There Is Light At The End
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2021
No it cycles through preset. It also uninterruptible by player, so you are stuck within animation, which was fixed in 3
The Witcher Game Series
- Thread starter WiseOldBadger
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
that's usually what ESG money implies, the fluoride stare in the humiliation ritual video should've told you enough.
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2019
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2018
I replayed The Witcher 1 over the course of the past month. I think this is the third time I've gone through it completely. My first time ever bothering with it was way back when it was first released but it was in a horribly shit state then, so I ignored it until they did the Enhanced Edition, which was my first full play through. Then I replayed through TW1&2 while waiting for the third one to release.
I'll probably take a break and then start TW2, which I already have installed and modded. Much like TW1, the only mods I'm using are a few bug fix ones. In the meantime, I might replay through the premium modules CDPR made for TW1, Side Effects and The Price of Neutrality. I think they were made to encourage people to use the modding tools to create further adventure modules for the game but it never really caught on.
Still like it a lot, especially the writing. The epilogue in particular is one of my favorite parts, specifically the way all the various plot threads tie together: the Salamandra, stolen witcher secrets, Order of the Flaming Rose, the White Frost prophecy, and Alvin.
The writing for the smaller story arcs and NPCs is quite good, too. That said, has anyone ever sided with the non-humans? I always go the neutral/witcher path, since it always seemed to make the most sense for Geralt, but I could see siding with the Order due to how much of a bro Siegfried is, however the Scoia'tael / non-humans (elves, dwarves) have nothing going for them narrative-wise. They're presented as just outright terrorists who have no problem killing random citizens, the non-human struggle in the Witcher universe is too big to present well in the game's limited narrative scope, and the main NPC for them, Yaevinn, isn't particularly likeable.
The game ends with several plot thread still open: the reason behind Geralt's resurrection, Geralt's amnesia, Geralt's connection to the Wild Hunt, and of course the assassin in the final cutscene. Speaking of that assassin, I've wondered if he was always meant to be another actual witcher or if the original intended implication is that the witcher secrets were still out there and someone managed to perfect the mutations.
The biggest problem with the writing is that it's very obviously translated. Even with the better translation they did for the Enhanced Edition you can still tell that the script has been truncated, especially if you play with the Polish VOs, and there's still the occasional ESL-y jank in it. There's a mod that restores a more robust script (it was locked away in the games files, even back in the original non-EE version, originally found by RPGCodex user OneEyedKing; you could probably still find his thread) but from the screenshots it looks very literal and clunky, obviously not intended for regular use. I remember CD Projeckt even admitting it was a problem and talking about how they hired English writers for TW2 and onward specifically to combat this problem, so that there'd be parity between at least the original Polish and English scripts.
Probably the weirdest thing about the game's writing is the complete lack of any mention about Ciri and Yennefer. Well, there is one random tavern NPC who tells the story of 'Cirillia' but that's it. There's no way Dandelion, Zoltan, or any of the Kaer Morhen witchers wouldn't bring up those two. I've heard that the head writer (who left midway through TW2's development) loathed Yennefer, so that probably explains it. Probably also explains why Triss has aspects of Yennefer's personality in TW1 but then changes in TW2 and (especially) TW3.
As for the other aspects of the game, visually the game still mostly holds up due to the strong art direction and visual design. Outside of a handful of godawful textures, the game doesn't look bad at all. It's impressive how CD Projekt was able to transform BioWare's Neverwinter Nights Aurora Engine. There's a handful of in-engine cutscenes that are technically impressive, with lots of action and moving parts to them, with those scenes being beyond what I remember BioWare themselves doing with their own updated version of the Aurora Engine for Dragon Age: Origins, which was released about two years later. Another nice touch added to the engine is NPC schedules; NPCs rarely stand around doing nothing all day, they instead wander around the hub area going to the bar, visiting other NPCs, and going to bed at night.
Unfortunately, whatever tech wizardry the developers did with the engine did not carry over to future-proofing it. The game ran like shit on my modern computer. I had to:
- Run the game in Windows 7 compatibility mode
- Turn off full screen optimizations
- Set the CPU core affinity to only two cores
- Turn off Windows 10's Gaming Mode and Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling
- make the main .exe large address aware
- Use the Nvidia Profile Inspector tool to force on v-sync, triple buffering, and set the FPS cap to 60
- set my monitor's refresh rate to 60
All that just to get it to run okay-ishly, though even then it was still choppy at times, all the while the game only utilized 5% of my CPU and 10% of my GPU.
I liked the musical score a lot. It's very subtle, to the point where a lot of times I barely realized it was playing at all as it mixes well with the general soundscape and ambiance.
