Witcher 2 is out

[Outlooker]

So I post a couple of screenshots that give a good impression of its atmosphere.

Some are a little thief-like, so maybe they are even inspiring someone a little bit regarding mission design.

 

Beware, those two are a severe threat to Americans, NSFW or or whatever you wacky folks call it :

 

 

http://img806.imageshack.us/img806/6242/witcher2201105172309183.jpg

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/3667/witcher2201105190038201.jpg

 

 

 

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767543772416/BBF01F578DFB51C9EA7AFA603C4A5AAE921CE4EE/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767542853616/DF9B539B7701B3B2358B515B3F6E42A8B01E8C9B/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767542684142/68E8088D9FAA51E7EE3437C4D3AEE2BC8C595ECD/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767541919751/543CA3F5D48FE2BB5003B253DCDA18BC07408CD5/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767541471759/DE72E07E07FCC2E0E37B631244D1FD9F3174B197/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767541078365/9275BC00E2C087A4A8C4A528969EAE36098CEFB0/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767540942925/0445FEF0871CA1F2DCB4138833FF89C39E0A9D91/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767550322363/2363BFDBDF1E912E44F5B1CEE7E5EB525BE1DBAD/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767550323416/67D7B1368C82FA1F9B3F6F508B0D13FCF8723395/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767550320975/5B9CC9D367DFC5A702CDEC4EEB302AC4C58E5BA8/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767550319153/17035E84120E7AC65456F833B6F3CCC39FC9EB9A/#.jpg

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540642767557675327/AC24434F80CEF8C96982623A5655B0789055D072/#.jpg

Edited May 19, 2011 by Outlooker

[Baddcog]

Oh no boobies, my american eyes can't handle, ughh... lol

 

I bought this and have been playing all day. Beautiful game. Running high specs pretty smooth. I turned ssao off just to squeak more performance.

It's noticeable in brighter areas, like the castle that's all yellow stone. The SSAO really adds alot in corners, but still with out it it's beautiful.

 

Gameplay, as far as exploring is (in town) a lot like morrowind, loot peoples houses in front of them, lol. Lot's of cutscenes, great storyline, though the devs love to use the phrases:

arse, ploughing, fucking, and fucking arse ploughing A LOT!!!

 

combat is fun and challenging. You have to duck, roll and block. Plus throw magic and attack together.

 

anyways, I'll talk more about it later. But I think anyone that likes medieval settings, scripting, cutscenes, stunning terrain, elderscrolls, etc... will probably like it quite a bit. I'm probably six hours in and barely scratched the surface I think.

 

MAJOR SPOILER

Already:

 

 

bedded a wench, saved a king, breached a castle, ran from a dragon, gathered a ton of stuff, saw a king (that I saved) get murdered ,got thrown in jail and accused of the murder, lost all my stuff, broke out of jail, regained my inventory (or replaced it at least), took a ship ride into town....

 

 

 

 

and the game's just begun.

[Jesps]

It is a great game so far. And I can barely run it with all the settings at minimum

[Fidcal]

Too early in the morning for my eyes to appreciate these images but I've saved them out to drool over later.

 

After years with Dark Mod that 4-corner hud seems obtrusive but I guess I could live with it. I'd even started to think our own light gem could be smaller.

 

I'm guessing it's mixed 1st and 3rd person view depending on actions but I'll browse later for specs and info. I might be tempted to get this. I loved Oblivion so I have to look at this.

[STiFU]

If you didn't play Witcher 1 yet, it's the right time to do so. After all, Witcher 2 is a sequel and many characters from the first game will return. I consider the first Witcher one of the best rpgs, along with Morrowind and I am expecting Witcher 2 to supersede at least one of those games. But I'll wait something like two months until I play it, because on the one hand, I'll finally be done with my thesis then, so that I can really savor the game, and on the other hand, I've read, that there are many bugs, which I already expected. After all, Witcher 1 was as good as unplayable on the initial release. Only when they released the "Enhanced Edition" with thousands of bugfixes, engine tweaks etc., it became such a great game.

[demagogue]

Well you guys said what I was thinking: "Looks like Morrowind" and "Must every RPG use the same style of HUD?" like I've also been spoiled by TDM's minimalism. Reading some of the descriptions it sounds like fun anyway. I still have a lot of RPGs to play through to get caught up though, esp Witcher 1.

