huh I have EE and had no idea about this, I don’t even know if it is on the discs I have. But I downloaded it and am now watching the dev videos - very informative and interesting. Thanks.
It’s the same content of the EE. It’s for the people who have the normal edition, they offered for “free” the EE content.
Yeah I guess I never bothered to explore the bonus dvds : ) well at least now I have it on a disc, more comfortable anyway.
I thought you were a fan of The Witcher, Paul.
Damn you got me. I was pretending the whole time :/
Yeah, if a game have a making of dvd or a bonus cd, at least i make the effort of giving it a look, even if normally is crap. Shame on you!
:P
Hmmm, I checked the map, read manual, checked the music dvds (discovered Beltaine whose both albums I love)…but somehow I missed the “Witcher background” dvd that contains those interviews etc. Dunno why, just did :p
I am halfway through it now though.It is quite interesting to watch them talk about how they did not want to make their own technology “it is as if we wanted to make a movie, we did not want to invent a camera too” when now they did create their own technology and it seems to rock hard : ).
And how they say “even back then NWN engine wasn’t that great graphically”, heh.
There is another thing i forgot to comment in the books <-> videogames comparison. The sorcerers (sp?), magicians and their magic.
In the games they are “dumbed down”, because it’s needed to have a semblance of balance in the combat gameplay, also the plot doesn’t show how really powerful they are.
But in the fiction… wow. Because the fiction doesn’t have need for balance and it’s in part inspired by popular tales where wizards can do whatever they want, they are really powerful in the books. After reading the first books i have seen:
-Control of their bodies: They can regenerate body parts, change their physical aspect, or stop their age and be almost immortal.
-Long distance teleportation
-Lifelike illusions that can be “touched”. Perfect VR in a fantasy world, lol.
-“fire” bullets (magically created and thrown metal or crystal objects at super high speed)
-Insta-materialize a giant block of quartz around a person, encasing him on it
-Transform groups of people in frogs with a fast spell.
Basically they are demigods in the Witcher fiction, the only hope if you have to fight against them is attacking by surprise and inmovilizing them as they require gestures to do magic.
Not sure what you mean by the Triss - Yennefer parallel. Tris is her own character and she is in the books. She is not a “game only” character like Alvin.
I was hoping they’d bring Yennefer into TW2.
I don’t know about now, haven’t read anything about Sapkowsky recently but a few years ago he said something to the extend that he was tired of the Witcher series and had no plans to return to it.
HBO could make a really awesome TV series with this like what they are doing with the Games of Throne now. Wishful thinking, I know.
I finally finished this game and it was a really good experience. It’s interesting that I had tried playing The Witcher a couple of times before but for some reason it just didn’t grab me and I abandoned it on the Outskirts both times. After preordering The Witcher 2 I decided to give this game another chance and something finally clicked this time!
The story is fantastic and I loved the kinds of choices that were presented to me during the playthrough. The ending was great as well with the revelation about the Grand Master. Of course, the game is far from perfect and I didn’t like the constant back-and-forth and respawning monsters but it’s definitely very good and made me much more excited for The Witcher 2. I just can’t wait for May 17th!
Should I be playing this on normal or hard? I just started it on normal so I wouldn’t mind starting it over again if hard is a much better experience. I assume that I will only play it once.
Normal’s probably hard enough for a single playthrough from what I remember. Perhaps avoid walkthroughs and strategy tips unless you get stuck.
flyinj
1894
I seem to recall it being pretty damn hard even on normal. Could be overly frustrating on hard.
I’m playing it now on hard (restarting after an original playthrough that trailed off in act 2), and I think it works quite well. It actually hasn’t been all that difficult, aside from the infamously ridiculous difficulty spike of the act 1 big bad. You need to stay on your toes and use potions, but being forced to make use of alchemy is all to the good IMO.
A tip for when you hit the end of act 1, though: You can save after the cutscene that leads in to the fight after the Beast. Just hammer the quicksave key the second after the cutscene ends. This will make the bazillion reloads marginally more endurable.
Oh, and another spoiler-free tip for anyone just starting that I wish I’d known:
There’s a quest in act 2 called “Vizima Confidential”. Be aware that this quest is vastly more complex than you’re expecting. There are branches, twists, and turns in it. Seemingly unrelated decisions will influence outcomes in non-obvious ways. The writing, or possibly the translation, does a very bad job of communicating this.
You don’t want any hints or spoilers for how things will go down. Just keep in mind: It’s complex, and choices have consequences. You aren’t being railroaded. You don’t need to take the path of least resistance. It largely plays fair with you, but I found it very easy to not realize that I had a choice at various stages.
I played on Normal and the game was really challenging on the beginning (up to the infamous fight that Damien mentioned). After that, it was pretty easy. There was nothing after Act 1 that came close to the Beast fight in terms of difficulty. Since I play these types of games for the story and not for the combat, I was satisfied with the difficulty level.
Personally I recommend hard. It makes alchemy and combat overall a lot more fun. Just don’t forget spectre oil for beast fight.
On the other hand, don’t sweat over the choices too much. There’s never any real “right” choice - in most cases no matter which way you go you’re gonna get some shit dumped on you.
I really liked the Witcher but my computer kept messing up in the Crypt area in the 2nd Act where I was trying to mine XP. Whenever ghosts, graviers (sp?), or ghouls showed up the graphics would just absolutely churn and sputter into a laggish nightmare. I tried getting help from Steam, Atari, and Witcher/CDProjekt and got the run around till I just gave up on the game. I absolutely loved the combat system. I may try to return to it someday but just thinking about having to redo all the first act just bums me out.
