"Heed my words, for here comes the age of the sword and the axe, the age of the wolfish storm.
Here comes the Time of the White Cold and White Light, the Time of Madness and Contempt, Tedd Deiradh, the Time of Ending.
And the world will die away slow, frozen in ice and covered with snow..."
Don't try to deny it; there's always been a part of you that wants to jack in your job at the office, don a linen shirt and some leather armour, strap swords across your back and go on a monster-slaying, womanising rampage, without shaving or indeed washing for weeks at a time. Unfortunately today's society frowns on such behaviour, so as a fairly good substitute I would recommend The Witcher.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again; games with good stories are few and far between. It seems far more profitable to produce yet another mindless blasting game every six months than to actually take time and effort in making something decent. But to their credit, BioWare, CD Projekt and Atari have gone against the grain, and the result is stunning.
How do you make such a decent game? Well, The Witcher did get a bit of a leg-up from Polish fantasy writing legend (don't ask me how to pronounce it) Andrzej Sapkowski whose series of novels following the witcher Geralt are revered apparently on a level with Tolkien in Poland. So that was the story more or less sorted, once it had been adapted to make it playable. Then came the artists, who designed the game world around Sapkowski's writing, the result being stunningly realistic and photogenic surroundings with abundant plants, a day and night cycle and creatures and people to go with them. With such fantastic surroundings it would be a shame to have unrealistic characters and combat; so the next step was to create the movements of all beasts, people and sword fighting with the help of a full complement of actors and sword masters using motion capture. Put it all together with some excellent voice-acting and actually make the game which is powered by BioWare's Aurora Engine, and there you have it: over eighty hours of fantastic role-playing game.
- The sword of destiny has two edges. You are one. -
The basics of gameplay are very simple; you can either use the click-where-to-move style or the press-buttons-on-keyboard style. When diplomacy fails (i.e. 99% of the time) combat is done by clicking on the enemy - after selecting an appropriate weapon - and then Geralt does the rest. Violently. In order to survive on the higher difficulty settings, and to make it easier to do so on lower difficulty settings it is necessary to make potions using ingredients you either gather or buy - and to learn the weaknesses of your enemies by reading books. Always there is a main thread of story that you must follow to progress, and always there are lots and lots of side-quests to do in order to make money.
Progression through the game grants you "talents" which are basically points that can be spend upgrading Geralt's swordsmanship, magical ability, toughness or skill at potion making. Carrying the correct potions will save Geralt's life when he is forced into life threatening situations, and there are a wide range to choose from; Cat grants sight in the darkness of crypts, Blizzard improves his reflexes, Swallow increases health regeneration and so on. Be warned however that potions are toxic - too many will kill Geralt or lead to unintended effects.
- This is Witchers' work... -
This is not a usual fantasy RPG however where morals are everything; in fact one of the major interests of the game is its amorality. Geralt's job is witching: he kills monsters and people pay him for it. Rarely will he agree to work for someone if there is no reward. Furthermore, as you progress there will be numerous instances where you must make a decision which is likely to have dreadful consequences whichever way you choose. With the kingdom of Temeria divided by racism against "non-humans" the country teeters on the brink of civil war. On one side stand the Scoia'tael, elven and dwarven "freedom fighters" (or murderous terrorists?) who demand equal rights through shows of violence. And on the other side stand the Order of the Flaming Rose, fanatical knights who believe all Scoia'tael must be wiped out and no non-human should be trusted. Which side do you choose?
The plot is deep and complex, requiring a lot of exploration to reveal its true depths; and with a final stunning twist. You won't be disappointed.
- Problems? -
Ok, it's a brilliant game, but it does have a few weak areas. Firstly there is a lot of combat, which by the end had become a little repetitive despite its dramatic motion-capture realism. I think partly this could be solved by playing on a higher difficulty setting; easy really is too easy, at least once you are used to fighting and potion making.
The next problem is that the sheer number of side quests detracts slightly from the pace of the main story, and although you don't have to do them they are your main source of income, and without money you will have difficulty acquiring the books, weapon upgrades and so on that are needed to survive, plus the fact that although side quests are on the side, some of them are really quite important to the main quest.
And finally, at least on my PC, which is admittedly very middle of the road, the load times were fairly large, and in the more populous environments there were a few problems with lag. However, it wasn't really enough to detract from the enjoyment, and a future patch that has been announced should go a long way to fixing this.
It is also worth noting that the 18 certificate is there for a reason; although I would personally say that there is nothing a 16 year old would be very shocked by, there is plenty of gore, sex, drunkenness, drug taking and other debauchery that some parents might not want their children to see.
All in all The Witcher is a stunning and beautiful game with a fantastic plot. My advice is to try and remember what you say when you offer people advice during the game; and to play on as high a difficulty setting as you dare to give it a real sense of danger. Oh, and of course to buy the game first.
For information much more skilfully written than I have managed, or to download the demo, visit the official website here: http://www.thewitcher.com/intro.asp
- Minimum System Requirements -
- Windows XP (service pack 2) or Vista
- 2.4GHz processor
- 1024Mb RAM (XP) or 1536Mb (Vista)
- 8.5 Gb on hard disk
- 128Mb video RAM with DirectX9 vertex shader/pixel shader 2.0 support (NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or ATI Radeon 9800 or better