More on the Witcher
Jul. 9th, 2011 01:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skull_bearerOkay, this has gone straight past Elric look-alike into full-blown lawsuit territory. Wow. Be glad it's not the Tolkien estate you're ripping off, Moocock is fairly laid-back about these things, even though this is taking the piss.
The sex cards are adorable though, am really enjoying the very playful attitude to sex in this game. Gameplay's fine, even on hard difficulty I'm not having too much trouble, and the dice poker game is a hell of a lot of fun. I like games-in-games, Knights of the Old Republic had the best, but Witcher is coming a close second. It was the one thing Mass Effect failed at. Elric is really fucking Elric to the point where it's weird being called something else (although a bunch of the time they call you White Wolf I am not kidding).
The prologue was a bit predictable, I wanted to tell the guy accompanying me "Look dude, I know this spiel. I'm Elric, and this is a prologue, if you come with me you'll be dead three times over, so you stay here and play in the traffic like a good boy while I sort this out solo." Of course, I couldn't say than, so of course, he died. Still, it's doing a good job of throwing you into the thick of the action, you have the choice of either taking down one of the big bads or a huge monsterous beastie in the prologue, and not simply a 'you take them on, they kick your arse'. You win. It does a great job setting you up as an uber bad-ass before you've even worked out where the attack key is.
The fighting's fine, although maybe that's because the last RPG I played was Dragon Age and that had a difficulty curve like a spider's backside and had me chewing on the keyboard in frustration as I was killed for the fifteenth time by a bunch of randomly spawning bad guys. Here I'm on hard difficulty and while it's not exactly a breeze, it's pleasantly challenging. I'm not dying every minute, but it's a real danger if I'm not careful, and I appreciate that. It's not as easy as Mass Effect, but it probably would be if I was doing it on normal.
In design it reminds me a lot of a somewhat better designed Oblivion. I haven't gotten a look at the full gameworld yet, but it appears to be set just after a devastating war which the non-humans came off rather the worst for. I haven't any idea what's going but that's fine because my character's an amnesiac and can't remember either (although he's being pretty laid back about being amnesiac, maybe it's because he's Elric and realises he would rather not know thank-you-very-much). Anyway, it's intruiging me far more than Dragon Age did, because we have no idea whose the bad guys, what we're supposed to do or why we're doing it, and we have to unroll the mystery bit by bit. I LOVE THAT. Nothing I love more than a good mystery plot. I suppose I can't get my hopes up too high for a spectacular shock like in Mass Effect, but hey, one can but hope.
While there was a fair amont of rather annoying railroading at the beginning, it's loosening up nicely now (I'm reaching the end of Chapter 1). Probably the railroading was because the developers had a clear idea of who you were playing and wanted to get you into it before turning you loose. That's fine, I can dig that. The lack of a morality system is a relief too, I could lie and say that's because it makes for a more immersive experience and gives the sense that your actions have long-term as well as short-term consequences, but let's face it, I'm just pleased I get to nick stuff scott-free.
The sex cards are adorable though, am really enjoying the very playful attitude to sex in this game. Gameplay's fine, even on hard difficulty I'm not having too much trouble, and the dice poker game is a hell of a lot of fun. I like games-in-games, Knights of the Old Republic had the best, but Witcher is coming a close second. It was the one thing Mass Effect failed at. Elric is really fucking Elric to the point where it's weird being called something else (although a bunch of the time they call you White Wolf I am not kidding).
The prologue was a bit predictable, I wanted to tell the guy accompanying me "Look dude, I know this spiel. I'm Elric, and this is a prologue, if you come with me you'll be dead three times over, so you stay here and play in the traffic like a good boy while I sort this out solo." Of course, I couldn't say than, so of course, he died. Still, it's doing a good job of throwing you into the thick of the action, you have the choice of either taking down one of the big bads or a huge monsterous beastie in the prologue, and not simply a 'you take them on, they kick your arse'. You win. It does a great job setting you up as an uber bad-ass before you've even worked out where the attack key is.
The fighting's fine, although maybe that's because the last RPG I played was Dragon Age and that had a difficulty curve like a spider's backside and had me chewing on the keyboard in frustration as I was killed for the fifteenth time by a bunch of randomly spawning bad guys. Here I'm on hard difficulty and while it's not exactly a breeze, it's pleasantly challenging. I'm not dying every minute, but it's a real danger if I'm not careful, and I appreciate that. It's not as easy as Mass Effect, but it probably would be if I was doing it on normal.
In design it reminds me a lot of a somewhat better designed Oblivion. I haven't gotten a look at the full gameworld yet, but it appears to be set just after a devastating war which the non-humans came off rather the worst for. I haven't any idea what's going but that's fine because my character's an amnesiac and can't remember either (although he's being pretty laid back about being amnesiac, maybe it's because he's Elric and realises he would rather not know thank-you-very-much). Anyway, it's intruiging me far more than Dragon Age did, because we have no idea whose the bad guys, what we're supposed to do or why we're doing it, and we have to unroll the mystery bit by bit. I LOVE THAT. Nothing I love more than a good mystery plot. I suppose I can't get my hopes up too high for a spectacular shock like in Mass Effect, but hey, one can but hope.
While there was a fair amont of rather annoying railroading at the beginning, it's loosening up nicely now (I'm reaching the end of Chapter 1). Probably the railroading was because the developers had a clear idea of who you were playing and wanted to get you into it before turning you loose. That's fine, I can dig that. The lack of a morality system is a relief too, I could lie and say that's because it makes for a more immersive experience and gives the sense that your actions have long-term as well as short-term consequences, but let's face it, I'm just pleased I get to nick stuff scott-free.