The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

[Ryom]

Two more days until its release on the 17th, here are some current pre-release trailers.

Hope Trailer
Launch Trailer

Link to the Original Witcher topic... viewtopic.php?f=21&t=21537

Ending Cutscene from the original Witcher...

Spoiler:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo_tyITA40Q

[Ryom]

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/16447-the-witcher-2-readme-reveals-uber-sampling-mode-more-options/

We may have a new benchmarking game

[Ryom]

Some ubersampling benchmarks: http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,82500 ... ture/Test/

At 1920x1080 no card tested could reach 30fps... topped out at 18fps average

It is also looking like you are going to want a Geforce 560ti / Radeon 6950 class GFX or better to run the game on high quality at high resolution.

[Ryom]

If you have a 7.1 audio setup, you'll get no audio in game. You'll need to set the audio to 5.1 or lower if you are able in order to get sound.

If you have Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic filtering forced on in the Catalyst Control Center, you'll need to set them to Application Preference or you'll get nothing but haze for video.

Key bindings can be trouble. Several keys cannot be rebound, and you can't bind the punctuation keys at all.

So far I've hit all three issues

[Xeio]

Apparently my Impulse pre-order got cancelled (I'm assuming because there was DRM added after my pre-order was placed). So I figured I'd just buy it at GOG since no DRM there.

[Jesse]

Let me know if it's actually fun to play. I bought the first one and couldn't get more than half an hour into it.

[Chen]

Well this is the first game in recent memory that I almost cannot run at all on my Radeon 2600 XT. If I set windowed mode to 800x600 its pretty smooth but I don't think I'll play it like that. I absolutely cannot run it at 1680x1050 even with everything set to minimum. I guess its to be expected since its a pretty old video card, but it still ran things like Dragon age 2 and Portal 2 on high with no problems. They really kicked the graphics up in this one it seems. That said, in windowed mode at 800x600 it still actually looks extremely good though I can't read anything due to how small the text gets. Been meaning to get a new comp for the last while (since this one is overheating and I suspect the CPU has actually been damaged after some tests) I guess this might give me that extra push to stop putting it off.

[Menacing Spike]

Let me know if it's actually fun to play. I bought the first one and couldn't get more than half an hour into it.

They said the combat was entirely remade, and is now sorta like Arkham Asylum.
I'll let you know once the download finishes

[Xeio]

My download is probably done, but I'm at work.

Also, I really should finish the first one (mostly I just want to run some benchmarks to see how my overclocked GTX 470s do, though I don't think there's a SLI profile out yet so probably not very good, so best to wait a week or two to see if Nvidia gets one out before then). It's like Dragon Age 2 all over again, so if all goes to plan I might start it by next week.

[Menacing Spike]

Witcher 1 had a plot twist you could see coming from a mile away.

Spoiler:

tell alvin to become a knight, alvin lost in time, super magical knight with time travel powers and a debt to gerald appears, WHO COULD HE BE

I hope 2's plot is more subtle.

[EmptySet]

Let me know if it's actually fun to play. I bought the first one and couldn't get more than half an hour into it.

I'm not buying it no matter how good anyone says it is. They claimed the first one was good, too, and I found it to be an atrocious wreck which wasn't worth the bargain-bin price I paid for it. Quit in disgust after a couple of hours.

[psion]

It works relatively fine for me, and I'm impressed with it so far. The writing and voice acting is excellent. It's made me smile a few times simply because of how good it is. The graphics feel a bit muddy, either because there's just too much going on, or because there's too many post processing effects that are trying to hide a somewhat ugly game. I think it's mostly the former, but a little of the latter. It can still be pretty, but it's not a Crysis by any means. The character models are really well done, though.

Much like The Witcher 1, the main problem I have with it is the combat. At first I really liked it, but after the 10th fight or so it started to become really annoying. You can't just attack an enemy head-on most of the time, you have to roll around behind them, bait attacks, and herd groups of enemies. You can only drink potions out of combat, and you don't have much health, so you have to be really careful with every fight... Which means lots of rolling and baiting. The controls have bugged out on me more than once though, and the game engine even slid me into an opponents attack. It reminded me of how attacks in The Witcher 1 would cancel an enemy's attack animation.

I still have no idea how the signs (magic) work. You start the game with about 7 of them, and there's almost zero explaination for them. It'd be nice if there was some sort of introduction to them. I've been sticking with the shield spell as it seems it's all I really need, but it feels like cheating.

I felt like The Witcher 1 was a good game, but it was just really hard to like it. The combat was brain dead, and the interesting parts weren't properly weaved into the game. There was no pacing to it, leaving you with very long and boring sections (i.e. the first couple hours of the game). The first few hours of The Witcher 2 are excellent, but there's definitely some core problems, not the least of which technical.

I found it to be an atrocious wreck which wasn't worth the bargain-bin price I paid for it. Quit in disgust after a couple of hours.

I did too, with those words, but then I gave it another try and found it to be overall enjoyable.

