The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

triggercut · 2012-04-18T11:29:41.000Z

Tim James:

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.

I think the gamepad improvements for the PC–if they just focus on target lock-on and the other controls for in-world Geralt control–should be fairly easy to implement, even if a fan has to do it.

I know that there are folks who prefer the 360 lighting scheme, but that seems like it could be a tougher thing to patch in. I dunno.

I will say this: there are some great .ini tweak guides out there for PC, most of which suggest turning Bloom off with a quickness. By doing that, and by fiddling with the Gamma and Contrast in the game options, I feel like my PC re-play is a nice middle ground between it and the console version.

Telefrog · 2012-04-18T11:30:02.000Z

I know this whole discussion has kind of devolved to the point in which we go to extremes, but there really is a middle ground for swords and sorcery language between having wizards talk about genetics and the ecological impact of magic and having everyone speak in authentic middle english. Game of Thrones, for example, does a pretty good job of sounding kind of fantasy medieval without becoming incomprehensible to modern ears.

TurinTur · 2012-04-18T11:32:23.000Z

But… they know about genetics, and ecologism. So of course they are going to use some terms about them.

Deal with it.

TimJames · 2012-04-18T11:34:22.000Z

TurinTur:

Deal with it.

Now we need the sunglasses meme for this. Henselt seems appropriate.

divedivedive · 2012-04-18T11:38:39.000Z

farfrael · 2012-04-18T13:26:45.000Z

Telefrog:

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.

Well, yes but more importantly that basic, silly, easily fixed technical issues like this detract from the enjoyment of what is otherwise a great game. And it’s a shame.

farfrael · 2012-04-18T13:29:12.000Z

triggercut:

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.

Same for me. I’ll trade flair for technical excellence any day but it should be possible for CDPR to keep the flair and still get the basics right

triggercut:

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.

I hope my post came out as the former (“hey guys”) rather than the latter, that certainly was the intention!

merryprankster · 2012-04-20T10:56:47.000Z

So now that I am a bit further in I am loving this game. Sure it’s a bit clunky and not as slick or polished as something like ME3, but is sure does suck you right in. I love the world it portrays and the art design is just superb.

gmonkey · 2012-04-20T11:00:54.000Z

How is it not as polished as ME?

olaf · 2012-04-20T11:09:30.000Z

I played the first one on the PC. I dont remember it being hard. This game on the 360 is kicking my ass. Tutorial recommended easy…and probably would have recommended very easy if that was a choice.

merryprankster · 2012-04-20T11:10:54.000Z

gmonkey:

How is it not as polished as ME?

Clunky controls, hitchy cutscenes, odd animations that don’t look quite natural, etc…

Alistair · 2012-04-20T11:12:53.000Z

But what about the Witcher?

Scotch_Lufkin · 2012-04-20T11:16:45.000Z

I see what you did there. And I approve.

merry, your settings must be too high for your system, or you need a new video driver. None of what your describing in regards to animation or hitchy cutscenes is happening on my end, at least.

Controls you might just need a bit more practice? I fell in with them immediately, but I play a lot of different types of games.

gmonkey · 2012-04-20T11:18:10.000Z

merryprankster:

Clunky controls, hitchy cutscenes, odd animations that don’t look quite natural, etc…

Did this not make into the final game?

Vesper · 2012-04-20T11:41:18.000Z

The game should run smooth as silk if you have the settings at an appropriate level.

Just to put it into perspective, you should almost NEVER turn on Ubersampling unless you have an extremely high-end setup with SLI. My brand new gaming machine (i7 running at 4.5Ghz, 16 GB RAM, and a GTX 570) can’t run everything maxed smoothly.

TimJames · 2012-04-20T12:31:22.000Z

That reminds me: did we ever find out if ME3 was a step back in animation and lip-sync, or am I just remembering ME2 through rose colored glasses?

ME3 still wins hands-down in terms of direction and editing in cutscenes. Fewer odd gaps and awkward dead time.

Vesper:

The game should run smooth as silk if you have the settings at an appropriate level.

Nah, it still drops 60 fps for me with a 6970. “Appropriate settings” is misleading. Most of the time you lose a ton of fidelity for a moderate increase in framerate. Besides, it looks so great at high settings I can’t resist.

Obviously, no one should be using ubersampling unless they know what they’re doing.

Joe_M · 2012-04-20T12:47:57.000Z

Tim James:

Nah, it still drops 60 fps for me with a 6970. “Appropriate settings” is misleading. Most of the time you lose a ton of fidelity for a moderate increase in framerate. Besides, it looks so great at high settings I can’t resist.

I went about it a bit different. After turning on SSAO and realizing that it was essentially mandatory, I then went from a baseline of SSAO enabled and tweaked settings around that until I was getting ~30+ FPS everywhere. I know some folks like to have 60 but for me 30 is perfectly playable.

I may actually be able to play my EE today after a few mishaps (including a hard drive that caught fire). Can anyone speak to whether the EE does anything to make the narrative a bit more accessible to anyone with a fuzzy recollection of Witcher lore? Or is the additional content more like ME2 DLC, not a refinement of the main campaign?

Delta · 2012-04-20T13:00:40.000Z

What do the blue and green dots on the minimap indicate it?

Lynxara · 2012-04-20T13:23:53.000Z

Green dots are friendly NPCs. Blue dots are NPCs who trigger dialogue sequences that, I think, aren’t related to quests.

maxle · 2012-04-20T19:39:27.000Z

Uh, guys, while the points about ME3 not being anywhere near smooth are valid: Merry’s playing on the 360. He doesn’t need a new video driver.