[7upMan]

After all, Witcher 1 was as good as unplayable on the initial release. Only when they released the "Enhanced Edition" with thousands of bugfixes, engine tweaks etc., it became such a great game.

 

I think that's the most important point: If you can calm yourself and wait a bit, the game will get its bugs fixed, the content updated (like DLCs being part of a Game of the Year Edition or something) and you will also get it a lot cheaper. Also, many games get their copy protection removed at later stages, so this is an additional benefit.

[STiFU]

Also, many games get their copy protection removed at later stages, so this is an additional benefit.

Witcher 2 uses internet activation. After that you can play the game without the disc. I am not sure when or if the developers are going to remove such a copy protection.

 

This raised some questions in my head. Say, somewhere distant in the future, you want to play an outdated game that needs internet activation, back when it was released. What happens if the responsible company shut the servers down? I guess most companies would offer a patch to remove the internet activation, once the game is considered abandonware. But I bet every now and then, a game will slip through, remaining unplayable without a proper crack.

[Jesps]

You can buy it from gog.com drm-free. You have to register to get any of the dlc, but I do not think that the game it self needs to be activated to run.

[Baddcog]

I did have to register on their forums to get the DLC, and there were issues getting that to work at first, but within the first day I had it DL'ed. I think their servers just got slammed.

 

So far I haven't encountered any bugs. Tons of scripting going on so I'm sure it would be noticeable.

 

I got it on steam pre-order for $5 off (plus some TF2 promo content) so that's the dmr. And I wouldn't expect to get it much cheaper for at least 6 months. I don't buy too many full priced games so every once in awhile I'll pop for a new one. Only played one day so far but not disappointed.

 

--------------

The first section was the 'intro', took several hours. It was very linear, really confined to one path but you do make choices in dialog that effect how the game plays.

(ie: fight one guy or convince him to surrender - I chose fight and later in the game someone asks why you had to kill him).

So the layout of that section was linear but the dialog/choices fork the story some.

 

From what I've read there are now 2 very large sections that should be many hours of play time. I'm at the beginning of one and it's a fairly large free roam town with a message board of quests, plus several people around with quests, and main story quest.

 

I found traders and a smith for the first time here, crafted a sword and armor, sold a bunch of stuff. Explored town a bit, but didn't get past that. I suppose you can leave town and venture into wilderness, etc...

 

------

Also some of the bugs I have heard about were:

 

1-Avast virus interfering with the game running.

2-someone installed in c/programs and was getting an 'internal error'. reinstalled in another folder and it ran fine.

3-SLI and Crossfire systems need driver updates.

 

And I had Catalyst Control controlling my AA and AF, so when I started the game everything was basically fogged out. Looked like the sky box background color was rendering in front of everything else.

Once I switched it to 'let program decide' it was perfect.

[7upMan]

Witcher 2 uses internet activation. After that you can play the game without the disc. I am not sure when or if the developers are going to remove such a copy protection.

 

If that's the case, then fine by me, but many other games have additional copy protection parallel to Steam. Riddick Dark Athena is such an example.

 

 

This raised some questions in my head. Say, somewhere distant in the future, you want to play an outdated game that needs internet activation, back when it was released. What happens if the responsible company shut the servers down? I guess most companies would offer a patch to remove the internet activation, once the game is considered abandonware. But I bet every now and then, a game will slip through, remaining unplayable without a proper crack.

 

I think it was Jowood who in the middle of going bankrupt released a patch that removed copy protection of one of their games. But I wouldn't bet on the hope that any company would do so.

[Baddcog]

OK, I'm at about 12 hours. Probably wasted 3 hours forgetting to save after major fights, only to run into a beast or monster unexpectedly and get hacked down to size.

 

USE F5!!!

 

-------------

So I'm still at the first city.

 

Have done a few small quests, go take care of this guy, find this or that... And wandered in the wilderness a bit.

 

So basically you have a town about the size of Balmora (Morrowind) which you can wander around, check out most buildings, buy a whore, supplies, get random quests, etc...

 

South of town is a big swamp, forest, caves. Some big hills to climb. Monsters to fight, kill off for quests.

