Nelson Schneider's Game Review of The Witcher

No Polack Jokes Required
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/28/12

Poland: The very mention of that Eastern European nation doesn’t exactly bring to mind a thriving videogame development community so much as it does square-headed bohemians with spectacular moustaches and hook-nosed grannies in headscarves. Yet Poland is indeed a legitimate power in the world of videogames, thanks in large part to CD Projekt. CD Projekt started as a simple localization company, translating some of the best PC RPGs made during BioWare’s golden age into a variety of Slavic languages. On top of their localization business, CD Projekt is also the driving force behind the cheap, DRM-free digital distribution movement; providing worldwide, one-price access to some of the greatest PC games ever made through Good Old Games (GOG.com).

With an incredibly-popular (in the Eastern Block) localization service and a universally-beloved digital distribution service under their control, it was only a matter of time before CD Projekt decided to develop and publish some original games of their own. Their inaugural effort, “The Witcher,” is based on the short stories and novels of Poland’s most popular fantasy author, Andrzej Sapkowski.

But in an industry environment dominated by stupid ethnocentrism and arguments over whether or not the fictional “W”RPG is better than the equally-fictional “J”RPG, where would an “EEBRPG” (Eastern Europe Block Role Playing Game) fit into the spectrum? And could a game based upon such obscure source material (being the most popular thing in Poland is about as exciting as being the tallest Hobbit in The Shire) find an audience outside of its homeland?

Presentation
Because of CD Projekt’s familiarity with BioWare’s games, it comes as no surprise that “The Witcher” was built using the Aurora Engine – the same engine that powered the original “Neverwinter Nights” and its expansions. However, “The Witcher” doesn’t really look like “Neverwinter Nights” thanks to the large amount of effort that was put into the character models, textures, and lighting. While “Neverwinter Nights” was released in 2002 and “The Witcher” was released in 2007/2008, the latter looks like a 7th Generation game rather than a 6th Generation game.

Of course, pushing an old engine past its intended capabilities is just asking for trouble. “The Witcher’s” troubles manifest in decidedly Uncanny Valley characters with dead, glassy eyes and incredibly high hardware requirements to make the engine run smoothly. Yes, the game has great-looking textures, insane draw distances, and cool lighting effects… but running them on a system that was good in 2007/2008 requires turning-off most of the fanciest visuals (of course, running the game on a modern graphics card makes it look quite impressive). “The Witcher” also suffers a bit from a small cast of character models. There are several important characters throughout the game that are just pallet swaps of generic townsfolk, which puts a dent in the game world’s believability.

The non-game engine graphics have two noteworthy portions. First, the CG cutscene that serves as the game’s intro is quite long and looks spectacular. Second, the game’s between-chapter cutscenes and loading screens are static images done in a striking, impressionistic style that adds a lot of interest and character to what would otherwise be a just another attempt at a photorealistic graphics engine.

The game’s audio is quite impressive. The soundtrack, while not particularly catchy (like so many Japanese games), is still a joy to listen to. The voice acting in the English version is mostly good, with one or two small instances of a character’s voice abruptly changing for a single line of dialog (Perhaps these were added lines in the Enhanced Editon/Director’s Cut version of the game?).

Story
Usually games based on existing intellectual properties are terrible. While I have never read any of Sapkowski’s works in translation, and thus cannot comment on the game’s fidelity to canon, the game’s story is a relatively safe take on dark fantasy. The narrative relies heavily on clichés that have been used time and time again in fantasy (racial inequality between dwarves/elves and humans, overly-religious people acting intolerant, monsters in the sewers, a main character with amnesia), while throwing in enough lesser-used clichés to stay interesting (a “Van Helsing” like take on monster hunting, anachronistic genetic engineering via magic, a ‘moral choice’ system that isn’t necessarily about morality).

