and knows lines were cut (Polish fans have discussed the differences on our own forums, so this is not new):

Someone called Martin Pagan posts on Gamefaqs, explaining that the script for The Witcher was given a decent translation, and then “butchered” to result in the garbled mess that now exists in the game (see the clip above - my favourite moment - and I stress, this is one continuous scene, no editing).

We can’t be certain Pagan is for real, but if it’s true, it certainly explains some things. Is this Atari trying to cut corners and save money on the voice recording?

I'm not sure how useful one hour's play is but here's a snip:

The second issue is the writing. Now, it’s not bad, bad. It’s just sub-average and amateurishly converted. Characters use anachronisms unconvincingly - for example, the Sorceress being referred to as a “Babe” a lot by the boss Witcher . The problem isn’t of course him using a diminutive (though there’s a particularly funny bit where he tells another Witcher to treat her with a bit more respect, before going back to calling her babe) but… “Babe”. Avoiding cod epic fantasy is one thing. This is another. [...]

But it’s worth remembering there’s a difference between writing and story. Most posturing writers will have probably read Robert McKee’s STORY and remember a section where he describes working as a script reader, noting that he recommended rejecting many stories which were beautifully written but fundamentally dull but never, ever wrote a rejection review for a story which was emotionally brilliant but apparently written by a Neanderthal in his own faeces… because if he did, he’d have been sacked. The name on the door is story department.

And in the story department, The Witcher actually interested me. I liked the world. I wasn’t so sure about the characters, but I wanted to know what happened to them. I was even interested in what the agreeably sado-mascohistically clad magicians were up to (especially because one of the bad guys was called The Professor, which ties into an RPS running joke we’ll tell you about another time). I wanted to know what happened next. Which, for the first hour of an RPG, no matter what failings it has, has to be counted as something of a success.

Gamers with Jobs has posted their review of CDProjekt's new cRPG, The Witcher, listing a few faults such as long load times but positively oriented overall:

The Witcher brings a lot to the table that we've seen before, but the end result is something unique. It's good, real good.

Based on a series of popular Polish fantasy novels, The Witcher follows Geralt, a sardonic wanderer whose past is long and bloody. You don’t customize anything about him before you start the game, the scars on his face and his penchant for swords and magic are all set in stone. The man has walked many paths, but conveniently for those of us who haven’t kept up with popular Polish literature, he can’t remember any of it. Rescued at the brink of death by his fellow Witchers, Geralt remembers the basics of sword fighting and sarcasm but little else....

 ...After all this there’s still a lot to say about the game. The story is well realized for the most part. Some warts will pop up here and there with a poor turn of phrase or a small plot point that could have been more clear, but not often enough to detract. The promised “lesser of two evils” decisions are in full force throughout the game, I’ve already been surprised many times by twists and turns in the story based on my past actions. No matter what happens, Geralt always has something to say about it and he’s rarely apologetic about the decisions he makes. I’ve regretted a few, but even looking back I’m not always sure I would have handled some things differently.

The Witcher is a good game. It's not always perfect, but it positively oozes with interesting moments and details well worth exploring. It's not likely to change any minds uninterested in story-laden RPG's, but for the rest of us it's a godsend in the current PC landscape. On any platform, the amount of control the player has over the shaping of the story is unprecedented in modern times. It's not an "Action RPG!" nor is it a "Which of my 200 spells do I want RPG." It's The Witcher, and it's about damn time PC roleplayers had something to crow about.

 In the latest batch of Witcher news,  Jolt.co.uk  has posted their review of CDProjekt's cRPG, scoring it high on all elements(8.2/10) and calling it an "rpg of rare quality":

Fans of the old Baldur's Gate games will feel right at home straight away. As with Neverwinter Nights 2, you can play the game from an old-school top down perspective, giving you a wide view of the environments that you are travelling through. A quick mouse click will have you travelling where you need to go in a pretty precise fashion. But for us, it's far more impressive to play with the third-person up close and personal viewpoint. It gets you in the thick of the action and uses a set up instantly familiar to anyone who has played any kind of 3D action game. WSAD does the job of moving you around, while the mouse takes care of the interaction and combat. And believe me, there's no shortage of the latter.