[JonScholar]

Warning, some small prologue spoilers ahead:

The game has a difficulty curve like a brick wall. Within the first few minutes of the game you're thrown into a fight with 6 or so enemies, 2 of which are using ranged weapons, with no explanation of how to handle group combat mechanics. I was mowed down about 10 times by the first group of enemies, who will swarm around you and stunlock you into oblivion, before I finally figured out how to use the magic signs (had to search through the tutorial journal entries in the menu), and even then the difficulty was still, in my opinion, way too high for what is one of the first combat sequences in the game. At about the point where you finally start to get the hang of everything the game throws a fire breathing dragon at you, who will baptize you in flames and reduce you to a pile of ashes within seconds if you ever leave cover. The "not leaving cover" part wouldn't be as much of a problem if you didn't have to share it with swarms of enemy knights... and on and on...

That said, the game's not bad once you get the hang of everything. If you're having trouble, here's some advice: Use the "quen" sign liberally, it will shield you from enemy damage and stunlocks. That one bit of information that, had it been delivered to me effectively by a tutorial earlier in the game, would have saved me much frustration.

[psion]

I find that the combat difficulty is constantly shifting from annoyingly difficult to piss easy. I was on a side quest that went from one-hit kills to "how the hell is this possible, I must be missing something" to a fairly easy boss fight.

[balderduck]

I've been really waiting for this one!

Quick question though

Isn't it very strange that downloading the game is more expensive than buying the DVD?

I mean, surely distribution and printing costs are avoided, and it's downloaded through G.o.g. which belongs to the same company that makes the game!

[Xeio]

How is that different from any other digital distribution ever? O.o

[balderduck]

I've never bought any game digitally, I wanted to do it now to support these guys...

so this is the norm? wow!

Could anyone explain this to me? what is it? server costs?

[SecondTalon]

Isn't it very strange that downloading the game is more expensive than buying the DVD?

.... More?

I purchased The Witcher 2 from Steam (reg. $49.99, discount of 10%). GoG? $49.99.

Gamestop is selling it for.. $49.99. Wal-Mart has it for $49.96 because there're gigantic assholes who strongarm manufacturers into selling their products to Wal-Mart at a lower rate than anyone else prices are lower damnit.*

*All prices in American Dollars.

So.. uh.. it's the more or less the exact same price either way? I mean, unless you're looking at the price in Euros and it's €49.99. In which case, game the system, buy it from GoG and set your location to the US.

As for why they sell a physical copy in a store for the same price as they sell it through Steam, Impulse, GoG or any other online distributor...... partially server costs, mostly because they can. If you're used to paying $50 for a brand new game and your options are go to a store, see if they have it, plunk down $50, bring it home, install it... or give $50 to some online thing, download and play... the only difference to you is time and bandwidth.

Difference to the publisher/retailer/whatever is remarkable as they're getting a much larger cut of that $50 pie.


*edit* Checking Italy's Amazon store, looks like they're listing the Normal Retail price of The Witcher 2 as €40.00 (more or less), which'd be $60 American, more or less. So... yeah. GoG it.

[balderduck]

Yeah they charge it 50 Euros (65$) for a european download, while the retail version on amazon costs 35 Euros

Strange that it's cheaper to buy it in the US since it's sold on the internet...

[SecondTalon]

Games are always cheaper in the US due to various agreements and so on. And which They is charging 50 Euro?

[WarDaft]

As for why they sell a physical copy in a store for the same price as they sell it through Steam, Impulse, GoG or any other online distributor...... partially server costs, mostly because they can. If you're used to paying $50 for a brand new game and your options are go to a store, see if they have it, plunk down $50, bring it home, install it... or give $50 to some online thing, download and play... the only difference to you is time and bandwidth.

One, because they can.

Two, because the retailers want to remain competitive, and most publishers have agreements with retailers.

And personally, if I factor in bandwidth, downloading a game really can be more expensive because my ISP has a ridiculously low monthly cap for the speeds it offers and charges $2 a GB over.

[balderduck]

Games are always cheaper in the US due to various agreements and so on. And which They is charging 50 Euro?

GOG

[SecondTalon]

Yeah, reset your location to the US.

[Menacing Spike]

Yeah, reset your location to the US.

On steam this is a bannable offense; also Amazon refuses to ship portal 2 overseas :/.

AAAAR MATEY

[MrConor]

Let me know if it's actually fun to play. I bought the first one and couldn't get more than half an hour into it.

I'm not buying it no matter how good anyone says it is. They claimed the first one was good, too, and I found it to be an atrocious wreck which wasn't worth the bargain-bin price I paid for it. Quit in disgust after a couple of hours.

The Witcher 1 wasn't worth playing unless you had the Enhanced Edition. From Wikipedia:

At GDC 2008, CDProjekt announced an enhanced version of the game which was released on September 16, 2008. The significant changes featured in the enhanced version are over 200 new animations, additional NPC models and recoloring of generic NPC models as well as monsters, vastly expanded and corrected dialogues in translated versions, improved stability, redesigned inventory system and load times reduced by roughly 80%.[30][31][32] In addition all bugs are said to be fixed and the game manual completely overhauled. There are also two new adventures available to play through: Side Effects and The Price of Neutrality. A new option is to mix and match ten different languages of voice and subtitles.

