The Witcher (video game): Difference between revisions
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| title = The Witcher |
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Revision as of 03:28, 15 December 2007
| The Witcher | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | CD Projekt RED STUDIO |
| Publisher(s) | Atari (World), CD Projekt (Poland) |
| Engine | Aurora Engine |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release | Europe: October 26, 2007 US: October 30, 2007 |
| Genre(s) | Action RPG |
| Mode(s) | Single Player |
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The Witcher is a computer role-playing game for the PC developed by CD Projekt RED STUDIO and published by CD Projekt in Poland and Atari for the rest of the world. Based on the book series of the same name by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski,[2] the game uses BioWare's proprietary Aurora Engine.[3] It was released in Europe on October 26, 2007 and in the US on October 30, 2007.[4]
The Witcher follows the story of Geralt, one of a few remaining "witchers" — travelling monster hunters for hire, gifted with unnatural powers. Taking place in a medieval fantasy world, the game implements detailed visuals. The natural light during various phases of the day is realistically altered, and the day and night transitions serve to enrich the game's ambience. The weather can dynamically change from a light drizzle to a dark, stormy downpour accompanied by thunder and lightning.
Story / Plot
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (December 2007) |
Many parts of the plot actually depends on the choices of the player since non-linearity is one of the game mechanics which the developers tried to emphasize in The Witcher. Thus, the plot exposed here is only one possiblity among several.
ACT I
Geralt finds himself on a carriage guided by 2 witchers, who lead him to one of the witcher's residences, Kaer Morhen. Geralt has lost his memory and doesn't recognize his 5 companions Triss, Vesemir, Eskel, Lambert and Leo. Soon afterwards the residence is being invaded for an unknown reason by bandits and assassins who all carry the sign of a salamandra. They are led by a serial killer named "Professor" and a powerful sorcerer named Azar Javed. While the witchers are fighting them back, the two salamandra leaders steal the precious secrets and mutagens from the witcher's laboratory. Leo dies in an attempt to stop the Professor. Both salamdra leaders escape through a short portal. After Leo's burial the remaining witchers decide to split up. Geralt heads south. The scene progresses in time and switches to a boy called "Alvin", who tries to escape from monsters. Geralt saves him and hands him to Shani, an old friend. Alvin experiences a vision, which proclaims eternal doom. Soon people were convinced that Alvin possesses inborn magical abilities. However Geralt needs to enter Vizima to find answers about the salamandra but first he needs to gain the trust of the local village's church to get a permission to enter Vizima city. Therefore the witcher slays The Beast (big spectral dog) that terrorizes the village. He finds out that the reason why The Beast has always been attracted by the village are the numerous sins of it's inhabitants, including the church.
ACT II
The witcher manages to enter Vizima city but he's being confronted by the city's sentinels, who accuse him of murder. He ends up in jail, where he sees the Professor being released from his cell. Geralt gets the offer to regain his freedom by killing a monster in the sewers. Geralt agrees and enters the sewer. There he meets a knight named "Siegfried" who offers his assistance. After the monster has been defeated both of them were attacked by salamandra bandits right before they leave the sewers. Geralt now seeks answers and teams up with Raymond Marloove, a private detective (reference to Raymond Chandler and his protagonist, Philip Marlowe, whom Geralt was compared to). Together they try to find those who are responsible for the salamandra. During their investigations Geralt notices that his medallion suddenly starts to vibrate in the company of the detective. Their investigation lead them to a sorcerer's tower in the swamps of Vizima. As Geralt breaks the seal of the closed tower to lure the person responsible, the detective reveals that he actually is Azar Javed, who attacked Kaer Morhen. He explains that he killed the detective to make use of Geralt and to let him break the tower's seal so Azar could steal it's treasure. A mighty volume, which contents are unknown to Geralt at that time. A battle between Geralt and Azar Javed in company with the Professor breaks out. Geralt is being poisoned through a gas bomb thrown by the Professor. As the witcher lies unconcious on the ground, both salamandra leaders escape through a portal once again.