Finally, there's the gameplay. I've never really minded the rhythm based combat system. The game was released in 2007, which means it was in development for years before that. I can't even imagine what sort of shitty action RPG system they would have given us if they had decided to go down that route, especially considering how mediocre combat is in TW2 & 3, and those two undoubtedly had much bigger budgets and more man power. At best we probably would've gotten some clunky, awkward Gothic-like combat system... at worse we would've gotten, well... a worse Gothic-like combat system, which is a frightening concept.
The alchemy and general prep stuff is still good, even in this more basic version of it. I've seen people say the alchemy system in TW1 is overly complicated but I never had a problem with it. Speaking of prep, I always thought it was a dick move not to give the player a silver sword in chapter one where 99% of the encounters are with monsters. I guess it forces the player to learn about and engage with the game's other systems early on, like potions and oils, but it probably filtered a ton of people.
This time around I didn't use the Full Combat Rebalance mod. To be honest, I didn't notice much of a difference, save for one thing. That thing being enemy spawn rate. FCR lets you turn down the spawn rates, which is great because my one major problem with the game is the horrid spawn rates. Drowners and other low-level monsters spawn at an ungodly rate in areas like the swamp. I usually just ended up spamming Igni while exploring areas with forever-spawning enemies. On the topic of enemies, though, I was impressed with how the game continues to introduce new enemy types right up through the finale.
The only mods I did use were bug fixing ones (the biggest being the Project Mersey one I linked to on a previous page). Possibly due to those mods, I never encountered any bugs with quests or anything that wasn't performance related. That said, while not actually a bug, the save game file size continues to bloat as you play it. The final size for my save folder sits at 6.64 GB, which is about half the size of the game itself, though admittedly I am a bit of a save scummer.
The various mini-games are weird but add some extra charm to the game, making it seem like there's more to the game's world than just questing and killing stuff. The fist fight game is clunky as fuck and easy to cheese via attacking the enemy as you see them move into their own attack animation. The dice mini-game is RNG bullshit and not really worth your time unless you're a completionist, though I guess save scumming it can be an easy way to make money. The drinking mini-game is goofy but charming, allowing you to occasionally get extra info out of NPCs by getting them drunk, though often it leads to nothing.
Overall, I still like the game a lot. It has a lot of charm and heart to it, you can tell it was developed by a group of dedicated autists who really wanted to make a Witcher RPG for the PC and who didn't seem to care much about what general audiences would think about it. The game definitely feels like a passion project wherein the developers cared first and foremost about what they wanted in the game.
The writing for the smaller story arcs and NPCs is quite good, too. That said, has anyone ever sided with the non-humans? I always go the neutral/witcher path, since it always seemed to make the most sense for Geralt, but I could see siding with the Order due to how much of a bro Siegfried is, however the Scoia'tael / non-humans (elves, dwarves) have nothing going for them narrative-wise. They're presented as just outright terrorists who have no problem killing random citizens, the non-human struggle in the Witcher universe is too big to present well in the game's limited narrative scope, and the main NPC for them, Yaevinn, isn't particularly likeable.
The game ends with several plot thread still open: the reason behind Geralt's resurrection, Geralt's amnesia, Geralt's connection to the Wild Hunt, and of course the assassin in the final cutscene. Speaking of that assassin, I've wondered if he was always meant to be another actual witcher or if the original intended implication is that the witcher secrets were still out there and someone managed to perfect the mutations.
The biggest problem with the writing is that it's very obviously translated. Even with the better translation they did for the Enhanced Edition you can still tell that the script has been truncated, especially if you play with the Polish VOs, and there's still the occasional ESL-y jank in it. There's a mod that restores a more robust script (it was locked away in the games files, even back in the original non-EE version, originally found by RPGCodex user OneEyedKing; you could probably still find his thread) but from the screenshots it looks very literal and clunky, obviously not intended for regular use. I remember CD Projeckt even admitting it was a problem and talking about how they hired English writers for TW2 and onward specifically to combat this problem, so that there'd be parity between at least the original Polish and English scripts.
Probably the weirdest thing about the game's writing is the complete lack of any mention about Ciri and Yennefer. Well, there is one random tavern NPC who tells the story of 'Cirillia' but that's it. There's no way Dandelion, Zoltan, or any of the Kaer Morhen witchers wouldn't bring up those two. I've heard that the head writer (who left midway through TW2's development) loathed Yennefer, so that probably explains it. Probably also explains why Triss has aspects of Yennefer's personality in TW1 but then changes in TW2 and (especially) TW3.