...The world in which all this action takes place is an interesting one. It's a sort of a dark, perverted version of the real world, only pushed back through time. There's disease rampant everywhere, and corrupt politicians abuse the populace for their own means while religion is causing wars and hatred everywhere, which admittedly doesn't sound too far fetched to us. It's almost like the writers are trying to make you aware of the real world's problems through a game. The actions you take, decisions you make and the morals you display will all affect the gameplay, but nothing is black and white. Whatever you choose to do, the results will be a voyage of discovery.

Next, Vault Dweller at  rpg codex  posts a link and some comments on this review at GameDaily, which is an exception to most of the reviews we've been seeing, scoring it 6/10 and making some rather harsh criticisms:

Like many things that come from another country, much of The Witcher gets lost in translation. Non-player characters spout random bits of dialogue that make no sense, come out unintentionally funny or said with the wrong tone of voice. When speaking with characters, players will feel like they missed something from previous conversations or a cut scene, since they'll make obscure references to people and events the player should know about. It doesn't help that the voice acting ranges from OK to downright awful. Geralt himself comes off as monotonously glum.

Gameplay only marginally surpasses that of a hack'n-slash role-playing game....

...The Witcher also has a day and night cycle, with the worst monsters coming out in the evening. Although there's nothing wrong with this, areas to rest and further the clock are spread out, and nothing is quite as annoying as waiting for some NPC to wake up, or for the sun to set so that some monsters can finally rise out of the water, but all of these issues build up to a larger one. It's hard to care about the story or any of the characters....

Finally, on a happier and saner note Gamebanshee winds up their Witcher week with a final article but promises more content to come:

The fourth and final day of our festivities for The Witcher includes the formulae for all of the game's bombs, oils, and potions, artwork for all seventy-two loading screens and sixty "flashback" images, and dozens of new art renders from the European Collector's Edition artbook. A spoiler warning is probably in order again today, since the "flashback" images are used exclusively to tell the game's story.

While our week-long feature has come to a close, you should be able to check back next week for some more Witcher content. There are a few other features I'm currently working on that just need some more time to finish up. Stay tuned.
 

GameBanshee continues their celebration of The Witcher release week with Day 2 and Day 3 special coverage.  There's lots of media and information on the skills but their review is the centrepiece.  The score is 9/10 and here's a snip:

And so, after over four years of waiting, The Witcher has finally stormed retail shelves. Given the fact that I just recently posted an extensive hands-on preview, I'm not going to talk a whole lot about the game's mechanics again. What I will do is give an update on my experiences with the game in the dozens of hours I've played since that article was written. The Witcher is quite long and broad in scope (even by RPG standards), so I wanted to make sure I was able to tell you exactly what type of game you should expect. Therefore, I've been spending almost all of my free time with it, having just finished the game this morning after clocking in well over 60 hours.

88% is the score for The Witcher at AtomicGamer, with their review praising the story and dialogue but lamenting memory leaks:

You'll realize quickly that the most compelling part of The Witcher is that the dialog is what pulls you into the world. The game engine is based on old Neverwinter Nights code, but has been tweaked and improved over the years to deliver not-quite-Oblivion levels of visual detail. The voice acting is passable, but the sheer volume of it means that some is better than others. But it's the actual dialog, the words that match the voice acting, on your screen that will make the difference. The story, based on a series of Polish fantasy novels, unfolds in an interesting way with plenty of unique twists and major happenings going on. This is a good thing, because while there are side quests, most of your sixty-plus hours with The Witcher will be spent furthering the main quest.

Steel_Wind from the NWN/2 content group DLA has posted some lengthy impressions of The Witcher from around the halfwat point.  To say they are impressed would be an understatement:

The spin in the gaming media is that The Witcher has been developed “in a style very similar to BioWare’s games and that if you like one, you’ll like the other”. While I don’t disagree with the overall sentiment, I think it’s only fair to clarify something we are perhaps a little better positioned than BioWare to comment upon: BioWare itself has never created a PC game as polished out of the gate as The Witcheralready is. The Witcher isn’t merely as good as a BioWare PC RPG; rather, based upon everything I have seen to date when playing this game and looking under the hood as to how it’s been developed, The Witcher is better than any BioWare PC RPG I’ve ever played. And I’ve played and kicked the tires of all of them folks. (To be clear, KotOR, which I consider to be primarily an Xbox title, still wins the overall best CRPG of all time, imo.)

