Check Out My Swords
Somewhat surprisingly, The Witcher is a game developed specifically for PCs, though it plays in many ways more like a console RPG. You play from a third person perspective, with the option to choose between three camera angles. F1 and F2 are more of a top-down view, and you click on the ground as you would in Neverwinter Nights to move your character around. The preferred perspective and method of control — according to the game as well as my personal preference — is an over-the-shoulder (OTS) camera and the use of WASD to move your character around in FPS fashion (select using F3). Left-clicking interacts with objects and people and attacks enemies while right-clicking uses Signs — The Witcher equivalent of spells. As part of the Games for Windows initiative, The Witcher supports the Xbox 360 controller in addition to standard keyboard/mouse input. It also works with Windows Vista — 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
 Looks a lot like Washington in the winter |
The majority of the game is spent running around talking to people, slaying monsters, reading books, playing FedEx delivery man, etc. — all staples of RPGs. While the game doesn't necessarily break any new ground in these areas, the quality of writing and the plot is certainly up there with the best of the genre. There are substantial differences in the game worlds and implementation, but personally this ranks right alongside games like Baldur's Gate 2 for having an involved and interesting story. Let's talk about some of the differences, though.
Combat is a real-time affair, although it can be paused at any time by pressing the spacebar to browse your inventory or give other commands. That still might sound like Baldur's Gate, but in truth it's not. Combat is a much more visceral experience, straddling the line between full-blown action-oriented gameplay and turn-based combat, but falling much closer to the former than the latter. Clicking on an enemy will draw your weapon — generally speaking, this is one of two Witcher swords, steel for humans and silver for monsters — and clicking on an enemy when your sword is drawn will initiate a sequence of attacks. After a set series of slashes, thrusts, and/or stabs, you must click on the monster again at the appropriate time to chain a second attack. Time this properly, and Geralt will begin another sequence of blows, more damaging than the previous attacks. Depending on the weapon, combat style, and skill level of your character, you can chain together up to five attack sequences — at which point all but the most powerful enemies will be dead.
 This is me, buffed out at the end of the game |
Skills are upgraded by spending bronze, silver, and gold talent points, in most cases acquired when you gain a level - there are a few other instances where you will gain a talent point, but these are the exception rather than the rule. Levels one and two can be upgraded with bronze talents, three and four require silver talents, and level five requires gold talents. The first ten character levels will give you three bronze talent points; the next ten will give you one silver and two bronze points; the final ten (maximum level appears to be 30, but it might be higher) you get one bronze, two silver, and one gold. There are three categories of skills you can upgrade: attributes (affect everything), swords, and signs - see below for discussion of the latter two. Certain attribute levels are required to reach higher levels with the combat skills (again, see below), and there are also a few special skills are only available after you consume a mutagen potion.
Weapon skills are broken down into two primary categories: steel sword and silver sword. Each category has three subcategories: strong attack (strength), fast attack (dexterity), and group attack (stamina) — you can have a sword skill one level higher than the associated attribute (shown in parenthesis). You upgrade all six areas independently, so you can potentially be very deadly against groups of monsters while using your silver sword and yet completely inept when it comes to using the strong style with a steel sword. The strong skill is best used against slower, more powerful opponents — faster opponents will parry your blows, interrupting your attack sequence. Similarly, the fast skill is for use against more agile opponents, and while it's not as likely to be parried by a heavily armored foe it does happen and even when successful it doesn't do as much damage. The group skills help to fend off multiple opponents, and become particularly effective when you're fighting three or more creatures at the same time. You can switch between any of the three attack modes by pressing a button, but you cannot chain together different fighting styles. Switching weapons requires more time and leaves you vulnerable to attack.
Signs are the other part of combat - think of signs as a quick mini-spell that doesn't leave you sitting around chanting, waiting for someone to stick a sword through your heart. There are five signs, the most useful (in my view) being the Aard (stun/knockout/push away) and Igni (explosion/fireball/ignite) signs. Others allow you to temporarily shield yourself — great for when you need to drink a potion or want to run away — cause fear/hex in nearby enemies, or set a trap on the ground (Quen, Axii, and Yrden respectively). Use of signs is related to your intelligence attribute, and you can have a sign level one higher than your intelligence — so level four intelligence allows you access to all sign levels. Again, on the hard setting signs are probably more helpful, or maybe if I had powered up the Axii/Yrden options they might have helped in a few battles. Most of the time, I found Aard to be sufficient, allowing me to stun enemies and then kill them off with a finishing blow, with an occasional Igni tossed in for good measure.
 Fighting a group of drowners |
Besides swords, you can also find daggers, torches, clubs, axes, hammers, and maces. While some of these might look cool, the fact of the matter is that none of them are particularly useful in combat compared to your swords. The reason is that your Witcher skills only apply to swords, so you don't get to chain together more than two attacks and you don't do as much damage if you're not using swords. The net result is that any other weapons you encounter are pretty much only used for being sold and earning money. The potential exception is the torch, which can provide light in dark areas. However, since the torch makes an ineffective weapon, you are better off using your potions to gain your night vision ability.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
I believe I covered that on page 6:[quote]Then there are the mini-games: drinking, gambling, and womanizing. Okay, the last one doesn't really count as a "mini-game", but the presentation does make one wonder if the developers/writers behind The Witcher aren't a bunch of misogynistic — or at least sexually repressed — men.[/quote]
Amazingly enough, I don't encourage young children to play 17+ rated games, and I wouldn't suggest parents buy this game for their pre-teen kids.
