Crivens, this is unprecedented. Last year’s most divisive RPG, The Witcher, is to be re-released. But not just re-released in a shiny box and with extra smutty collector’s cards – re-made, almost. Loading times are to be cut by up to 80%, stability’s in for a-fixin’ and there are to be improvements in “interactivity and precision in combat.” Most fascinatingly for me – as it was the often painfully wobbly dialogue that most kept the game from my affections – its script and voiceovers are in for a near-complete overhaul.
“The English-language version will, for the most part, be completely re-done. The amount of text in that version was reduced compared to other language versions and that was said to cause a significant decrease in immersion and atmosphere. Now the English version will be as polished and atmospheric as the other language versions.”
That’s still not all. Bloody hell.
“Over 50 new supporting character models will be added, so that the player won’t run into the same person too often. The inventory panel will be re-designed and improved, and some elements of the main game screen will be polished. However, one of the biggest changes that will greatly increase the player’s immersion in the game world will be improvements concerning dialogue scenes. Both Geralt and non-player characters will get over 100 new animated gestures which will make their body language during conversations much more natural. Additionally, the facial animation and lip-sync system will be re-created, making the faces of the speakers now even more natural, as well.”
So that’s The Witcher 2.0 then, with almost everything anyone bitched about due for a tarting up. It’s a second chance to be the game its developers wanted it to be, it seems. That’s pretty incredible – certainly, I can’t think of any other game that’s been officially re-loved to this extent post-release.
The Witcher’s sold a truckload, truly one of last year’s sleeper hits. So I wonder. Is this Enhanced Edition aimed at those who haven’t yet played the game, or rather at those that have already sworn undying allegiance to it, and won’t hesitate to buy a second copy?
Update – the new content will be free to existing Witcher owners, it seems. Me gazes forlornly at my timed-out, unpatchable, mega-buggy review code.
It’s enough to get me interested in revisiting the thing, certainly – I really struggled to stomach the atmosphere-fracture of the clumsily-translated dialogue and cutscenes, but maybe this will cause the scales to fall from my eyes.
Whether new lines can make the unchecked misogyny any less risibly cheesy remains to be seen. Let’s hope so.
More info on The Witcher: Enhanced Edition in this cut out’n'keep PDF.
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Wooo. They really didn’t have to do this, did they? So, hooray for CD Projekt not spending all their earnings on ale and wenches.
Let’s hope this sort of behaviour catches on.
(Someone call LucasArts and Obsidian and subtly mention KotOR 2? Oh, and cast resurrection on Troika while we’re doing impossible things.)
I liked the Witcher a lot. My main problem was the shoddy localization. I’d get the sense there was good writing somewhere in there, obscured by television-subtitle-grade translation and a VA director phoning it in…
Redoing all that is just Above and Beyond. And performance tweaks, better UI and graphical upgrades won’t exactly hurt.
The demo wasn’t quite the life altering experience people were eluding to upon release, with simple (and perhaps dull) combat, performance issues, plus the somewhat bizarre dialogue, but the story seemed very promising. This resulted in me waiting for a much cheaper bargain bin version in a few years time.
This new event will cause me to buy the updated version when it appears.
Seriously, this is a ripping act of generosity and common sense by CD Projekt and I can only applaud them for it.
The game is certainly not BAD, and this will improve it significantly. Bless their cotton socks, they can count on my cash when this comes out.
BTW, this is a great opportunity to beat the Steam ROCKS drum once again: Clearly this is a situation where an auto update would be unbelievably useful. I don’t know who the publisher of the Witcher is but perhaps they could sort something out with Valve. That said, I’d rather a box and fancy manual in this situation (plus whatever other goodies they can throw in) as its an RPG and needs those things, so perhaps Steam integration upon install from DVD would be an ideal solution.
600K +1 for Witcher customers total
Can only sit back and applaud this amount of effort towards polishing an already released game. It really shows that they care.
If they achieve half of what is stated, they are going to end up with a much better game. (I’d probably go from my 8 to a 9).
[Apologies if this is out of place. I never took part in previous discussions, but it's been nagging at me.]
