The Witcher improved and extended

Bought this from Steam on my new laptop last night. I got up to the part where you choose between going to the labs with the piece of ass sorceress and fighting the giant praying mantis thing. I picked the labs, then saved and quit before packing it in. From what I've heard, this game gets much better later on, and I can see potential this early on in playing.

I will say that the graphics and animation are hilariously uneven so far. Some of the characters, like the mage with the eyepatch, look really good, while others look pretty awful (piece of ass sorceress with 80s hair). The same goes for the environments. There's this shot in the opening scene of Geralt's wagon being driven to this castle. When the shot's on the forest and hills, it looks pretty bad, but then it moves to the castle, which looks kind of incredible.

So I've forgotten that I own Dragon Age 2, pretty much. This game is awesome. I'm only in the first chapter, so the world still feels pretty small, which actually kind of works. I wouldn't mind at all if the game consisted of episodes of Geralt riding into town and solving a local mystery. Combat is fun, but I'm playing on hard, which is pretty uneven so far, with no real progression in the enemies. You just sort of wade through cannon fodder and then get to a boss who hands your ass to you in pretty short order. But still, loving it so far.

Also, I find the casual sex aspect pretty hilarious.

The Witcher is one of those games that really took me awhile before I realized just how good it is. The damn thing just takes so long to click, and I don't think it's until I got into the city itself that I started to get caught up in it. At that point though when you have to work with fantasy private eyes, hunt monsters through sewers, and make a quick detour and have sex with a Dryad at some point? That's when I really fell in love.

And the end of the game has my type of choices. Reallllllllllly puts your ass on the burner and makes you choose between some real bastardly folks.

I love how this game is one of the few times I've realllllllllllllllllly wanted to walk the neutral path too. The shit that goes down due to stray choices is what really makes this game.

Yeah, no matter what side you pick stuff will happen that will make you regret your decision. For my pre Witcher 2 playtrhough I deiced to take the easy way out and just do whatever Triss tells me to.

I like that walking a neutral path:

Had to take a rather long break from this game for about a year. The most recent Steam Sale fattened up my games collection quite a bit (and helped me discover that my laptop is a lot beefier than I thought), and I'm using that as an excuse to play through and complete everything that I own. So, I'm on this now, and I tried to stick as close as possible to my first playthrough up to where I am now (pretty early-ish in Chapter 3). I might get spoilery, so if you're working on this game like I am right now or plan to play it soon, you may want to stop here.

So, one complaint that I have is the way the game handles what seems to be the big break in the Scoia'tel/Order of the Flaming Rose plot. I was thinking about helping out the elves, mainly because the head elf's character model has a better design than Siegfried, who looks like a retarded kid with a bowl cut. So I tell the head elf (Je'vainn or some shit like that) that I'll help him fight some monsters in some elven ruins beneath the city. Monsters! Ruins! What's not to love? A fair bit later (I've been working on other quests, too, mainly the contract stuff for money and XP) I run into Siegfried, who says that people have been disappearing in the cemetery, which is RIGHT THERE. So I figure I'll kill those monsters before the elf's monsters for convenience's sake. But it turns out the elf rebels have been robbing graves, and they've shoved some humans into a ghoul-infested crypt. So I rush in there and save those poor folks while the elves get away, and Siegfried ends up giving me bonus monies for making innocents my priority. What a good guy!

But then I get a journal message saying that the elven ruin mission has been failed (aww), and that the head elf guy is robbing Vivaldi's bank and that I need to stop him. So I run over there, and try to negotiate with the pointy-eared prick, but man is he ever an asshole. So I end up telling him to go screw (After trying to stay neutral. I kill monsters first, dammit) and wind up allied (I guess for now, anyway) with Siegfried, who despite his gorky looking haircut is not a dick, and the Order of the Flaming Rose. I have no regrets as to how this shook out (seriously, head elf is a shit bird), but the way the game builds to that split has the feeling of an accident rather than a point where I'm really deciding my storyline. On the one hand, yeah, real life happens like that, and I can always play the game again to see what the other branch has to offer, but the game goes from "Here, kill some monsters over here" to "MAKE A  DECISION" without really any sense of build up (keep in mind, we don't really know anything about the Order except that Siegfried is a more or less good dude while that one guy at the party is a racist shitheel).

It didn't kill the game for me or anything, but the whole thing did throw up a bit of a yellow flag to my narrative sensibilities, and I hope that it ends up just being a weak moment. Still enjoying the hell out of the game at any rate.

The story goes way off the rails by the end of the first game, but I still kinda dig it.

Actually it's weird how much I enjoy the story in this compared to the second one.

Finished it. So this was basically a high fantasy version of Metal Gear. I haven't even installed the second one yet (going to play some other stuff first), but I hope that the experience and seemingly bigger budget allows that one's story to breathe a tad more toward the end. The last act/epilogue of this game moves a little TOO quickly, and not in that "I wanted more way," but in that "I can tell that they were running out of money" way. The relationship with the kid is also very poorly developed, so when the (telegraphed) twist comes, there's not really any power behind it. The Wild Hunt stuff was also handled really poorly, and I can't help but there was stuff involving those characters planned for other parts of the game but cut due to budget.

All in all, a noble effort, and there are some pretty tough decisions here and there, but the writing is often weak enough that you have no sense of what hangs on your decisions, which for a game like this is a major flaw. Still, I had fun, and it was worth the discounted price I paid for it last year. If the second is as big an improvement as most everyone except for LaurenOrtega seems to let on, I think I'll be in for a treat assuming I ever get around to playing the damn thing.