What is "The Witcher?"

[brokenergy]

People always say go to the wiki but when a game tries to introduce a world to a potental new audence, they would try to explain what's going on without a) making it look bad or b) saturated it to the point of boredom. RED needs to address this because (even though that I like the lore and buy every single book in-game to read and read the wiki) it doesn't explain the world that well to the audence, leaving people in the cold to put the pieces themselves.

 

I'm not asking for them to saturated it to the point of boredom, I'm asking if they can make it more accessable without asking me to buy 30 odd books here and there to fill the gaps. I also find it silly that all my codex entires from TW got wipe out in TW2, if I suggest an idea it is to follow ME's example with certain codex entires and carry over to the next game because you are following one character in the series and don't need to reboot it.

[dragonbird]

I'd have liked to see more on the history / background, and I'd have really liked to have one question answered, that I can't find either in-game or in the wiki, but it's probably in the books.

 

How old, roughly, is Geralt?

 

I do agree that reading the books would add to overall interest, but wouldn't call it a necessity. The information you need is all in-game and (trying to avoid spoilers here), if you DON'T know the historical background or Geralt's personal history, you're following the advice of a Certain Person regarding establishing your identity, so you're more in character than you would be if you knew everything.

[brokenergy]

Geralt is about 100 years old, give or take. I think part of the problem is that the player is in the dark about Geralt and comes back to the topic of player knowledge is that the player knows less than what Geralt knows. For example, there are certain things that I didn't know about but Geralt did and this led to WTF moment. Players (especially RPG players) need to have control over their character and if the character does something that the player didn't ask, then they feel out of place. There should be a short crash course about Geralt at least.

[dragonbird]

Thanks about his age. I'd got "at least 100" from looking at timeline stuff on the wiki, but I wasn't sure if it was substantially more than that.

 

We'll need to agree to differ on the gameplay advantages of knowing the background. :)

[brokenergy]

What I meant was a bit about his background in the blurb or intro without killing the story. Like a short monologe of who he was and what he's searching for.

[swordsman5]

I think the last part is pretty obvious......he's searching for his past, and on a personal note I think it works better when you as a player find out snippets along with Geralt, rather than having his past history in the back of your mind whilst Geralt is oblivious to it all. If you have a good idea about his past then it would probably change the way you played the game or built the character.

 

In respect of carrying a lot of stuff over from the previous game, well that could also be a game killer, either making it too easy for those that have Witcher 1 saves, or too difficult for those that don't. A few little perks, more as a thank you for getting the earlier game, are fine, but to transpose Geralt 1 into game 2 would IMHO take all the fun out of the sequel.

[brokenergy]

I know it too (because I have played the first) but I'm thinking in the position of new players joining in who have never played TW or heard of it. Introduction is very important in any story you wish to convey. Like I said before, I don't want to make it obivious but I feel that there are their storytelling techniques (which is the way they convey the story) could be improved so that people of both sides could like.

[swordsman5]

I think we'll have to agree to differ on this point, I much prefer to find out what is going on along the way. Let's take books for example.... years ago I read the Dragonlance series, a very good read but in the first instance the writer spent a vast amount of time explaining the situation and the various characters and it was information over-load, it wasn't until I had virtually finished the first book that I was able to assimilate who was doing what to who! Then you have books like Magician by Raymond E Feist, where you start of with a simple group of characters and you are steadily drip-fed the others and all the political machinations surrounding them, another good example of this type of writing would be Katherine Kerr's Devvery series.

 

I for one would hate to have too much information at the outset in any game, because to my mind getting to grips with the background is as much a part of a game as the MQ, and nobody wants a game where you can just fire it up and head for the end boss, similarly starting with the absolute minimum background information and building on it throughout the game is much the same as building your character to face that end-boss.

[hoofhearted4]

got mine for $5 off Steam during the christmas sales. only reason i bought it was cause it was soo damn cheap. i cant really get into it though, barely put a couple hours into it, but then my laptop died on me, and the one im on now cannot handle games that well. i wont try again until i build my PC, but i still got other games before the Witcher. i still gotta try to push into DA2 and FONV...neither of which ive been able to get sucked into like i did their predecessors.

[dragonbird]

I'm still on "agree to differ" with brokenergy about the absence of introduction/background on The Witcher, but as far as TW2 is concerned, I really did get frustrated about the lack of a good introduction.

 

An awful lot seems to have happened between the end of The Witcher and the start of TW2, and Geralt knows what's happened but you, the player, don't. There are far too many times in the Prologue and at the start of Chapter 1 where you have to make a decision despite not having a clue what's going on.