One more thing… the “unchecked misogyny”. Yeah, not going to argue about the Babe Pokemon mechanic. It’s just…
—– SPOILERS GALORE —-
… was I the only one more bothered about the main wooable females (pretty cool ladies, both of them) going completely irrational as soon as there was a kid in the picture?
And then there’s Bloodlines, with its “all female NPCs are bisexual” motif.
And all those Bioware games with a female lead NPC prone to going evil and needing to be rescued from herself by virile male PC. (Okay, “all those” mean “the two”.)
And WoW with its Stripper Esthetic.
And… so on and on and on.
The Witcher’s collectable nekkid pictures? More blatant than the usual fare, for sure. It just bothers me that a game that beats the crap out of almost everyone else’s “choices have consequences” gets handwaved because of something fairly superficial. When the game actually is a lot more than a covergirl and formula 3b.
Yeah, they brought it on themselves. The slagging still seems out of proportion and out of perspective to me.
What WoW stripper aesthetic? I is missing outs!
Heh. Well, non-coyly repeating hearsay: night elves’ dance emotes. (Nevermind the chaimail bikini dress code.)
Stick: I think not many of us would have a problem with “Games are a little regressive sexually” as a comment. I don’t think any of the games cited are as bad as the Witcher is – Bloodlines especially, motivates even its most obvious wrist-fodder characters with some of the best writing ever seen in videogames.
(Bloodlines when it appears to be misogynistic is mostly just writing *about* misogyny.)
I stress, of the 3 people at RPS who’ve played Witcher, I liked it the most, but it’s all sorts of iffy in these areas.
EDIT: That said, this is an incredible move from the team, and should be applauded.
KG
This is great news. It will certainly push it from being a bit crappy with great potential into a truly great game.
The acusations of mysogeny are the main things that are putting me off trying the Witcher. Also, stick, I find it interesting that you try and single out Bioware as being notable, as its a company I would praise for its well developed female characters. Jaheria from the Baldur’s gate series is a particularly good example. Admittedly she does sit alongside Aeire, though I feel that the intereaction between the two, indicates that Bioware were indicating that Aeirie was overtly feminine because she was Aeirie, not because she was female.
As to the redemption of female characters, yes, I suppose that is something that hadn’t occured to me. Plus I fear you are missing a few, I can think of at least four. There is the argument to be made of course that the PC doesn’t necessarily have to be male, although in one of those cases I believe they have to be, as the redemption is part of a romance option. (Then again, it is also possible to redeem a male character in the same game.)
SPOILERS FOR VARIOUS BIOWARE GAMES
For purpouses of clarification. I was specifically thinking of Aribeth in NWN, Bastilla and Juhani in KOTOR, Viconia and Sarevok in the BG series.
This game is already excellent, and this announcement therefore awesome. Unfortunately, it must be a bit of a bitch for those who already own it (unless they get the polished version gratis, but, yeah, not much chance of that if they’re gonna relabel it). Fortunately, I hadn’t bought it yet, and I’ll definitely be holding off until this comes out.
Although the translation/dialogue work was a bit rubbish (and patently inferior to the original, judging by the comparisons I’ve seen), it didn’t actually stop me from enjoying this; but then, I tend to use an unseemly amount of imagination when gaming. I’ve got to stop nodding politely to friendly NPCs with the mouse… “Well met, Witcher!” “Oh, isn’t that nice.”
I just read that all extra additional content (UI fixes, download times, extra modules) will be downloadable for FREE for the owners of the original game. That’s just beyond awesome and extremely rare in this type of age.
See Bethesda? You can make a profit by respecting and nurtiring your original fanbase!
This will make this otherwise excellent RPG even more fun.
*groan* I -did- notice that the patch is coming out for free, but my edit failed! Oh well.
Regarding ‘misogyny’… The ‘cards’ were a very tacky element, and probably put off even more female gamers than the Dungeons & Dragons racial makeup did (LET’S BE HONEST, GIRLFRIENDS etc), but as terribly misjudged as they were, they don’t actually imply contempt for women. That said, fair enough if people’s distaste for it puts them off, but they’re missing out on a great game behind that brief cheesecake trapping, so…
(Actually, I wish they’d done desktop-sized pinups, if they had to do it at all — there’s no room for a budding Frank Frazetta on a little card-size canvas! Do it right, CDP!)