ACT III
Geralt awakes in Triss' chamber located in the re-opened trade quarter of Vizima city. On a banquet in a nearby tavern where he meets the bard Dandelion and the princess Adda again, from whom Geralt lifted a curse 5 years ago, that had turned her into a monster, a Striga. The witcher figures out that she still has animalistic habits even as a human. Geralt is being informed that salamandra bandits kidnapped the young boy Alvin. The hero eliminates the kidnappers and saves Alvin once more. Afterwards Geralt is soon given a hint that one of the sentinels located one of the hideouts of the salamandra. While roaming the streets of Vizima's trade quarter Geralt identifies the pretended sentinel by a code phrase. At the same evening they gather at the sewer to gain access to a separated disctrict of the trade quarter, where the salamandra hideout is assumed. Indeed Geralt finds salamandra bandits in one of the abandoned houses. He discovers a mirror, which served as a communication window for the salamandra. Then he notices a teleportation rune on the table. The witcher picks it up and heads for Triss hoping that she can activate the rune again. After a day of recovery Geralt enters the portal reestablished by Triss to fight the salamandra leaders. He encounters Azar Javed, who flees through another portal. Therefore the Professor is willing to fight till death. Geralt finishes him and escapes from the salamandra outpost. At the exit princess Adda and a couple of archers await the witcher. Adda reveals that she worked hand in hand with the salamandra. She gives the order to shoot Geralt but Triss ports him away just in time.
ACT IV
The portal leads Geralt to a rural landscape at the southern parts of Temeria. There he finds the witcher Berengar, whose steps he was tracking throughout acts II and III. Berengar turns out to be a a mean bastard, especially to other witchers. Geralt heads for the nearby village where he finds Alvin. The boy explains that he and Triss or Shani have been attacked by salamandra while Geralt took out the Professor. Alvin has tought of a beautiful place and has suddenly ended up right in this village. Geralt then figures out that Triss has ported him to the same village to protect Alvin, whose visions have become more and more regular. Geralt hands him a "Dimeritan Amulet", that should help him to restrain his visions. On an isle close to the village's coast the witcher meets the "Lady of the Lake", a goddess who predicts him a destined fate. Berengar appears and reveals that he worked together with the salamandra. Geralt chooses whether to fight Berenger or realise him from blame. Both witchers draw their swords. The fight ends as Geralt kills Berengar and takes the medallion and the diary from Berengar's corpse or Berenger departs promising Geralt they will meet again. The diary recovered if the player kills Berenger unveils that his real intentions have been to kill Azar Javed. As Geralt leaves the isle, he noticed sentinels of Vizima. Geralt is told that elves and dwarves, called Scoia'tel, have taken the villagers as hostages, including Alvin. The witcher confronts the elven leader and demands to let Alvin go. The elven leader gives in and hands Alvin over. Suddenly the sentinels of Vizima appear and charge the hostage-takers. Alvin panics and ports himself away. Presuming the worst Geralt enters a boat and heads for Vizima city to finish the business with the salamandra.
ACT V
The king has returned to the city. However big parts of Vizima has been set on fire by elvish and dwarvish resistance groups. In the castle the king tells Geralt that his daughter Adda turned into a Striga again. He asks the witcher to lift the curse once more. Geralt then talks to Triss and explains what has happened to Alvin. Triss states that she has no clue where Alvin could be right now. She says that he could even have travelled in time. After pushing back the Scoi'atel resistance group Geralt enters the swamps of Vizima. There he's being attacked by hordes of monsters, but the Grand Master "Jaques" arrives just in time to drive them back. While doing so he proves the rumours that Jaques is one of the greatest sorcerers to be true. Geralt states that he now is in Jaques debt but the Grand Master refuses and claims that he just repaid his own debt to Geralt. Afterwards the witcher tracks down the princess striga in a grave and lifts her curse, the same way he did 5 years ago. Having finished the job, the witcher crosses the swamps to the old manor. He encounters count 'De Vett where he finds out that 'De Vett was the one who turned the princess into a Striga again. Knowing that 'De Vett works for the salamandra Geralt strikes him down. In the old manor Geralt faces hostile mutants for the first time. He finds Azar Javed and understands that the salamandra stole the witchers secrets and mutagens to create an army of mutants. The reason is however still unknown to him. Geralt hunts Azar Javed through the dungeons below the manor and manages to kill him. In a mirror he sees the Grand Master and realizes that Jaques is actually the one behind the salamandra. The witcher leaves the caverns and is now on the way to the Grand Master's residence in the temple square of Vizima.