Our hero, Geralt of Rivia, is a Witcher. Witchers are a secret society of individuals who go through rigorous training and magical mutation in order to make themselves better at the two things Witchers do best: killing monsters and having sex. Unfortunately for Geralt, he has amnesia, and was found in a field outside of the Witchers’ fortress, months after he was supposedly killed by an angry mob wielding pitchforks. Fortunately for those of us playing “The Witcher,” Geralt didn’t transform into yet another dull silent protagonist when he lost his memory, but became the type of lovably-surly badass anyone would want to share a drink with.

Geralt’s memory loss is a convenient plot device to keep players in the dark about the history of the world of Temeria, allowing hero and player to discover its secrets together. And while the player is ultimately responsible for what Geralt says and does, his latent personality comes through in his dialog and actions.

The game’s actual plot gets off to a quick start, as the Witchers’ fortress is attacked by an unknown group of thugs led by a mysterious sorcerer and a most-wanted criminal known as The Professor. This group, known as Salamandra, and their pet monster (a giant mantis-like thing called a Frightener) are more than three Witchers, an initiate Witcher, an amnesiac Witcher, and a sorceress can handle, enabling the bad guys to break into the Witchers’ laboratory and steal the formulae for their most secret mutagens and potions. Knowing that such magical secrets could be disastrous in the wrong hands, the Witchers split up and scour the four-corners of the nation, seeking their lost secrets and the ultimate purpose behind the theft.

Geralt ends up heading to the capital city, Vizima. As he follows the tail of the salamander, he must make a series of far-reaching decisions. While the game’s narrative always leads to the same general conclusion, some of Geralt’s decisions can have drastic effects on the between-chapter cutscenes. Witchers are supposed to be neutral, not taking sides in political conflict, and the neutral path usually results in the ‘best’ story results. Of course, in the dark fantasy world of “The Witcher,” ‘best’ results usually come from picking the lesser of two evils.

As a result of the bleak nature of dark fantasy, Geralt usually, through no fault of his own, leaves behind a smoldering crater as he moves from area to area. Due to misfortune following Geralt through the game’s narrative, that narrative is extremely linear. Yes, there are a variety of sandbox-style sidequests that Geralt can pursue at his leisure… so long as he completes them before he completes the current chapter of the main story. Each chapter serves as a Point of No Return, which can penalize players who rush through them.

Ultimately, the ending of “The Witcher” subtly ties-up story threads that were first introduced in chapter one, as well as resolving the overarching mystery of Salamandra from the prologue. However, the ultimate mystery of Geralt’s identity and amnesia is left unresolved, which leaves then ending feeling a bit more hollow than it otherwise would.

The Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut version of “The Witcher” also includes a handful of ‘New Adventures,’ which are short, stand-alone stories built using the Aurora Engine Editor (which also comes with the game). Two of these adventures are by CD Projekt, and are enjoyable little diversions. The remainder of these adventures are the creations of (Polish) fans, and are… mostly terrible. It’s not that the fan-made adventures are inherently bad, it’s that fans don’t have the dedicated QA and proofreaders required for an international release. As such, many of the fan-made adventures are glitchy and all of them have horrendously-unreadable translations. Another significant problem shared by ALL of the new adventures is that, despite CD Projekt’s modifications to the Aurora Engine making it possible to create entirely unique environments instead of using generic environmental tiles and objects, the adventures take place in barely-modified versions of the environments from the main game, only with the names changed.

Gameplay
While I was disappointed to discover that “The Witcher” doesn’t officially support a game controller, I was impressed that the game does support two entirely-different gameplay schemas and that both schemas work well. The mouse-only schema makes “The Witcher” play quite similarly to other Aurora Engine games, with an overhead camera and clicking and spacebar pausing as the primary interface elements. The keyboard and mouse schema places the camera behind Geralt in an over-the-shoulder third-person perspective that delegates movement to WASD and looking around to the mouse. Since the over-the-shoulder camera and controls reminded me a lot of a typical third-person console game, I decided to stick with that and create an Xpadder profile to use with “The Witcher” and an Xbox 360 controller. Thanks to the fully-mappable shortcuts supported by the game, I was able to come up with a controller schema that worked perfectly, aside from some minor annoyance in selling items due to the shop system’s excess of click-required confirmation windows.