As for the story itself, Geralt’s relentless (overwhelmingly optional, btw) womanising is no more misogyny than the exploits of my more promiscuous female friends are misandry — it’s not like he’s deceiving anyone (unless you pick deceitful dialogue, but I can’t think of any offhand, and, er, that dialogue-tree probably won’t get him laid anyway). And Shani/Triss/Abigail/Adda (among others) are actually pretty likeable, memorable characters, guiding the protagonist in his task; if CDP hate the ladies so much, they’re spending an unusual amount of time building them up. There’s some recriminations about ‘OMG NUDEY CHARACTER MODELS’!, but considering these models are of dryads and wild vampires, and that much more hideous male and female beasties go similarly and also-explicably nude (yes, the Drowned Dead have their cocks out — just buy the red ribbon talisman so they run away in fear, teehee), I think it’s a bit prissy to only go on about the OMG NUDEY MODELS which look a bit nice.
(Yahtzee’s article was heap of bollocks, btw. Shame the literacy of Escapist commenters is down around a monkey’s ankles, or quite a good chat could’ve resulted.)
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=misogyny
If your going to bandy a word about at least know what it means FFS. Certainly there are some misogynistic NPCs in the game (not the Player), but I’d hardly say the game is misogynistic within itself. It’s like saying a game is ‘evil’ because it contains evil characters, quite ludicrous.
As for the Demo, I don’t think it was a particularly fair representation of the game from what I’ve heard. Hopefully they will update it with all the new features when it’s launched. Certainly it’s a game that I’d love to see available via Steam because it deserves a bigger audience.
Agree with James T about Yatzees awful review. The man got his job at the escapist over his hilarious youtube bitchslapping of Fable, however when he comes to a game that actually delivers genuine player choices he totally fails to recognise it and gives it a wholly undeserved kicking.
I assume you’re not talking to me, my little beary chum…
Wiedzmin 2: WiedzMAX!
edit: Hey, that’s Polish Youtube! Neat!
Teehee, ‘filmy wideo’.
edit again: Hey, that “brand manager”’s a looker. Those Poles get all the genes…
edit again: Well, okay, the head programmer didn’t. Maybe he’s Lithuanian.
@KG & James(Non-T): In my bass-ackwards way of reasoning, I picked on those games because they’re not prime glaring offenders. (Agree so much it hurts about Bloodlines’ writing and also a big fan of BW’s characters in general. WoW included since it’s the seemingly non-offensive “populist” game.)
My niggle was, good/progressive/”important” games getting dismissed out of hand because of – to me – less critical flaw. (If a redundant achievement mechanic of dubious taste can be called a flaw.)
Not trying to be cute, but… this reminds me of the talking about the talking about BioShock here. Don’t know who said it, but I recall something along the lines of “We know it’s not perfect, but focusing on that wouldn’t be fair to the game or helpful to Games.” Very probably oversimplifying on my part, but I think it applies.
… I should really go write proper bit of text instead of coming here for random half-digested scatterbursting.
@James(Non-T): About being put off the game because of what you heard… You certainly don’t have to take my word for it. There’s a demo. :)
If your going to bandy a word about at least know what it means FFS. Certainly there are some misogynistic NPCs in the game (not the Player), but I’d hardly say the game is misogynistic within itself.
turning female characters into a card collecting game dances a little too close to that line for my tastes. i do enjoy much of the rest of the game (1.2 patch) but that whole mechanic really dampened my enjoyment. especially since they did work the dating sim – or “boffing sim” if you will – into the story fairly well. it’s just so fucking juvenile.
that and almost no one owns a blouse that isn’t totally bodice-tastic.
Actually, they should have made the sex scenes into little ‘Geralt musing over art stills’ clips, like the ones that happen at pivotal points in the story; would’ve developed character as well as flashed some boob.
(Er, obviously he’d be musing about the characters, like in the Journal section, rather than saying “Man, look at the rack on that!” although, knowing the English translation…)
(Now with added G for clarity’s sake. Stupid common name.)