Epilogue
After a short briefing with the king, where Geralt explains the situation, he fights his way through the mutants that now roam the temple square. Geralt finally reaches the Grand Master's quarter and encounters him in a peaceful environment. Laughing children are surrounding the Grand Master. Geralt however is determined to put an end to Jaques propositions. The Grand Master's explains his intentions in detail. Due to his inborn magical talents, he claims to see the future, in which an inevitable ice age will occur and humanity is going to die or become monsters. The mutants Jaques intents to create will be the only ones who are able to stop those monsters. But to make this happen all humans have to submit to Jaques and accept him as the new leader of the world. Geralt refuses that thought and challanges the Grand Master. Jaques manifests his vision and turns the environment to the image of his future. Geralt fights his way through the vision of Vizima which is completely covered in ice. With the strength of Geralts mind he is able to summon his friends into the vision, who are now helping Geralt slaying the monsters Jaques has created in his vision. As Geralt reaches the Grand Master he has to face him alone. Jaques still tries to persuade Geralt, but the witcher answers by drawing his sword and defeating Jaques in battle. Geralt puts an end to Jaques life, which causes the vision to collapse. He is now back in Vizima's temple quarter, where he examines the corpse of Jaques. He retrieves the stolen witcher secrets but, more surprisingly, he also finds a "Dimeritan Amulet" on Jaques corpse. The witcher tries not to think about it and closes this chapter of his life.
Geralt's business is done and all conspiracies have been unveiled. He collects the reward from the king and walks towards the castle's gates. Suddenly an assassin appears and tries to take the kings life. Geralt manages to strike him dead just in time. The witcher takes a deep breath and uncovers the assassins mask. He instantly turns speechless and realizes that the one he killed was not an assassin but a witcher...
Gameplay
There are three camera styles available when playing The Witcher. The game can be played from one of two top-down perspectives, in which case the mouse is used to control everything, or it can be played from an over-the-shoulder view, which brings the player closer to the ingame combat, but limits visibility. In all the views the keyboard and mouse controls can be changed to be primarily mouse focused or a combined keyboard and mouse approach.
The combat system in The Witcher represents a departure from most RPGs. Players choose one of three fighting styles. The quick style allows for faster, less-damaging attacks with a greater chance of hitting faster enemies; the heavy style deals more damage in exchange for a slow attack speed, and a lower chance to hit faster enemies; and the group style, which features sweeping attacks best used if the player is surrounded.[5] The player can switch between the styles at any point.
Each of these stances has its own unique combat style. Both of Geralt's main swords - the steel and silver ones - have distinctively different combat styles from the rest of weaponry, and serve very distinct purposes: where the steel blade is used to fight humans and other flesh-and-blood beings, the silver one is more effective against supernatural monsters and beasts (against some of which steel may have no effect whatsoever).
Alchemy is a major part of gameplay. The player can create potions that increase health or endurance regeneration, allow Geralt to see in the dark, or provide other beneficial effects. The recipes for these potions can be learned through scrolls, or by experimentation. Once the player creates an unknown potion he can choose to drink it, but if the potion is a failure it will poison the character. Each time Geralt drinks potions they increase the toxicity level of his body. This can be reduced by drinking a special potion or by meditating at an inn or fireplace.
In addition to potions, the player can also create oils and bombs, respectively used to augment the damage done by weapons, or as weapons in combat. Neither can be created until talent points have been allocated into the corresponding skills.
An innovative, time delayed decision-consequence system means that the repercussions of players decisions will make themselves apparent up to 10 -15 hours later in the game. This prompts the players to put more critical thinking into making each decision, and circumvents a save-reload approach to decision making. It also allows the game to have a unique approach to replay value, as the consequences resulting from the player's decisions can lead to great difference in the events that take place later, and ultimately a very different gameplay experience than in the prior play-throughs.
The nature of the options faced when playing the game rarely falls into the typical black-and-white morality present in most regular computer RPGs, and the players often find themselves choosing from the lesser of two evils rather than making a clear choice between good and evil, a situation more reflective of real life morality.[6]
Game engine
The Witcher is powered by a heavily improved version of the Aurora Engine by BioWare, modified for a single-player experience. A number of changes have been introduced to the original engine, some of them are described below.
World visualization
One of the most important features of the Aurora Engine is how the developers design the game world, and then implement that design into the final game. In BioWare's Aurora Engine the world is designed exactly as it was envisioned rather than using a tile-based system. All the environments are developed in 3ds Max and then exported into the game engine. As a result, developers can create unique game worlds, rather than recycling the same tiled objects over and over again.
- Light maps
- CD Projekt's version of the engine supports lightmaps generated in 3ds Max. Shadows generated this way are reported to look more realistic, and provide better game performance.
- Texture paint
- This is a special tool that allows the developer to paint the environment using custom textures. This enables the developer to make the game world truly unique.
- Skybox and water effects
- New realistic skyboxes and water effects designed specifically for The Witcher were added to the engine.
