Who Am I?
I awoke today to a gray dawn, the rain pouring down outside my window. I looked around, uncertain of where I was... and come to think of it, who, what, and when I was. I stood up from my sleeping mat, glanced around the unfamiliar surroundings, and managed to find something that would pass as clothing. Opening the door to my room, I found a small package outside with a note. "You have amnesia. Try this — it will help." What the...?
 Deja vu |
Along with the note was a rectangular box with a strange looking fox head on the cover and the words "The Witcher" across the top. Opening the box, I found a shiny circular disc. Memories poked at my fogged mind: "It's a DVD — you put it inside a computer." My unknown benefactor appeared to be right; the box was helping my memories to return. Walking down the hall, I found a convenient table with food and a laptop sitting on it; might as well get started….
As I watched the opening sequence of this "game", I began to recall more of my past: books I read, people I knew, getting sick at tradeshows, working on computers, and doing something called "benchmarking" until my eyes bled. Another phrase kept popping into my mind: "A non-tech". Who or what that meant, I just couldn't guess. Back to the game, I was walking around a virtual world, talking to people, killing people, and occasionally sleeping with people. Every now and then, I would level up, regaining lost memories and skills.
While my virtual counterpart became more adept at slicing and dicing monsters, my real-world skill upgrades were less dramatic. Typing could be upgraded with 60 WPM and Enhanced Carpal Tunnels, with the level 5 upgrade being Speech-Recognition. Strength upgrades featured skills such as Mountain Biking, Hiking, and the ability to Lug around 20 Pound Desktop Replacement Notebooks. Stamina skills were similarly useful: All-Night Gaming Sessions, Extra Caffeine Tolerance, and Resistance to Tradeshow Meetings. Perhaps I should've started with the Intelligence category, however: Improved Wit, Analogies, Insightful Commentary, and Internet Author were available. Unfortunately, I ran out of skill points after choosing the Author upgrade — it was Improved Wit or the Nacho Champion stamina upgrade! At least you're getting a review, even if it is for a two month old game….
If you're thinking right about now that that's the most clichéd introduction to an article you've ever read, you're probably right. Nevertheless, the same cliché serves as the basis for The Witcher, a game developed by CD Projekt and published by Atari. Don't let that deter you, however, as what follows that generic introduction is anything but. The Witcher is set in a fantasy world based on the books of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.
 Believe it or not, there's a laptop on a desk inside |
Who? Okay, so most of us very likely don't speak Polish and have never read any of his books, but they appear to be extremely popular in Poland and they are being translated into other languages. I'm a huge fan of fantasy and sci-fi books, and I often wish that the stories in computer games could reach the same level as what we find in the pen and ink world. Some of my favorite games of all time have been based on literature — Neuromancer and Betrayal at Krondor — so I was more than happy to give The Witcher a shot.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
I believe I covered that on page 6:[quote]Then there are the mini-games: drinking, gambling, and womanizing. Okay, the last one doesn't really count as a "mini-game", but the presentation does make one wonder if the developers/writers behind The Witcher aren't a bunch of misogynistic — or at least sexually repressed — men.[/quote]
Amazingly enough, I don't encourage young children to play 17+ rated games, and I wouldn't suggest parents buy this game for their pre-teen kids.
Foxy1 - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
I’ll make myself clearer, as you missed the obvious intent of my question: In your opinion,1) Does The Witcher portray women as vile temptresses, witches and whores?
2) Are women treated reprehensibly by all the male characters in The Witcher?
3) Is the underlying theme of The Witcher the sexual conquest of women?
4) As a father of a young daughter, were you offended by the objectification of women in The Witcher?
And regarding your comment: “I wouldn’t suggest parents buy this game for their pre-teen kids.” – what about teenagers (ages 13-17)?
JarredWalton - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
1) Yes. It also portrays men as depraved, evil, murdering jerks; other women are nurses, concerned mothers, peasants, old women, etc.2) Hardly.
3) If you're hard up, maybe? I can think of better ways to get my jollies than playing an 80 hour game just so I can see a few PG-13 rated scenes and cards.
4) Nope, because it didn't exist any more than it does in the real world. There are women that have sex for money, sex for pleasure, or hate men - all of these are present in The Witcher.