The overall gameplay in “The Witcher” should be familiar to anyone who has played a BioWare RPG. Geralt must travel around a variety of environments, ranging from towns to swamps, talk to people using dialog trees, and kill monsters by clicking on them. Unlike BioWare’s games, though, Geralt works alone as a party of one. Unfortunately, as a party of one, inventory space is at a premium, making the typical BioWare RPG item hoarding-and-sales impractical or impossible.

In order to survive hordes of enemies, Witchers have developed three unique combat styles Wolf (Strong) Style deals a lot of damage to one enemy, Cat (Fast) Style is extremely accurate, and Griffon (Group) Style allows Geralt to whip his sword around in great arcs to damage every foe in a radius. Switching between the three combat styles on the fly is key to success. The game also features a series of short tutorial panels that pop-up at the beginning to explain how combat works. One of these panels is a bit late, though, as the only really unintuitive thing about “The Witcher’s” combat is that Geralt performs a number of swings with each click, and clicking again while he’s in the middle of an attack animation will interrupt that animation and stop his flurry of attacks. Waiting until the crosshairs/cursor turns into a little flaming sword allows Geralt to chain another series of attacks to the one he is just about to complete, resulting in an easy-to-use and relatively laid-back combo system that feels truly at home in a solo-hero Action RPG.

In addition to his sword skills, Geralt gains access to a variety of magical ‘Signs’ throughout the game that allow him to use magic. I found all but two of the Signs (Aard and Igni) to be utterly useless. Of the two useful Signs, Aard sends out a gust of wind to knockdown/stun/disarm opponents and destroy breakable walls while Igni sends out a blast of fire to incinerate foes and light campfires.

And campfires are quite an important aspect in the game, as they are required for Geralt to meditate. Meditation allows the application of level-ups as Geralt earns them and the creation of the Witchers’ signature potions, while also providing a means to purge the Witcher’s body of toxins, restore health, and pass time on the in-game clock.

The leveling system in “The Witcher” bears no resemblance to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons based system originally used with the Aurora Engine. Instead, all of Geralt’s stats are percentage-based. Geralt has four abilities (Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, and Intelligence), his list of Signs, and his combat styles, each of which can have bronze, silver, and gold talents applied to them to unlock boosts to specific percentages. Early in the game, Geralt only earns bronze talents, but by the end of the game, he gets a relatively even mix of all three talent grades with each level-up.

The potion system is yet another key tool in Geralt’s arsenal. Due to their mutations, Witchers can consume these alcohol-based concoctions (with varieties of herbs and monster innards mixed-in) to gain significant stat boosts for a short period of time in exchange for a build-up of toxins in their bodies. If a Witcher’s toxicity exceeds his body’s ability to handle it, he can take damage or even die, all the while seeing red blotches in his peripheral vision. Depending on the difficulty chosen by the player at the beginning of the game, potions might be superfluous (easy), useful (medium), or mandatory (hard). Some potions require rare (story-based) ingredients and provide permanent improvements with no toxicity.

Overall
While “The Witcher,” even ‘enhanced,’ has a few glaring flaws, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. We’re at the point now where ALL RPGs are going to feel somewhat clichéd, yet the character of Geralt and the small details of his world were a welcome change from both the drab, overly-customizable characters and scenarios typically found in PC RPGs and the moe-infested characters and scenarios that have recently come to dominate console RPGs. Anyone seeking a solid RPG could do much worse than “The Witcher,” especially now that CD Projekt has dropped the price to the point where it can be purchased digitally for anywhere from $3-10. Not that it has much competition, nor does it fall neatly into this category due to the fact that it’s a PC game, but “The Witcher” is one of the best RPGs of the 7th Generation.

Presentation: 4/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5