News: The Witcher Quick Look

Besides Killing Floor, I played a bit of The Witcher over the weekend.
If you're curious about the game now is the perfect time. It's on sale on Steam, and the sequel is being released early next year. Though the game is three years old, it's still one of the best western rpgs on the PC. 

Here are some quick impressions on the game:

Well they don't call this the Enhanced edition for nothing! These twins have more polygons and better physics than the character's face and body.In cut scenes, the breasts are independently animated from the body, a la Dead or Alive series. Actually, all of the women in this game are babes so far, and I haven't seen one with anything less than an F cup. Good work CD Projekt Red Studios! Well, now with the most important aspect out of the way, lets actually take a look at the game.

The first place you see is the castle where the Witchers train. What's great about this location is that it actually looks like a functional broken down castle. In many games, castles are weirdly structured, and you have many rooms created that are simply there for action scenes rather than an actual purpose to the structure. 

 Going through the castles you see cracks on the wall and things breaking apart. The walls are decaying and there is old furniture and paintings belonging to better days in the story. These paintings and portraits are interesting. They add an extra level of detail and give the castle an added sense of history and culture. In terms of sound, you can hear pigeons flying around and small rocks breaking apart from various places in the castle. Looking through the cracks in the floor reveal other sections of the castles, giving the player the feeling that everything is connected in the castle.

After leaving the castle, the main player heads south for a quest and stays at a village. In the story, the village has been the victim of strange possessed animal attacks at night, resulting in many deaths. Yet when we are introduced to the village, we see a well endowned and unarmed mother with her child walking alone in the open roads at night. What's the word for this setup? Ah yes, it's stupid. If in the story there is a history of attacks by beasts then why have these characters out at night? I understand it's a dramatic way to introduce the player to the village, but some more thought into the story would have been nice.

The combat is very simplistic, at least at this point of the game. Voice acting is average, and the cut scenes stale. By stale I mean that in cut scenes, people stand around like sticks and flap their arms when they talk like robots. It's a 2007 game made by a small European developer, so one can't be too harsh by judging them to today's standards.

The game is still beautiful after three years. The graphics have been upgraded with the enhanced edition and the lighting looks to be real time instead of pre-determined (The game has a day and night system). I don't know if the Director's Cut in the USA finally removes the censorship stemming from the sex scenes, but so far the only sex scene I've seen has been blurry, quick, and disappointing (hey, just like in real life!).

If you're on the fence, try it out. It's a bit like Dragon Age and other western RPGs. It has aged well, has a simple but fast combat system, and the graphics still hold up very well. I'm early in the story, but I'm attracted by the game's bullet point of having a true grey morality system. I'm looking forward to facing choices that are not clear cut or leave you wondering if you've made the right choice.