Compare:

Original dialogue:
Geralt: Why do locals persecute nonhumans?
Dwarf: Humans have always hated dwarves and elves.
Geralt: I don't understand.
Dwarf: Then go see that bastard Brogg. I won't discuss it with strangers.
Geralt: Understandable.

Enhanced Edition dialogue:
Geralt: Why do the locals persecute nonhumans?
Dwarf: Why do pricks go in cunts? It's the natural order of things. Humans have always hated dwarves and elves. Not for me to know why.
Geralt: I'm not sure I understand.
Dwarf: Then ponder it on your own. Or discuss it with that maggot Brogg. I don't talk to strangers about these things.
Geralt: Fine.

- - -

Seriously though, if you've only played the non-Enhanced version, then download the latest patch and give it another go. It's worth it.

[SecondTalon]

Yeah, reset your location to the US.

On steam this is a bannable offense; also Amazon refuses to ship portal 2 overseas :/.

Steam is not GoG. GoG is awesome.

That is all.

[Jesse]

Had the Enhanced Edition. The problem was that combat was awful, and that is a big problem for me.

[EmptySet]

I also had the Enhanced Edition. It was still terrible.

[SecondTalon]

I.. rather enjoyed combat. Switching stances, getting the timing right... like a rhythm game, only not shitty.

[MrConor]

I.. rather enjoyed combat. Switching stances, getting the timing right... like a rhythm game, only not shitty.

This. There's no accounting for personal taste, I suppose, but hitting the attack buttons in sequence always felt more involved that DA:O's equivalent of press attack, watch my character fight whilst waiting for the right moment to press the special attack buttons. Then again, I'm more into these sorts of things for the story anyway.

[psion]

I wouldn't say The Witcher 1 had awful combat so much as boring combat. Getting the timing right was very simple, and switching stances was even easier. There was zero thought or dynamic to it. DA:O provided more thought and dynamic to the fights (unless maybe you were playing it on a console), which for me is the key difference.

[Menacing Spike]

This. There's no accounting for personal taste, I suppose, but hitting the attack buttons in sequence always felt more involved that DA:O's equivalent

Drinking pee sure is better than snorting poop!
I mean goddamn, even shootforeignerduckbehindobstaclewhilehealthregeneratestrytoaimtoomuchbloom is better.

[EmptySet]

I.. rather enjoyed combat. Switching stances, getting the timing right... like a rhythm game, only not shitty.

This. There's no accounting for personal taste, I suppose, but hitting the attack buttons in sequence always felt more involved that DA:O's equivalent of press attack, watch my character fight whilst waiting for the right moment to press the special attack buttons. Then again, I'm more into these sorts of things for the story anyway.

I didn't feel any more involved. I was just annoyed that I had to click the mouse once a second, as if to remind the computer that I'm actually there. It's incredibly tedious, repetitive, and shallow, and it's even worse because the constant demands for clicking force me to actually pay some attention to it. That said, combat was hardly the only reason I disliked it... don't know if anyone really wants me to go into a big list of everything I didn't like about it.

[Ryom]

I'm not sure why people are selling off their Raven Armor and Aerondight silver sword from their save game imports and saying that they get better armor and weapons quickly. They may not realize that both those items have 3 upgrade slots... my Raven armor is at +16 armor, +25 health, and resists incineration, poisoning, and bleeding after slapping in 3 upgrades (still in the town of Flotsam). Most of the other items I've seen only have one slot available if that.

Don't sell your imported items! They are probably more powerful than you realize

[KingofMadCows]

The problem with both games is that they don't really tell you enough about the mechanics of how things work. It's better in the second game since things are more streamlined but it's still a problem.

[Ryom]

Agreed.

[Menacing Spike]

I lol'd at the "additional troll contract" for people who register as forum users.

Also: Triss slamming doors into your face as you follow her evokes unpleasant high-school memories.
Also: Quen is ridiculously OP. Absorbs a godly amount of damage, reflects 40%, all of that for just one vigor bar.
Also:

Spoiler:

"Triss, stop thinking with your vagina."

[Xeio]

Now that I've started this, daaamn is it hard. Holy crap combat is unforgiving. Though I'm getting better at it.

It sucks that they basically nerfed potions to be useless too (10 real-time minutes on swallow? and you can only drink outside of combat, and in an area where it's "safe" to meditate...). I guess I've made a bit more use of bombs though since I didn't use them at all in the first one.

I'm also sad that they seem to have tossed out your choices from the first game to continue the narrative, I guess I can understand it, but I'm not sure what the point of loading the save was...

[Menacing Spike]

Now that I've started this, daaamn is it hard. Holy crap combat is unforgiving. Though I'm getting better at it.

Upgrade quen. Upgrade dodge.
Spam quen. Dodge while vigor regens.
Finish game on hard with a broom. (he doesn't use the broom during cutscenes)

[psion]

Quen makes every sign, trap, bomb, and so on pointless. It's weightless, it regenerates on it's own, and it just plain works better. I try to avoid using it whenever I can, but some fights really force you to use it in order to survive. I want to use alchemy, damn it.