The Witcher (video game)

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The Witcher
Image:The Witcher EU box.jpg
Developer(s) CD Projekt RED STUDIO
Publisher(s) Atari, Inc (World), CD Projekt (Poland)
Engine Aurora Engine
Version 1.3
Platform(s) Windows
Release date Europe: October 26, 2007
US: October 30, 2007
Genre(s) Action RPG
Mode(s) Single-player
Rating(s) ESRB: Mature (cut)
PEGI: 18+
BBFC: 18
OFLC (Australia): MA 15+
USK: 18
Media DVD DL
System requirements Minimum requirements
  • WinXP SP2 / Vista
  • Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 +2800
  • 1 GB RAM (WinXP) / 1536 MB (Vista)
  • 128 MB Video RAM with DX9 Vertex Shader / Pixel Shader 2.0 support (NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or ATI Radeon 9800 or better)
  • 8.5 GB hard drive space

Recommended requirements

  • WinXP SP2 / Vista
  • Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz or AMD X2 5600+
  • 2 GB RAM
  • NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or ATI Radeon X1950 PRO
  • 8.5 GB hard drive space[1]
Input methods Keyboard & Mouse
Advertisement for The Witcher at Gen Con Indy 2007
Advertisement for The Witcher at Gen Con Indy 2007

The Witcher (from Polish: Wiedźmin) 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.

Contents

[edit] Story / Plot

The game tells the story of Geralt of Rivia, who at the beginning of the game is brought to the witchers' fortress, Kaer Morhen, by witchers who discover him unconscious in a field. Geralt only has vague recollections of his life, and discovers he in fact died five years earlier, attempting to defend non-humans from an organized mob. Geralt gradually learns he is a very renowned witcher, and though he remembers almost nothing, he has friends and enemies almost everywhere who remember him. Through the player's actions Geralt redefines those relationships and choose his path in the political intrigue that surrounds him.

Due to the game' semi-non-linear nature, many of the plot's points are determined by decisions the player makes. The concept of the freedom of player choice was intended to be showcased by the developers.

The game's story is separated into five acts, each representing a different area and distinct set of quests.

Act 1. starts with Geralt the witcher desperately running from something. He collapses on the ground. He is rescued by other witchers and taken to the witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen. Geralt spends two days at Kaer Morhen to recover with the aid of Triss Merigold, sorceress and friend to the witcher. Triss seems to know and care for Geralt very much despite his having lost most of his memory of her.

[edit] 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.

A 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]

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.
New realistic skyboxes and water effects designed specifically for The Witcher were added to the engine.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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).

[edit] TAGES Issues

The game uses the TAGES copy protection system, which 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).[7]

[edit] Requirements check

Upon launching the game it runs a check of the computers specifications (such as virtual memory, graphics memory and processor capabilities) [8] If the requirements are not met the game will not load. This practice contrasts to other games which scan the specifications at the time of install and warn the user if the recommended quantities are not met. Due to this check, a number of people have been left unable to play the game without investing in hardware upgrades[8]. On December 20, patch 1.2 was released, the patch made it possible for the optional flag "-dontForceMinReqs" to be used in order to bypass the system requirement check [9].

[edit] Reception

As of December 5, 2007, the game's cumulative score on Game Rankings is 81%[10] and on Metacritic, 81 out of 100 ("Generally favorable reviews"), though user reviews score it much higher (9.1 and 9.4 respectively).[11] PC Gamer UK gave The Witcher a lukewarm 67% on the grounds that the plot was generic, the combat engine was poor, and the main character was lifeless[12]. However, PC Gamer US awarded The Witcher with "RPG Game of the Year." In addition, The Witcher has received numerous Editor's Choice and RPG of the Year Awards, many from publications or websites that scored the game in the mid 80s.[13] Kane Ikin from Alchemy SBS Radio said "...Despite all its problems... ...The Witcher is one of the best role playing games to come out in a long time"[14] The Witcher's cinematic intro was nominated for the 2007 VES Awards in the category of Outstanding Pre-Rendered Visuals in a Video Game. The nomination was given to Polish artists Tomasz Bagiński (Academy Nominee, director), Marcin Kobylecki, Grzegorz Kukus and Maciek Jackiewicz from Platige Image, who worked together with a team of about 20 people for a year on the game cinematic intro.[15]

[edit] Enhanced Version

At GDC 2008, CDProjekt announced an enhanced version of the game will be released later this year, with significant changes including new animations, expanded and corrected dialogues in translated versions and load times reduced by around 80%. This update will be available to download free for owners of the current version.[16]

[edit] Localization variations

All the female portrait cards shown after Geralt's "conquests" were censored ("retouched to a more modest standard") for the US release version.[17] 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. Proofreader 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. [18]

[edit] 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 "LE" means "limited 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 YesY NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN
European LE YesY YesY NoN YesY YesY NoN YesY NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN YesY NoN NoN
Polish YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN
Polish CE YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY NoN NoN NoN NoN
Czech YesY YesY YesY NoN YesY YesY NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN
Czech CE YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY NoN YesY NoN NoN NoN
Hungarian YesY YesY YesY NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN
Hungarian CE YesY YesY YesY YesY YesY NoN NoN YesY NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN
Russian NoN NoN YesY NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN
Russian LE YesY YesY YesY YesY NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN YesY YesY NoN
Russian CE YesY YesY YesY YesY NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN YesY YesY YesY

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Witcher Official Website. Retrieved on 2007-10-13.
  2. ^ Aihoshi, Richard (2006-05-24). The Witcher E3 View. IGN. Retrieved on 2006-09-09.
  3. ^ Park, Andrew (2006-05-16). The Witcher Impressions - E3 2004. GameSpot. Retrieved on 2006-09-09.
  4. ^ The Witcher technical information. GameSpot. Retrieved on 2006-09-09.
  5. ^ Ocampo, Jason (2007-07-02). The Witcher Exclusive Impressions - Combat and Story. GameSpot. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.
  6. ^ Arulnathan, Justin (2007-08-24). The Witcher TheGamerGene Preview. TheGamerGene. Retrieved on 2007-08-24.
  7. ^ "Missing NPC's Or am i missing something".
  8. ^ a b Petition to CDProject concerning game's system requirements check at start up (2007-12-19).
  9. ^ Fix to bypass Minimum system requirement. (2007-12-20).
  10. ^ Overview over The Witcher reviews. Game Rankings. Retrieved on 2007-11-28.
  11. ^ Overview over The Witcher reviews. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2007-11-28.
  12. ^ PC Gamer 182, December 2007, page 90
  13. ^ The Witcher Official Website Honors and Awards. Retrieved on 2008-05-09.
  14. ^ Alchemy Game Review : The Witcher
  15. ^ Müller, Martijn (2008-01-09). The Witcher nominated for VES Award. GameLegend. Retrieved on 2008-01-09.
  16. ^ IGNPC The Witcher Enhanced Edition.
  17. ^ Burnes, Andrew (2007-10-24). The Witcher Preview. IGN. Retrieved on 2007-11-17.
  18. ^ Breckon, Nick (2007-11-07). The Witcher Script Heavily Edited for English Audiences, Says The Writer. Shacknews. Retrieved on 2007-11-17.

[edit] External links