The Witcher: Extended Edition. AKA, o hod, he’s hot.
Posted by LSama on Oct 1st, 2008 in Computer Stuff, Video Game Shit | 1 commentAbout a year ago, I was pretty quick to snatching up The Witcher. I’ll be honest in admitting that my reasoning behind it was highly ovary based, because Geralt of Rivia was one of the hottest hotties I’d seen in a while. I am of the firm belief that if I’m going to sit down and spend copious hours on a game, there had better be an incentive, a reason for making me want to keep going. In this case, it was Geralt.
(I understand that the above statement might sound a bit..I dunno, shallow or petty, meaning that I’ve missed out on great games due to a lack of hot–but you ever notice how the really great games have hot? Castlevania? Final Fantasy? Chrono Trigger? Yea. Shut up.)
The first thing I noticed was the load times. Then, the mind-boggling dialogue. Followed by an iffy combat system and a horrendous inventory. But you see, I didn’t see it like that. What I saw was:
A bit of a loading time, but considering the graphics and the machine that I was running it on, no biggie. A hysterically FUNNY dialogue. A combat system that, while not great, was certainly not the worst I’d ever played, and the inventory didn’t bother me that much at all, as I’m not terribly used to playing RPGs like this. I didn’t know better.
However, with the release of the 1.4 patch, it’s now turned into:
A much, much shorter loading time. They’ve really paired things down in that department. The graphics are still beautiful, though they’re now much sharper, clearer. The world of the Witcher is a drab sort of place, post-war, so there’s a lot of gray, but where there is color, it really pops out at you, which is nice, particularly in clothes. They’ve recorded hundreds of new lines of dialogue, and it shows. Now, when everyone talks, it sounds much more natural. Things are explained better through dialogue; There were parts in the original when I was very confused, as what I was supposed to be doing–or why I was doing it!–was not explained very well, if at all. So points there. Some of it still sounds a little funny, but now it sounds more intentionally amusing.
Unbefuckinglievable.
The combat system…mm. In my opinion, it still needs work. The repetitive clicking on a mob, just to attack them? It gets old. I would rather mash a button that swings my sword than have to click on my opponent over and over again, but…You take what you can get. The inventory system? Oh, NOW I see why everyone nagged over this one. It’s SO much better, now that they’ve cleaned it up. Glorious, I would go so far to say.
All in all, the Extended Edition patch is awesome. It fixes so many issues of the games, as well as adds a little new content(2 new missions, hooray!). Best of all, if you bought the original game, you can DL the EE patch for free, which is just kickass.
So! If you played this game at launch, and were not impressed with it? Give it another go. It’s worth a shot!
You are absolutely correct about many things:
1.) Despite being given the stilted, testosterone thickened dialogue of a grunting bear, Geralt’s butt in leather is to die for. Oh, and he’s got great eyes. Yeaah…suuuuure.
2.) The dialogue has improved a little. Strongest places are during quest dialogues. It makes sense now! I know what I should do! The…uh…rest of the dialogue still makes me giggle like a thirteen year old.
4.) Loading time is nearly instant for me now, maybe a handful of seconds depending on what’s loading.
5.) Yep, inventory = awesome. You covered it already so..
6.) Mmm. Leather pants.
…What was I saying?