Perhaps you should notify people like Jack Thompson about this game; at least he would care enough to be outraged.
chizow - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Lighten up guy, you're 700 years early on the topic of suffrage and equal rights in a fantasy world. Its a video game, squarely marketed towards the 18-35 male demographic that dominates the industry (and most others too). The game is rated 17-18+ in Europe and M (18+) in the US, so be a good parent and don't buy it for your 13-17 year old kids if you don't want them playing it.homercles337 - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Why was there no time spent discussing the flawed DRM? Many people with this game have serious, game stopping issues with the DRM--FOR NO REASON. There is a 20 page thread at The Witcher Forums discussing this with no resolution.Overall though, i was happy to see a Witcher review right here at AT. :)
nHeat - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Without a doubt, that was the most idiotic introduction ever written on a Witcher review. Anyone else agree?vijay333 - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/edit...">http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article...tion/283...JarredWalton - Friday, January 25, 2008 - link
You might notice that this link is already in the article, on the last page. Thanks for reading. ;)chizow - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Nice review Jarred, I certainly agree with many of the points you've covered. I also wanted to give a BIG thumbs-up on incorporating some of the hardware/performance aspects of the game into the review to give it that techy edge. HardOCP has also done some featured game/patch performance reviews. I'd like to see more reviews of this type that bridge the gap between game reviews and bar graphs and help the end-user understand how they can improve their gaming experience.As for the game itself, I also found it very enjoyable. There's certainly some annoyances, many of which you covered in your review. My main gripe is with looting, how you can't loot while aggro'd and even something as simple as a "Loot All" bind key or making it closer to the center of the screen would cut down on the annoyance that is looting corpses. Some things I'd add to help new players or potential players is:
1) Books: Always buy Monster books for Bestiary entries ASAP. This will help advance some secondary/bounty quests and cut down on some of the running back and forth or frustrations with limited spawn monsters. Look for the Antiquary or Book vendors in new areas first.
2) Looting corpses: for Junk mobs, don't bother looting all of them all the time. Best way is to just find 1 readily available alchemy ingredient for each component and stick to only looting that (6 items). For advanced players, you can do this for each sub component too (18-24 items).
3) Gathering Herbs: same as above, only focus on the ones you need for specific alchemical values, ignore the rest. When buying books buy monster books first, then Plants if you have the extra scratch.
4) Sell everything unless you're sure you'll need it (meteorite, runes, potion alcohol, key alchemy ingredients), you can usually buy it back later and anything essential goes to quest items.
5) Food is pretty much useless, sell it off and keep only 1-2 stacks to help free up inventory.
Interesting comments about performance, glad you were able to compare on multiple systems. I ran the game with Vista 64 and 8GB from the start and found it very stable even before the 1.2 patch, but saw many others complaining about crashes in the forums. At first I wasn't sure if the game was /largeaddressaware but as soon as I got to Chapter 2/3 I saw the game would certainly take advantage of extra RAM and a 64-bit OS with all the zoning and transitioning. I've seen Witcher commit hit 2.85GB (~4GB system total) with another 4GB cached in Vista 64 but I'm sure they can improve load times even more.
I also found the game to be very CPU intensive. On a C2D E6400 @ 3.1GHz, the system would use 80-85% with CPU 0 pegged at 100% and CPU 1 fluctuating between 60-80%. Didn't really seem to impact performance until I ran FRAPs, at which point both cores would be pegged at 100% (similar experience with other games with FRAPs in Vista) and I would see a negative impact on performance with choppy gameplay. Upgrading to a C2Q @ 3.5GHz smoothed things out a bit, especially with FRAPs running. Only 25-30% (max 80% on Core 0) instead of 80% on a slower C2D. With FRAPs recording utilization hits 50-60% and gameplay is noticeably smoother with the Quad core. The Quad didn't address the brief slowdown I experience when zoning from indoor to outdoor in Chapter 3 (Trade Quarters) during the day. Figured this was a memory management issue and part of the reason transitions took so long, as the game is loading up all of the dynamic objects and NPCs.
Oh btw, when are we going to see that Vista 64 vs Vista 32/XP comparison? I know Derek was out sick for awhile so maybe that slowed things down, but we're starting to see more and more games that perform better/worst on 32 or 64-bit even if it doesn't show up on an FPS graph.
ghoti - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Thanks for the comprehensive game review, Jarred.