So what makes The Witcher such a treat? Simply put: everything. It’s graphically leading edge and the art direction on the game is just awesome. The texture artists and environmental designers at CD Projekt have seriously raised the bar with the environmental artwork in this game. The authentic medieval feel to the buildings in The Witcheris, in a word, perfect. The look of The Witcher is like our own Tir Na n’Og design style used in Wyvern Crown of Cormyr, except on steroids; we absolutely love it.

The editors at IGN's Aussie branch have posted their own review of CDProjekt's The Witcher, seeming to share the main site's positive impressions of the game with a score of 8.3/10:

Welcome to a medieval game done right....The Witcher drops you into a turbulent medieval world, rife with disease and conflicts between different races. It's a world where things aren't black and white, where Elven freedom fighters use intimidation and violence to combat discrimination against 'nonhumans'.

but focusing quite a bit on their take on weak areas as well:

 We should also mention that while the world itself is populated by interesting characters, conflicts and decisions, The Witcher is lacking a final level of storytelling polish. You'll occasionally find that there's a bit of a leap of faith from scene to scene, when a short cutscene would have sufficed to link the two. Some of the dialogue seems a little disjointed too, like two completely separate conversations have been spliced together. And as is the way with sprawling RPGs, not every quest on offer is interesting, and you'll occasionally feel like a hamster in a wheel, being forced to complete quests that are there for the sake of padding in order to advance the plot.

A bunch of NA and UK reviews for The Witcher have hit the 'net - hopefully we won't double up on any of our previous lists.

GameInformer scores 8/10 and offers a scant couple of paragraphs that don't really support the score:

The Witcher’s traditional structure is a bit of a weak spot, but it falters more in its overwrought attempts to convince you that you’re in an unconventional fantasy world. You are supposed to feel that Geralt is burdened with decisions that are morally ambiguous, like whether to defend his employer’s medicine crates or let elves take them to treat their ill. It’s nice to get away from the standard good versus evil mechanic, but The Witcher’s method often forces you to select the lesser of two evils; it feels like nothing you choose matters since you can’t effect any kind of desirable outcome. Players should be rewarded in some way for their choices, not given a lesson on the inevitability of failure.

Bit-tech is conflicted and awards a score of 7/10:

This is a bit of a personal conflict, because I’m a massive RPG fan and The Witcher is exactly the type of game I love. There’s an adult theme, a complicated but scalable set of mechanics to master and an epic and inventively delivered narrative – just what gamers like I lust for. There are problems too though. Poor lip syncing, graphics which border on schizophrenic and frequent crashes and viewpoint problems – these are noticeable enough to dissuade the majority from playing the game.

The Witcher isn’t a bad game though, just an unpolished one which could have done with a little bit more thought and design work. The bugs and crashes will hopefully be eliminated in the future, but for the moment they are a semi-serious problem for the game.

Hooked Gamers says 8/10:

The Witcher is a fantastic example of what a creative team can do with a deep universe such as the world created by Andrzej Sapkowski. Give this team a powerful engine and a lot of freedom to interpret the source materials, and the result is a simply fabulous Next-Gen game that oozes style and ambiance. The beauty of it all is that it really doesn’t matter whether or not you have read the books.

Games Radar is effusive about the story and goes for 9/10:

The story focuses on you, Witcher "White Wolf" Geralt, one of a roving band of mercenary monster hunters. The crumbling fortress of their once revered clan has been attacked and the secrets behind your mutation abilities are stolen. It's your job to find a way to recover the secrets before they are put to nefarious use, all while finding out about your past and that of your dwindling clan. It's perhaps not the most exciting premise, but the presentation and pacing of the story is excellent throughout, from the lengthy opening cinematic even to the hand-drawn screens that guard the transitions as new areas load into memory. Most noteworthy are the cutscenes, which have been storyboarded and edited with real cinematic flair and, together with the voiceovers and script, make The Witcher one of the best examples of interactive fiction we've enjoyed.

Thanks, MikeZZ for these links. 