As for the other aspects of the game, visually the game still mostly holds up due to the strong art direction and visual design. Outside of a handful of godawful textures, the game doesn't look bad at all. It's impressive how CD Projekt was able to transform BioWare's Neverwinter Nights Aurora Engine. There's a handful of in-engine cutscenes that are technically impressive, with lots of action and moving parts to them, with those scenes being beyond what I remember BioWare themselves doing with their own updated version of the Aurora Engine for Dragon Age: Origins, which was released about two years later. Another nice touch added to the engine is NPC schedules; NPCs rarely stand around doing nothing all day, they instead wander around the hub area going to the bar, visiting other NPCs, and going to bed at night.
Unfortunately, whatever tech wizardry the developers did with the engine did not carry over to future-proofing it. The game ran like shit on my modern computer. I had to:
- Run the game in Windows 7 compatibility mode
- Turn off full screen optimizations
- Set the CPU core affinity to only two cores
- Turn off Windows 10's Gaming Mode and Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling
- make the main .exe large address aware
- Use the Nvidia Profile Inspector tool to force on v-sync, triple buffering, and set the FPS cap to 60
- set my monitor's refresh rate to 60
All that just to get it to run okay-ishly, though even then it was still choppy at times, all the while the game only utilized 5% of my CPU and 10% of my GPU.
I liked the musical score a lot. It's very subtle, to the point where a lot of times I barely realized it was playing at all as it mixes well with the general soundscape and ambiance.
Finally, there's the gameplay. I've never really minded the rhythm based combat system. The game was released in 2007, which means it was in development for years before that. I can't even imagine what sort of shitty action RPG system they would have given us if they had decided to go down that route, especially considering how mediocre combat is in TW2 & 3, and those two undoubtedly had much bigger budgets and more man power. At best we probably would've gotten some clunky, awkward Gothic-like combat system... at worse we would've gotten, well... a worse Gothic-like combat system, which is a frightening concept.
The alchemy and general prep stuff is still good, even in this more basic version of it. I've seen people say the alchemy system in TW1 is overly complicated but I never had a problem with it. Speaking of prep, I always thought it was a dick move not to give the player a silver sword in chapter one where 99% of the encounters are with monsters. I guess it forces the player to learn about and engage with the game's other systems early on, like potions and oils, but it probably filtered a ton of people.
This time around I didn't use the Full Combat Rebalance mod. To be honest, I didn't notice much of a difference, save for one thing. That thing being enemy spawn rate. FCR lets you turn down the spawn rates, which is great because my one major problem with the game is the horrid spawn rates. Drowners and other low-level monsters spawn at an ungodly rate in areas like the swamp. I usually just ended up spamming Igni while exploring areas with forever-spawning enemies. On the topic of enemies, though, I was impressed with how the game continues to introduce new enemy types right up through the finale.
The only mods I did use were bug fixing ones (the biggest being the Project Mersey one I linked to on a previous page). Possibly due to those mods, I never encountered any bugs with quests or anything that wasn't performance related. That said, while not actually a bug, the save game file size continues to bloat as you play it. The final size for my save folder sits at 6.64 GB, which is about half the size of the game itself, though admittedly I am a bit of a save scummer.
The various mini-games are weird but add some extra charm to the game, making it seem like there's more to the game's world than just questing and killing stuff. The fist fight game is clunky as fuck and easy to cheese via attacking the enemy as you see them move into their own attack animation. The dice mini-game is RNG bullshit and not really worth your time unless you're a completionist, though I guess save scumming it can be an easy way to make money. The drinking mini-game is goofy but charming, allowing you to occasionally get extra info out of NPCs by getting them drunk, though often it leads to nothing.
Overall, I still like the game a lot. It has a lot of charm and heart to it, you can tell it was developed by a group of dedicated autists who really wanted to make a Witcher RPG for the PC and who didn't seem to care much about what general audiences would think about it. The game definitely feels like a passion project wherein the developers cared first and foremost about what they wanted in the game.
I'll probably take a break and then start TW2, which I already have installed and modded. Much like TW1, the only mods I'm using are a few bug fix ones. In the meantime, I might replay through the premium modules CDPR made for TW1, Side Effects and The Price of Neutrality. I think they were made to encourage people to use the modding tools to create further adventure modules for the game but it never really caught on.
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Anon88
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2020
I’m playing through the Witcher games for the first time and I’m around the end of chapter 2 of the first game and debating if I should just skip to the second game. If I don’t finish the first game will I be confused about what’s going on in the second game?
Gravityqueen4life
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 29, 2019
Kinda. If you do skip it, watch the final boss and ending.
Super Hans v2
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
If you're getting filtered by the swamp, it's by far the roughest part of the game and where most people drop out. The game balances out chapter 3 and onward.
