Giaddon
2941
Oh, that’s too bad. I found it charming.
Was plowing a term in use at the time? Inquiring minds would like to know :)
Hahaha…Yeah my cat is gonna hate this game. Still I’m sure it will sell better on console than PC so Witcher 3 will be developed for console (Dragon Age and Crysis say hi). Remember, he who laughs last laughs the hardest. ;P
I don’t have any stake in this whole anachronism discussion, and wasn’t really bothered by the use of the term “special forces” either. But I did notice, right around the first time the term was used, those two special forces characters entering a doorway using what look like standard police/military doorway sweeping technique. Not that it troubles me too much, but I did find it kind of amusing. For all I know, that’s how troublesome peasants were cleared out of castles back in the day.
BTW, I would like to salute some of my favorite little things that occur early in this game that for me helped set the mood and draw me in. Forgive me if these have already been noted. (VERY MILD SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!)
I love the way that, after Ves brings Roche the key in the prologue, he dismisses her explicitly with a casual wave of his hand. Something about his hand wave just feels…right.
When the whole gang gets together for the first time in the pub in Flotsam and Geralt asks about Zoltan’s wedding, something about the way the dwarf says “Yeah…that got fucked” just sounds so forlorn and true-feeling. There’s just the right mix of angry and sad in the way he says that and whomever the voice actor is on that nailed it.
Hint - he doesn’t really wear a monocle.
I have to apologize to merryprankster. I got him confused with metta!
For me, the character that “proves” the writing is good is Iorveth. The setup is pretty trite: the man’s keeping him down, he has a secret love affair, and has a stereotypical mysterious connection to Geralt. If he were in a Bioware game, he’d be such a whiny bitch. I’d want to punch him in the face. I kept waiting for that moment to come in The Witcher 2 but it never did. He felt like a real character during his chapter. That’s an accomplishment.
I love CDProject Red to bits and the games they make but man … sometimes, they are really let down by the most basic technical problems.
Such as not playing all the brand new “intermission” videos if you are not using a 16:9 aspect ratio.
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/ee_videos_broken
BDGE
2952
Having upgraded my PC version to the EE and now owning the Xbox port, I am shocked at how much I vastly prefer the console version.
Though certainly not nearly as beautiful as the PC version, the alterations to the lighting engine and ESPECIALLY the brand new controller configuration make the Xbox version easily the go-to version for me.
On PC, gamepad support felt really clunky. Selecting magic/items, targeting enemies, and camera management never came together very well. Excessive management and button presses were required to do the things you desired.
On console, the team clearly overhauled the control scheme to fix many of these issues. Magic selection no longer demands clumsily pushing left twice in the quick-menu and hastily notching up/down to the appropriate spell. Instead the quick-menu now acts as a proper radius wheel where you can freely just aim and select your desired item/spell/whatever with tremendous ease using the analog stick.
More importantly, the lock-on targeting now acts identically to something out of Zelda. You target lock an enemy, the player maintains direct focus on the enemy, the camera stays framed to that target, and you are freely able to circle strafe and use any direct attack/spell towards your target. The PC functions far differently(locking-on is more of a formality really), and the new EE patch did not incorporate these changes unfortunately. Ultimately the act of playing the game is far more functional with a controller on the console version.
They’re the first company to ever issue a game overhaul update that needed patching, I guess.
I think his point is that the videos not playing unless you set the output to 16:9 is basic issue that should not have gotten through.
Jazar
2955
I can’t think of a reason why they didn’t apply this to the PC version. I hope the PC version gets a patch.
I do hope that they make the console controls for the PC a patch, but the more I think on it, it could be tough.
For instance, you’d have to re-do the UI in the menus and stuff, right? In the 360 version, I click on a potion, or book, or piece of armor and I have the option to “Use/Equip” or “Inspect”. In the PC version, right-click is inspect, double click is use or equip.
And while I love the 360 interface in the world itself (really like it for how easy it is to get to all your tools–bombs, traps, and signs), the console interface can be very clunky in the non-world screens. For maps, journal entries, and inventory, I think the PC has it beat hands down. Love just hitting “J” for journal.
So yeah, I guess I’d like to see something of a hybrid. Give me the left-bumper radial menu and combat controls in the world itself, but let me use hotkeys and mouse in the inventory/character/lore screens.
Fair enough.
I figure that it’s part of the tradeoff here. These guys do so much with what is clearly a fairly small-ish team that some obvious QA stuff is going to get through the cracks. They’re aware of it now and with their track record of fixing, I’m sure they will.
I guess my point would be that saying “hey guys, this is an issue you missed; be cool if you could fix it” is one thing. Scolding them for having a smallish QA fuckup on the massive and free content update they just gave everyone seems sort of mean.
Editer
2958
Exactly! I demand authentic period English dialog in my next fantasy game! Cutscenes should have dialog like this:
It’s awkward sometimes. It’s like telling your friend at work that he keeps dropping the ball. Not a big deal, but you kind of wish he wasn’t such a screwup.
You can’t always reason with them either. For all their talk about understanding PC gamers, I’m not sure they quite grasp the subtleties of, say, field of view. It took a while to extract non-16:9 modes out of them, and they ended up just zooming it in anyway.
The gamepad improvements could go either way like that. Cross your fingers.
BTW, I’m about halfway through “The Last Wish”, the first Witcher book, and the first translated to English. It’s the one that is short stories with some links to one another.
They’re real solid stories. Not great, but worth reading and quite enjoyable. What I guess I didn’t realize was that Geralt needing to meditate to potion himself up wasn’t just a game construct, but part of the lore. I mean…I like it in the game. It’s a neat way to handle things, as opposed to the more common way that stuff is handled where you’re swinging a sword in dire combat with one hand while swigging Gatorade with the other. I like that in TW2, potions are basically buffs.
But I was intrigued to have it reinforced in the stories as lore. The potions are highly toxic. They kill normals. Mutant witchers can survive their potions…but even so have to focus and concentrate through meditation and mind-over-matter to be able to achieve the higher functions that quaffing gives them.
Interesting note: the first book refers to Vizima as Wyzim. Wish I was better with foreign languages to cipher out why the CDPR guys preferred the former to the latter.