Russian site CRPG.ru also wrote in to say they have posted their review.  Although the article is only in Russian, they sent over a translation of the conclusion, and noted a score of 9/10 together with an award:

Despite all the technical and the "omg, it's loading again" issues The Witcher is an awesome and in many aspects a fresh gaming experience. A thrilling story is complemented with a fascinating combat system that doesn't turn boring througout the game and remains challenging till the very end. Mature world background and the necessity to make real moral choices without all that candy-fantasy stuff is simply refreshing. We have great characters an extremely charismatic main hero and a captivating storyline here. What else can one desire? Nice graphics? Visuals defintely please one's eyes. Great soundtrack? Here you have it, Adam Skorupa and Pawej Blaszczak created a real masterpiece, the music is simply awesome. October 2007 is sure a blessed by the RPG "god" time. It's amusing how a regulary "buried" genre can revive within two projects in a month. First, the Mask of Betrayer, than the Witcher. We just hope that the positive trend continues.

The Witcher official website has listed a slew of reviews for CDProjekt's new RPG, focusing on sites from the UK, Germany, Norway and the Czech Republic. For the full round-up, head here.

Here are some snips from reviews not previously covered by the Watch:

Yougamers,com:

Morality choices are de rigeur in games today but they're never more than "pick option 1: holier-than-a-Saint or option 2: cow-molesting-dwarf-eating-evil", which actually removes any real choice from you. The writers behind The Witcher should be congratulated for making a serious effort at disguising this lack of freedom as much as possible; many of the choices you'll make fall into very grey areas and the consequences of your actions rarely make themselves immediately obvious. Such complexity does mean that, at times, it can be quite difficult to keep track of just what the heck is going on, but then again, this isn't a game for kiddies.

GamesExtreme.net: (This one runs six pages and is a fairly spoilerless, detailed examination of the game.)

The Witcher deserves to be on the shelf of any PC RPG fan. It's a brilliantly executed take on Sapkowski's books and there is a reason that Bioware recommended it. The game is truly top notch and other PC RPG's should aim to top this as their benchmark...

...The lands of the Witcher are full of monsters but there are no greater monsters than humans, humans are capable of the most terrifying deeds of all. The game takes the motifs of Sapkowski's world and translates them into a satisfying and enthralling experience that has kept me entertained since the official release on Friday. Normally I'd wait for a review copy to appear from Atari but not in the case of the Witcher, this is too good to wait.

I think we all know this but just in case...

- Atari Announces the Launch of CD Projekt's Role-Playing Masterpiece, Available Now at North American Retailers -

NEW YORK, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Atari, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR - News), one of the world's most recognized brands and a third-party video game publisher announced today the North American launch of The Witcher®, the first game from Polish development studio CD Projekt RED and a distinctive PC role-playing game which delivers a thrilling story in a unique fantasy universe alongside stunning tactical combat. The Witcher is a Games for Windows title, rated M for Mature and available at the suggested retail price of $49.95.

In The Witcher players take the role of Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster slayer, who exists on the fringes of a complex society troubled by the kind of problems more commonly found on the front pages of newspapers than in a fantasy universe. Taken as a child, mutated, and trained in the arcane ways of the witchers, Geralt is a reluctant hero, who nonetheless finds himself all too frequently in the heat of battles that are not his own. His is a path he might not choose to walk, but walk it he must, guided by his head, heart, and only faithful companion - his sword.

"The Witcher is an unbelievably robust and exciting role-playing game that offers an intense world, unbelievable graphics, and an incredible story-line," said Lawrence Liberty, Producer, Atari, Inc. "Atari is eager to deliver with CD Projekt RED this outstanding game that strives to set new standards within the genre."

Based on the fictional world created by best-selling Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher is set in a unique fantasy universe where real-life issues dominate a troubled society. In this world there is no right or wrong, only decisions and consequences - consequences with which the protagonist Geralt must live.

For more information about The Witcher visit www.thewitcher.com and for more details about Atari's entire product line up visit www.atari.com.

After a short run of positive reviews for The Witcher comes GameDaily, who don't sound like they enjoyed anything about it.  The score is 6/10 and here's an except from the end:

The Witcher also has a day and night cycle, with the worst monsters coming out in the evening. Although there's nothing wrong with this, areas to rest and further the clock are spread out, and nothing is quite as annoying as waiting for some NPC to wake up, or for the sun to set so that some monsters can finally rise out of the water, but all of these issues build up to a larger one. It's hard to care about the story or any of the characters. Even though the game graphics generate some pretty good looking characters, they all lack facial expressions, and most don't even use hand gestures. With that said, characters rattle off lines while staring blankly into space, like statues with moving mouths. This game even has the silly role-playing convention where players can walk into any house and poke through the cupboards, cabinets and chests to take anything they please without repercussions. Then toss in the side story about non-human races like Dwarves and Elves forming guerilla squads against humans, and the narrative becomes almost impossible to take seriously, especially since the humans nicknamed these groups "squirrels."