But if you're going to skip, you can just watch a recap of chapter 5 and the epilogue. 3 sets up the events of 5 and 4 is mostly a (extremely good) bottle episode.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
FCR has a "cheat" option during the installation that gives you bonus damage on attacks, allowing your steel sword to hurt monsters.
TBH the steel/silver thing is overplayed in the video games. Silver is definitely better against monsters but anything that isn't inherently magical (so most things) can be done in just fine by steel, even stuff like chorts and fiends, assuming you can stab those deep enough without getting mauled. Its a bit of a thing in the books that the monsters have been winnowed down enough that average humans can deal with them. Its worth noting the video games take place in the context of a major war where men that would normally be on patrol killing things like ghouls and drowners to keep people safe are dead in a field and being eaten as food by those creatures.
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2024
That's what the Knights Of the Flaming Rose were originally, designed monster hunters.
Normal humans are perfectly capable of killing lesser monsters like drowners.
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2018
There's the Royal Huntsman, who is a monster hunter, in the game. I think Jean-Pierre is also supposed to be a monster hunter but typically gets others to do his work. And, yeah, then there's the Order of the Flaming Rose, which was originally the Order of the White Rose but was taken over by Alvin Jacques, who repackaged them as humanity's protectors in order to gain support.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Yeah, and I was saying that the games deliberately understate that capability for you know... gameplay reasons.
"Well, we had drowner problems, then some of the lads grabbed some pikes and stabbed them all to death" is great for Geralt because it means he's one step closer to a much-wanted retirement, but sucks for us players.
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2022
In books it was all in context of how Geralt's trade is slowly going obsolete. The example given was peasants having a problem of a dragon eating their sheep; instead of hiring a monster hunter they just took some sticks and ganked the dragon during his beauty sleep. Later there's a situation where a manticore is blocking a trade caravan, and nobody could do anything about it until Geralt came and demanded outrageous sum to get rid of it.
Normal humans are capable of killing monsters if they gang up on them but a 1-on-1 fight on infavourable conditions still is a witcher-only domain.
Normal humans are capable of killing monsters if they gang up on them but a 1-on-1 fight on infavourable conditions still is a witcher-only domain.
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2024
Sweet Baby Inc. is not collaborating on the development of The Witcher 4, says the CEO of CD Projekt Red..
When your DEI is in-house
When your DEI is in-house
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- Joined
- Mar 22, 2022
Witcher 4 trailer really came just in time for people to be fed up with this shit across the board.
There's still time to unfuck this. They don't have to burn another few hundred million dollars. They will though.
There's still time to unfuck this. They don't have to burn another few hundred million dollars. They will though.
Chapalapachapa
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2024
hope the game sucks and those faggots at cdpr go out of business
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2024
I'm not sure I believe them. Between W3 and W4 Ciri's jaw and chin have tripled in size for no reason which is a classic Sweetbaby move.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Stop obsessing about Sweet Baby. There are a ton of companies that do this shit assuming their faggots aren't in house. They instead may have hired MAPs Love Games to be their consultants for all we know.
Don't turn Sweet Baby into the only thing to be on the prowl for. Sweet Baby is just the most known poz factory, but is far from the only.
regalterry
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2024
Unlikely to happen. Too much goodwill still left in the tank, especially after the "comeback" they did with Cyberpunk. Depending on how deliberately antagonizing towards the core audience the game is, we're unlikely to see their bottom line getting hurt before Cyberpunk 2, and even that is unlikely.
Just look at how long it took BioWare to completely and utterly crater into both cultural and financial irrelevance. CDPR are doing a speedrun of this, sure, but it's still going to be a few games before normies sniff the stench coming off the neovagina.
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2024
I don't think this is going to be an outright bad game.
My prediction is that this will be CDPR's Fallout 4, a very ok 7/0 game where you can tell it's a severe mechanical and thematic downgrade and a sign of bad things to come but it's still perfectly playable and enjoyable.
Also literally the first mods that are going to come out will be giving Ciri her W3 face back so that will make it more tolerable, at least for PC master race.
My prediction is that this will be CDPR's Fallout 4, a very ok 7/0 game where you can tell it's a severe mechanical and thematic downgrade and a sign of bad things to come but it's still perfectly playable and enjoyable.
Also literally the first mods that are going to come out will be giving Ciri her W3 face back so that will make it more tolerable, at least for PC master race.
All of this already happened 5 years ago, it was called Cyberpunk 2077.
The bad things to come are upon us.
Also, since Witcher 3's combat system and open world are both pretty mediocre to bad, I'll be impressed if they manage to make even worse ones for Witcher 4.