Rendering
All the in game and tool set rendering is done using DirectX9, and the engine now supports many different shaders (water effect, bump mapping, environment mapping, etc). Additionally the whole rendering system has been unified and a new light manager was added.
Other changes
Other important changes include the following: motion-captured animation, physics effects, new mechanics and combat system. There are also many other modifications, like introduction of portals, additional graphical effects (glows, advanced dynamic shadows, blurs).
TAGES Issues
The game uses the TAGES copy protection system, which has has been found to conflict with disc image drive emulators and react similarly to presence of SCSI and SATA drivers in the system, leading to a number of occasions where the copy protection system has prevented users from running legitimately purchased copies of the game.
These problems can be usually avoided by uninstalling the TAGES driver with the official installation program and then starting the game (which will automatically install the appropriate driver version).
Reception
The Witcher generally received positive reviews, with praise for its sound, graphics, and lasting appeal. However, some have criticized the frequent loadings, uneven pacing and clunky item/potion system. The current scores for The Witcher are:
- Atomic Gamer: 88/100
- CRPG.ru (Russia): 9.1/10
- Eurogamer: 7/10
- Edge 5/10
- Game Daily: 3/5
- gamona (Germany): 85/100
- Gamespot: 8.5/10
- Gamespy: 4.5/5 (Editor's Choice Award)
- Game Stats: 8.8/10
- Gametrailers: 8.6/10
- Gry-Online (Poland): 92/100
- IGN: 8.5/10 (Editor's Choice Award)
- IGN (Australia): 8.3/10
- PC Gamer: 90%
- PC Gamer UK: 67%
- Total Video Games: 8/10
- X6 (Norway): 6/6
- You Gamers: 87/100
- Gamer's Hell: 8.5/10
- 1UP: 7.7/10
- GameZone: 8.8/10
- Strategy Informer: 7.7/10
- Jolt Online Gaming (UK): 8.2/10
- Computer and Video Games: 8.8/10
As of December 5th, 2007, the game's cumulative score on Game Rankings is 81%[7] and on Metacritic, 81 out of 100 ("Generally favorable reviews").[8]
Localization variations
All the female portrait cards shown after Geralt's "conquests" were retouched to a more modest standard for the US release version.[9] The in-game Dryad was also reskinned so her hair covered more of her body in this release.[citation needed]
Some dialogue between characters is shortened in the non-Polish language versions. Lead Designer Michal Madej has disputed claims by fans that this was due to the sometimes crude language, but that the decision to edit down dialogue occurred because of production-related concerns in game development. Proof reader Martin Pagan noticed this shortened version during his work and writer Sande Chen confirmed that it was not due to censorship. Fans have theorized that it may have been done for voice acting cost savings, especially since much of the vulgar language has been retained. Such cost savings would normally occur during any shortening of dialogue, even in cases where no major crudity was involved. [10]
Contents of each edition
The following table lists the contents of each edition in addition to the game DVD itself. "CE" means "collector's edition" and "PE" means "premium edition".
| Edition | Manual | Map | Soundtrack | Bonus DVD | Guidebook | The Witcher" Short story | Artbook | Bestiary | Medallion | T-Shirt | Card game | Posters | Bonus music | Stickers | Leather bag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US/European/Chinese |  |
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| Polish | |
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| Hungarian | |
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| Russian | |
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| Russian PE | |
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| Russian CE | |
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References
- ^ "The Witcher Official Website". Retrieved 2007-10-13.
- ^ Aihoshi, Richard (2006-05-24). "The Witcher E3 View". IGN. Retrieved 2006-09-09.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Park, Andrew (2006-05-16). "The Witcher Impressions - E3 2004". GameSpot. Retrieved 2006-09-09.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "The Witcher technical information". GameSpot. Retrieved 2006-09-09.
- ^ Ocampo, Jason (2007-07-02). "The Witcher Exclusive Impressions - Combat and Story". GameSpot. Retrieved 2007-11-02.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Arulnathan, Justin (2007-08-24). "The Witcher TheGamerGene Preview". TheGamerGene. Retrieved 2007-08-24.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Overview over The Witcher reviews". Game Rankings. Retrieved 2007-11-28.
- ^ "Overview over The Witcher reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 2007-11-28.
- ^ Burnes, Andrew (2007-10-24). "The Witcher Preview". IGN. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Breckon, Nick (2007-11-07). "The Witcher Script Heavily Edited for English Audiences, Says The Writer". Shacknews. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help)