...Kotaku's article isn't a full review but rather some impressions - and much more positive despite issues with the loading times:

Since I saw CD Projekt's PC action RPG The Witcher in action at the Atari room during E3 this year, I've been eager to get my hands on the title. Based on a series of short stories and novels by Poland's premier fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski, the title promised a rich, atmospheric world, statless leveling, an interesting, combo-driven combat system, and decision system that blurs the lines between good and evil. Happily the final title delivers, albeit with a few minor flaws and one relatively major one. If not for the absolutely staggering loading times, The Witcher would have easily been one of my top PC RPGs of all time.

Shacknews' review of The Witcher is glowing in its praise, despite noting some minor problems.  There's no score but here's a snip:

 As you may have gathered from my recent preview--which I recommend to those looking for a general overview of the game--I was quite surprised by The Witcher, due to both its shock value and its polish. This is a European RPG that actually lives up to its own hype, delivering on its promises of mature content, massive amounts of dialogue, and impressive presentation. No one element of the game stands out more than the other, which is a testament to how well-rounded an experience it is. As you trod through the Gothic, rain-soaked landscapes, you don't find graphical eyesores that pull you out of the scenery, but instead a coherent, logical portrait. There is no overblown musical score that draws your attention, but rather an atmospheric soundtrack which slowly lulls you into the world. The dialogue may be hammy at times, but it almost adds to the charm in a quirky sort of way. Everything just fits, allowing your mind to concentrate on the quests at hand and become embroiled in the day-to-day concerns of the witching.

Thanks, MikeZZ.

Justin writes that The Witcher is now available at GamersGate for those in the US (and with 3.7Gb of bandwidth to burn).  For those on the other side of the Atlantic, Metaboli also offers the game.

The first review from the US gaming web triumvirate is up at IGN. It's a fairly balanced article with a score of 8.5/10, despite noting some technical hitches. Here's an excerpt:

Geralt as the deciding factor in events is one of the reasons The Witcher works as a narrative and a game. The first couple of chapters of the adventure will offer up some moral decisions that may seem a little more cut and dry but when chapter three rolls around, the choices offered up are many shades of gray and it's hard to ever know that what you're doing is "right" by the video gaming standard of black and white right and wrong. Are you helping elves fighting for freedom and equality or terrorists that have just as much hatred of humans as humans have of them? Do the ends of preserving and protecting humanity really justify the potentially horrific means? Do I love Triss or Shani or just view them as toys for my amusement? These ideological, political, and personal decisions make the story and the game more engrossing as you sit there and wonder "what did I just do?".

As a footnote, we've opened a new forum for The Witcher if you'd like to discuss the game. 

TVG has reviewed The Witcher in a fairly short article with a score of 8/10:

Split across six different chapters, The Witcher is an overwhelmingly large adventure to play through. Embracing the moralistic dilemmas Geralt faces, many of the missions require a careful degree of thought, such as tracking down the guilty murderer through investigation and an autopsy. So large is the scope and substance of The Witcher that it can begin to get a little daunting, even for hardened RPG veterans. Admittedly the Track Quest option helps significantly, but it does reduce the game to little more than fed-ex'ing between checkpoints in a run-of-the-mill manner. 

Thanks, MikeZZ! 

GameBanshee kicks off a week-long celebration of The Witcher bunch of media and details of the skill tree for the main attributes, as well as a nice interview with chief designer, Michal Madej. The interview includes the frank admission they would have liked more freedom in the world exploration, as well as clear hints they have more plans for this franchise.  Here's an early snip:

GB: Which games would you say influenced and/or inspired you the most during development of The Witcher?

Michal: We were inspired by all classical RPGs with great stories, like Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, KotOR and the quite underestimated Vampire: Bloodlines. We were greatly influenced by the Gothic series, especially the feeling of a living world, freedom of choice and the realistic fantasy theme. But as it comes to combat, we realized we are much closer to console action-adventure games like God of War with exciting, spectacular and fast-paced battles, rather than turn-based combat or mindless clicking. Finally we always wanted to achieve user-friendliness and intuitiveness of great Blizzard titles like Diablo. We also were tracking some mistakes made in other games, just to be sure we will avoid them.