 

It's not free roam like MW for sure. The swamp is a pretty big open space you can wander around in, and then there are paths leading off to smaller areas, caves, paths that climb up on top of mountains.

You can't jump in this game, so you are limited that way. Can't jump off a deck, have to run down the stairs.. So climbing on mountain paths, every once in awhile you can mantle or climb a ladder (left click - plays anim).

 

There's a cool feature with your necklace, every 5 seconds or so you can hit z and it sends out a 'shockwave' that highlights important things.

So kill a beast in ferns, it's hard to see the corpse to loot it, but use your amulet and it leaves a glow/fog at the item. Same with plants that have contents.

So unlike morrowind you don't have to 'open' every plant to see that it's empty. You can only open the ones that have contents, same for crates, etc... And you can see the contents in dialog before you click on them anyway. Nice feature imo. For TDM it wouldn't be cool, but for a game like this where you're gathering stuff for potions, or just want to take coins, it's nice.

 

As far as the paths, they are obvious that 'I can only go this way', linear... But they are done really well, and anywhere you can't go is pretty naturally closed off. Say you can cross a stream, but can't go down it, it will be blocked with rocks, maybe vegetation. But not over done so it's obviously a wall. Just a few small rocks that blend in really well while letting you know you can't proceed.

You can't swim either so same thing, water depth/rocks are clear indicator but not cheesy.

 

You can climb up on some massive cliffs and look way down. Great views.

 

The vegetation in this game is great. I'm sure it eats tons of polys, but they have LODs for everything. Even inside the castle the walls are modeled bricks. I have LOD at medium and you can see them switch out to brushes (or at least flat models) but I think their lod has a slight fade out. Definitely not a strong pop like some games.

All the plants do it too, but there are so many plants that you don't really notice.

[stumpy]

if you have an old disc version of witcher 1 you might have problems upgrading it to the enhanced version, as the enhanced patch needs you to login to the witcher 1 registration servers, which are not available anymore due to them being used by witcher 2, there is a workaround though, and when you've fixed it, you also need a language pack eg twee_english_language_pack.exe in the same directory as the twee_upgrade.exe to patch the game, takes about 2 hrs to patch the game (takes two hours regardless of the speed of your computer), once you've done that, run the 1.5patch to remove disk protection and tages protection.

 

the language packs are not available on the official sites, you have to do a search for them, even though they are official language packs. (think its due to some idiots trying to patch witcher 2 with the witcher 1 language packs)

[Baddcog]

some things i noticed last night.

 

great anims for average folk. sweeping, scrubbing floors, kids playing with swords, guards sleeping on their halberts that startle awake when you get near.

 

anyone recognize some of the details on the chest behind the chest?

http://steamcommunit...797618600183004

 

beauty/inspiration shots

tower/wall

http://steamcommunit...797618600210534

sleepy gaurds

http://steamcommunit...7618600200937/?

looks at stiching on hood-great cloth in game, cloths are very well done.

http://steamcommunit...7618600200937/?

inside tavern

http://steamcommunit...7618600205469/?

 

can't hot link steam screens?

[Fidcal]

Ordered from Amazon for delivery tomorrow. I probably will need to try to my joypad working with this as I doubt there are key control choices.

[Baddcog]

you can fully configure keys or use pad. you gotta double click on the key to highlight it though, took me a min to figure out.

 

the key binds are pretty nice as is though. I only changed inventory from ctrl to tab.

[Fidcal]

Thanks. Amazon confirm I'll get this tomorrow.

 

I've now got Xpadder installed and working just in case. Half configured for Dark Mod. Easy to use once you know how but sadly a few more sentences of Help would have saved me quite a bit of experimenting and searching the net.

 

Anyway, probably won't need that for Witcher from what you say but I bet I need it for SkyRim in November if it's the same as Oblivion. I just wish I could get my Oblivion working in Vista to try that mod that Biker (I think it was) mentioned.

[jdude]

Could anyone tell me about their experiences with Witcher 1? I got it last xmas sale and I haven't really played it because of a lack of time, I got to the first village and quit but it failed to spark my interest. But I'm aware it could be like Oblivion, where at first it seems boring then gets really great.

[STiFU]

(No heavy spoilers in this post, just some general info about a couple of locations)

 

The great cutscenes got me hooked pretty fast, especially those that play when you're about to leave the village. You'll also face one of the more or less game-changing decisions you'll have to make then. So I'd say, just play some more and maybe even raise the difficulty of the game, if it bores you.

