Monday, October 24, 2016

First Impressions: The Witcher (PC)


This is a (sort of) First Impressions article for the similar reasons that my First Impressions-type post for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind took me about 35 hours of gameplay before I felt comfortable putting my time and experience down into words.  So after 22 hours and 29 minutes with The WitcherI wanted to talk a bit about this first game in The Witcher series and not about The Witcher III which more recently came out in May of last year (2015)  This is The Witcher from 2007.

I first started playing a few months back, and even just the game asking a question about control settings took me a bit my surprise.  The question was if I wanted to play with the keyboard/mouse or just the mouse.  My preconception of the game was that it was Skyrim-esque, in that it was a 3rd person, over the shoulder fantasy adventure game set in an open world..  As it turns out, The Witcher could actually be played more like Diablo or Neverwinter Nights, with a semi-isometric camera angle and clicking where you want the protagonist to go.  I decided to use the mouse/keyboard option as I at first didn't know what the "mouse only" option entailed and that was what I became used to in the first area.

One thing I noticed was that your character, Geralt of Rivia, seemed to move a lot faster than the number of footsteps he was taking; it probably also didn't help that in the close up camera mode you are unable to even see Geralt's feet.  In the farther away view (mainly usable in the Mouse mode, but still usable in Keyboard/Mouse), Geralt seems to move more naturally, but I still personally prefer the up close, over the shoulder view.

Something that I love about the game so far, is the visual asthetic to this foreign world.  Maybe because the story of the game is Polish and developed by a Polish company, the game feels more foreign to me than say, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion or even Baldur's Gate.  And even though this world is populated by high fantasy standards such as Elves, Dwarves, werewolves, and wizards, there are flavors such as the names of characters and places, fist fighting in taverns, gambling by dice, and copious amounts and types of alcohol which all lend to  a very eastern European flavor that is not present in other swords and sorcery tales; now I feel like I am stereotyping and I apologize.

There is also a small part of my brain that tells me that I am either not "playing this game correctly" or vastly under-utilizing certain traits and skills in the game such as using magic, and brewing potions and oils.  Only last night did I realize that I missed acquiring a fire spell, something that would be of great use in the swamps and against these damnable plants sporting rotting corpses.  (Next time I play I'm going to see if I can backtrack to the camp where the fire spell was first supposed to be picked up).  I also forgot about how to brew potions and oils since it was briefly covered in the opening area, but I have been collecting everything that I am able to collect to, potentially, brew into a potion. One other area that I am pretty sure that I am deficient in is the money gathering department.  22 1/2 hours in, and I have only had one piece of chestal armor, which is the one that is given to you.  The armorer in the first large city you come to, Vizima, sells a suit of. . .some kind of armor that I'm not 100% sure about, but it costs 5,000 Orens (the unit of currency) and I only seem to have between 1,500 and 2,200 Orens at any given time.

As far as how the game looks and runs, some of the character animations seem off, the clipping of hair/hands/weapons and bodies move around, as well as parts of the character models glitching and extending off into infinity, you know, 2007.  All of these graphical defects aside though, the game is still very much playable and I have yet to come across something that completely hampers my ability to play the game (looking at you Fallout: New Vegas!).

So that is kind of where I am at right now, occasionally sexed, underpaid, under-knowledgeable and frequently killed by that bloody damn stupid carnivorous plant bastard.  I guess I just need to do some more grinding.  LEVEL grinding!  Jeez.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

P.S.  One last thing.  I love how the cities are populated.  You have characters who might typically be found at an inn, but maybe only during a certain time of the day, such as between dusk and midnight because that's when the musicians are playing, but not because the musicians are playing, but music helps to make a atmosphere more conducive to drinking.  Or, a Dwarf might wander between the inn and another named Dwarf's residence because they know each other.  Basically, these fictional digital people have fictional lives of their own (kind of).

P.P.S.  Oh, and another one last thing that I thought was pretty cool which happened when I was out by the docks and it started raining.  Everyone, with exception of the local guards ran from where they would normally be, and all huddled under the overhang of the walkway down to the docks.

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