CD Projekt Shows Off The Witcher's World

[Ocelot]

Ah, the life of a Witcher. Strolling around a beautifully-rendered world, meeting a guy who likes to beat people up, and inspecting the shoe collections of unsuspecting non-player characters. Experience it for yourself in these new videos of The Witcher 2.

[chaoticprime]

The narrator complimented the townsfolk NPCs on ..."not being shallow, impersonal entities..."

If I had the choice of playing an RPG with NPC's just like every other RPG ever made, or one with interactive NPC shoe-repair that crashes constantly and needs patching just to be playable, and then fan-created patching to finally work correctly, I will choose the former.

All I want out of a game is for it to be fun to play. I did not enjoy myself very much when I paid fifty bucks for The Witcher, and the damned thing crashed on me continuously. The game, in the end, after all the patching, was really good.

I want to like this game, but I am still not going to buy it until at least a few months after its commercial release. Most western game-developers need to adopt a better policy of Quality Assurance.

If you have to focus on the good parts of a game by looking past the bad parts, you are not playing a good game--you are playing a bad game that you want to be good.

[The Doomhammer]

I'd rather interesting games with technical problems than bland games without them, myself.

The game is also not even out yet, a little early to be going on about bugs.

[chaoticprime]

I'd rather interesting games with technical problems than bland games without them, myself.

The game is also not even out yet, a little early to be going on about bugs.

Are you suggesting that not using the presentation of NPCs as depicted in this trailer makes a game bland, as in insipid?

CDProjekt has developed one game from the ground up, The Witcher. The game was so badly bugged they released an enhanced version of the game which fixed the numerous problems which made the game almost unplayable. Even this version, however, still had enough bugs to warrant fans to take the matter into their own hands and release a patch to make it work. I was fairly addressing the credibility CDProjekt has for game-development.

I want this game. What I want more than their trailer offers, however, is for the game to work right the first time. It is perfectly reasonable for me to want claims of the game being bug-free more than those about the most complex, yet still ambient, take on an RPG mainstay.

The game is not even out yet, I believe it is a little early to be going on about how its interesting take on NPC's standardizes a precedent that invalidates every other RPG ever made.

[The Doomhammer]

No. I'm suggesting that making games with features that are exactly the same as in every other game in the genre might get a bit boring, and i'd rather developers experiment and do different things and if those experiments result in a few bugs, then so be it.

An interesting game with Bugs can be fixed, but a bland game will be bland forever.

Even this version, however, still had enough bugs to warrant fans to take the matter into their own hands and release a patch to make it work. I was fairly addressing the credibility CDProjekt has for game-development.

I've never even heard of this, nor can I find any mention of a 'Fan Patch.' Mind posting a link?

[chaoticprime]

http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Witcher_Wiki is as close as I will point you to. The patches are not legal, and I do not want to link to such content on someone else's forum. There are quite a few patches, though, from removing the censorship to totally new quests.

[The Doomhammer]

Uh... what? Mods are perfectly legal last time i checked, they even released an editor with the game so fans could make them! And you mentioned fans making a patch to fix bugs - removing censorship (Which CDP ended up doing anyway) and adding new quests doesn't really fall under that definition.

[Ocelot]

I won't know exactly how bug-free TW2 is until next week, but I think it's going to be a lot, lot better this time 'round. For one thing, CDP is using its own engine for this game, which they themselves have stated is making it a lot easier to track down and squash bugs. For another, I haven't heard complaints of massive bugginess from game sites that got early review copies like Eurogamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Both those sites would totally call the game out if they were having major problems with bugs. CDP also had a far greater development budget to work with for TW2, and they are well aware that their fans are expecting a polished game.

I'm re-playing The Witcher in its final version, which I bought from GoG.com yesterday, and I see no evidence that it needs a fan patch. It's such a huge improvement over the original in terms of translation and stability that it's almost a different game. The fact that CDP spent the time and resources to improve their first game so vastly is a huge point in its favour, and I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[SiliconNooB]

I wasn't delighted with the stability of the Witcher, I still can't wait for the sequel though. I'm thinking it could be RPG of the year material.

[Drav]

This year isn't exactly offering up any stiff competition. We'll see what Deus Ex and Skyrim are like.

[shoptroll]

http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Witcher_Wiki is as close as I will point you to. The patches are not legal, and I do not want to link to such content on someone else's forum. There are quite a few patches, though, from removing the censorship to totally new quests.

I'm not finding much here in terms of a "fan patch". I am finding a number of things that CD Projekt did on their own to support the game. Censorship removal was accomplished with the "Director's Cut" patch. The 1.5 version patch added a couple of community submitted quests into the game, in addition to removing the DRM.

Also, fan patches aren't legal. If they were a lot of projects such as the Vampire: Masquerade - Bloodlines fan patch project would've been shut down years ago.

I'm re-playing The Witcher in its final version, which I bought from GoG.com yesterday, and I see no evidence that it needs a fan patch. It's such a huge improvement over the original in terms of translation and stability that it's almost a different game. The fact that CDP spent the time and resources to improve their first game so vastly is a huge point in its favour, and I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I'm starting the first game tonight mostly to get a taste of the world and to decide if this is a series I want to invest myself in before taking advantage of the pre-order sale on GoG.

This mod might be of interest to anyone playing the original game. It's supposed to be decent and adds another 10-12 hours to the game.

[Drav]

You probably won't get much out of the game if you only plan to play through the beginning. The tutorial section is pretty good, but after that it takes a long, long time to get going.

[shoptroll]

You probably won't get much out of the game if you only plan to play through the beginning. The tutorial section is pretty good, but after that it takes a long, long time to get going.

I've certainly heard that, I'm mostly doing this to get a feel for the franchise. Probably planning on sinking 5-10 hours right now. I have a couple other games I'm close to beating already so I wanted to finish those off first before committing to anything else.

[chaoticprime]

I won't know exactly how bug-free TW2 is until next week, but I think it's going to be a lot, lot better this time 'round. For one thing, CDP is using its own engine for this game, which they themselves have stated is making it a lot easier to track down and squash bugs. For another, I haven't heard complaints of massive bugginess from game sites that got early review copies like Eurogamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Both those sites would totally call the game out if they were having major problems with bugs. CDP also had a far greater development budget to work with for TW2, and they are well aware that their fans are expecting a polished game.

I'm re-playing The Witcher in its final version, which I bought from GoG.com yesterday, and I see no evidence that it needs a fan patch. It's such a huge improvement over the original in terms of translation and stability that it's almost a different game. The fact that CDP spent the time and resources to improve their first game so vastly is a huge point in its favour, and I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Thank you for mentioning this. I am very glad to know that they have taken significant action towards getting the game working correctly right out of the gate.