Foxy1 - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
I’ll make myself clearer, as you missed the obvious intent of my question: In your opinion,1) Does The Witcher portray women as vile temptresses, witches and whores?
2) Are women treated reprehensibly by all the male characters in The Witcher?
3) Is the underlying theme of The Witcher the sexual conquest of women?
4) As a father of a young daughter, were you offended by the objectification of women in The Witcher?
And regarding your comment: “I wouldn’t suggest parents buy this game for their pre-teen kids.” – what about teenagers (ages 13-17)?
JarredWalton - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
1) Yes. It also portrays men as depraved, evil, murdering jerks; other women are nurses, concerned mothers, peasants, old women, etc.2) Hardly.
3) If you're hard up, maybe? I can think of better ways to get my jollies than playing an 80 hour game just so I can see a few PG-13 rated scenes and cards.
4) Nope, because it didn't exist any more than it does in the real world. There are women that have sex for money, sex for pleasure, or hate men - all of these are present in The Witcher.
Perhaps you should notify people like Jack Thompson about this game; at least he would care enough to be outraged.
chizow - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Lighten up guy, you're 700 years early on the topic of suffrage and equal rights in a fantasy world. Its a video game, squarely marketed towards the 18-35 male demographic that dominates the industry (and most others too). The game is rated 17-18+ in Europe and M (18+) in the US, so be a good parent and don't buy it for your 13-17 year old kids if you don't want them playing it.homercles337 - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Why was there no time spent discussing the flawed DRM? Many people with this game have serious, game stopping issues with the DRM--FOR NO REASON. There is a 20 page thread at The Witcher Forums discussing this with no resolution.Overall though, i was happy to see a Witcher review right here at AT. :)
nHeat - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Without a doubt, that was the most idiotic introduction ever written on a Witcher review. Anyone else agree?vijay333 - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/edit...">http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article...tion/283...JarredWalton - Friday, January 25, 2008 - link
You might notice that this link is already in the article, on the last page. Thanks for reading. ;)chizow - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Nice review Jarred, I certainly agree with many of the points you've covered. I also wanted to give a BIG thumbs-up on incorporating some of the hardware/performance aspects of the game into the review to give it that techy edge. HardOCP has also done some featured game/patch performance reviews. I'd like to see more reviews of this type that bridge the gap between game reviews and bar graphs and help the end-user understand how they can improve their gaming experience.As for the game itself, I also found it very enjoyable. There's certainly some annoyances, many of which you covered in your review. My main gripe is with looting, how you can't loot while aggro'd and even something as simple as a "Loot All" bind key or making it closer to the center of the screen would cut down on the annoyance that is looting corpses. Some things I'd add to help new players or potential players is:
1) Books: Always buy Monster books for Bestiary entries ASAP. This will help advance some secondary/bounty quests and cut down on some of the running back and forth or frustrations with limited spawn monsters. Look for the Antiquary or Book vendors in new areas first.
2) Looting corpses: for Junk mobs, don't bother looting all of them all the time. Best way is to just find 1 readily available alchemy ingredient for each component and stick to only looting that (6 items). For advanced players, you can do this for each sub component too (18-24 items).
3) Gathering Herbs: same as above, only focus on the ones you need for specific alchemical values, ignore the rest. When buying books buy monster books first, then Plants if you have the extra scratch.
4) Sell everything unless you're sure you'll need it (meteorite, runes, potion alcohol, key alchemy ingredients), you can usually buy it back later and anything essential goes to quest items.
5) Food is pretty much useless, sell it off and keep only 1-2 stacks to help free up inventory.
Interesting comments about performance, glad you were able to compare on multiple systems. I ran the game with Vista 64 and 8GB from the start and found it very stable even before the 1.2 patch, but saw many others complaining about crashes in the forums. At first I wasn't sure if the game was /largeaddressaware but as soon as I got to Chapter 2/3 I saw the game would certainly take advantage of extra RAM and a 64-bit OS with all the zoning and transitioning. I've seen Witcher commit hit 2.85GB (~4GB system total) with another 4GB cached in Vista 64 but I'm sure they can improve load times even more.
I also found the game to be very CPU intensive. On a C2D E6400 @ 3.1GHz, the system would use 80-85% with CPU 0 pegged at 100% and CPU 1 fluctuating between 60-80%. Didn't really seem to impact performance until I ran FRAPs, at which point both cores would be pegged at 100% (similar experience with other games with FRAPs in Vista) and I would see a negative impact on performance with choppy gameplay. Upgrading to a C2Q @ 3.5GHz smoothed things out a bit, especially with FRAPs running. Only 25-30% (max 80% on Core 0) instead of 80% on a slower C2D. With FRAPs recording utilization hits 50-60% and gameplay is noticeably smoother with the Quad core. The Quad didn't address the brief slowdown I experience when zoning from indoor to outdoor in Chapter 3 (Trade Quarters) during the day. Figured this was a memory management issue and part of the reason transitions took so long, as the game is loading up all of the dynamic objects and NPCs.
Oh btw, when are we going to see that Vista 64 vs Vista 32/XP comparison? I know Derek was out sick for awhile so maybe that slowed things down, but we're starting to see more and more games that perform better/worst on 32 or 64-bit even if it doesn't show up on an FPS graph.
ghoti - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Thanks for the comprehensive game review, Jarred.