 

A friend of mine stopped playing the game in the third section of the game (counting the village as the first). You'll be in the swamp then and it is neither artistically nor gameplay-wise diversified too much, but when I was at that point, I didn't mind at all. The story also evolved great there and there was always this kind of tension. They captured the mood of that swamp very well, so I don't really understand how one can quit on Witcher.

 

But After that section and a brief return to the swamp later, it's all cool with an epic finale that also servers as the cliffhanger to Witcher 2.

[Fidcal]

Got it working but totally confused by the activation system.

 

After installing I was asked for the activation code. I could find no mention of where this code is anywhere in any of the manuals or paperwork. In fact it doesn't mention this system anywhere except vaguely in the t & c.

 

I did find an unnamed 4 x 4 char code on the back of the user manual. I now think it's the serial number but it is unnamed so at the time I assumed it was the activation code.

 

I tried to type it in but I was unable to type anything. That is, pressing the keyboard produced nothing in the input box. I hit many different keys both letters and digits. Hey - I even tried my joypad in case it had detected it and was expecting me to scroll through an alphabet starting with Space. No response.

 

Eventually I typed the code into a text editor then pasted it into the activation input. Still no indication of anything. Completely unresponsive except for a winking cursor.

 

In the end I gave up and pressed OK hoping it would reject zero input and tell me where to find the code and how to enter it. Instead it went through the activation process OK.

 

At some stage it spewed out a 10 x 4 char code as well. I don't know what it's for.....

 

I can only guess that it is intended that the user invent their own activation code and anything will do. So maybe it is now using my serial number as the activation code. Or maybe it's using the many random keys I pressed plus the serial number. I just don't know.

 

Why oh why could they not simply put in an instruction like "create an activation code. It can be anything you want. But you won't see anything while typing. Not even ****. We wanted to make it as difficult as possible."

 

Will I need this code again?

[Fidcal]

you can fully configure keys or use pad. you gotta double click on the key to highlight it though, took me a min to figure out.

 

the key binds are pretty nice as is though. I only changed inventory from ctrl to tab.

How did you do this? It sounds like you found an on-screen keyboard display. But how did you access it? The only config I can see is to switch between keyboard or joypad.

[Fidcal]

After searching the net I find it's under Video and Language on the Launcher! wtf.

 

But the advanced options panel is corrupt on my system. Note in the image below there is a screenshot showing how it should be but see my panel above it. Not only is that button missing but also the OK button.

 

Wait... I can just see it just below the Motion Blur.

 

OK, got it.

 

[Baddcog]

Yeah, having all that stuff on the main launcher is strange.

 

The one issue I have with it is my keyboard volume controls don't work in the game, so I have to make sure I have a good volume before launching, then adjust sound in game. a bit annoying as all my games have different vol levels, so I'm used to using my keyboard controls once in game.

[Fidcal]

Seems to be crashing for me - or rather hanging in the menus with no cursor. I have to exit with Task Manager.

 

I'm stuck anyway - and this may be a bug.

 

I can't see how to

operate the ballista. This is the ballista after the castle is stormed with the tower. (I don't even know how I got in there - it just appeared next time I launched the game!) There is no interaction so I don't see how to proceed. I've defeated its defenders. My next task is to prepare the bolt. There is a bolt in the device. I assume to prepare it one would face one of the winding mechanisms at the back and the interaction icon should appear but it doesn't. Been all round the damned thing and no clue as to how to operate it so I assume there is some bug. I want my money back. I'm wondering if there is a defender trapped somewhere out of sight and the ballista won't operate until I defeat every defender.

 

 

Overall the game seems to be controlling the player. Walk along. Click this to jump down in just one place. Click there to go up this ladder. And yes, you must go up this ladder. Led by the nose basically. I don't feel like I'm playing a game but watching a partially interactive video.

 

OK, I've googled around and a lot of players had this trouble. One says you have to stand in a very precise position. Even then it sounds hard to aim and shoot. Anyway, I'll give it one more go.

[Fidcal]

No. It seems to be broke.

 

If I were to give this game away, how do I de-activate it. I read somewhere I have to de-activate it before I can sell it or give it to someone else.