@stick
Okay, that makes sense. Indeed, it is difficult to judge the overall tone of a game without playing it, and I’m not going to go ahead and do a Fox news vs. Mass Effect. The cards alone are a concern, but obviously the game should be judged as a whole. Perhaps I’ll check out the (updated?) demo, especially now the developers seem to have addressed most other concerns.
I doubt the demo will have been updated yet; my Polish is a little rusty, but there’s a great big ‘MAJ’ at the end of that Youtube clip above, so I think we’ve got a bit of a wait…
About a month since I bought the crap, and now this?
Certainly, it can’t repair the mediocre game that The Witcher was.
lol wrong
@Dhex
Juvenile perhaps (it’s not essential to the plot to bed any girl you meet), but it’s not misogynistic, is my point. It’s an inaccurate word that implies something that isn’t really there. There is no hatred of Women going on from the players viewpoint. There is a degree of mistrust and hatred towards Witches and Witchers though, but the same distrust is equally applied to the Humanoids (and vice versa).
James T
I was referring to the people who posted before you. I think we are in shared agreement about the game and a number of issues.
Do the male protagonists who ‘rescue’ women in the attempted romantic subplots of your other examples collect their sex objects?
Guess the derailing onto arguments about misogyny is my fault for using a term with a wildly differing literal definition and common parlance definition. Soz.
(’Sexual encounters so clumsily-depicted they can’t help but seem almost comically contemptuous of women’ would more accurately reflect my own feelings on the matter. Not that it bothered me even a scintilla as much as the dialogue did.)
@AM & everyone: I necro’d the topic all half-roostered, I’ll take the blame. :)
I guess that everybody here who’s appalled at drawn pictures of naked women and calls that misogynistic has never ever watched porn…
@Alec Meer
“Guess the derailing onto arguments about misogyny is my fault for using a term with a wildly differing literal definition and common parlance definition.”
There is no differing interpretation. Misogyny has always been ‘the hatred of women’. Your getting confused with male chauvinism. Don’t feel too bad though, Yatzee made exactly the same mistake in his ‘review’ (if you can call it that). Yes the cards are tacky, but women aren’t throwing themselves at the Witcher left/right and centre throughout the game. They are there if you choose to play it that way, but I wouldn’t really say any of the women are submissive or derided in any manner, in fact a lot of them are quite empowered.
Rather than patronise you back, I’ll let the Wikipedia page documenting the various different forms of misogyny, and how they can differ from the straight dictionary definition, do the talking for me.
Do feel free to argue that page is inaccurate – though please do so, of course, without rudeness.
Can and do, thanks. What’s your overly pedantic definition for ‘hatred of silly video reviewers’?
Nice deletion of my post there. Nothing at the wiki impacts upon the dictionary definition of misogyny, not that wiki is a reliable source of information save in the most broad manner. Fact of the matter is though, the word doesn’t accurately apply to the Witcher. To reiterate what I said in a previous post, that there are ‘evil’ characters in a game does not make the game ‘evil’.
See the edit to my last comment. We have gentlemanly standards of discourse here, and smileys don’t get you out of ‘em.
If your going to take a stance, defend your position with an argument. Throwing up a link to a wiki page doesn’t cut the mustard in any circles (gentlemanly or not). If a game contains characters who are misogynists, or racists, or any other kind of ‘ist’, does that necessarily make that game a platform for those views unless the game inherently supports that position? I mean did you feel that at the end of the Witcher that there was a clear right or wrong path in terms of how you could progress in the same way as there are clearly good and evil choices in Fable or Mass Effect? Discourse away.
@Hypocee
I don’t hate anyone (it’s a word used far too lightly by most people) and I certainly don’t think the RPS guys are ’silly video reviewers’ (This has become one of my daily stopping points). But I’m not some blind fanboy who’s going to nod in agreement like a Churchill at every utterance as if it’s the word of god carved in stone.
I can think of more than a few female characters who essentially threw themselves at Geralt, actually. Mind you, except for the clumsiness of the dialogue I thought it was all handled fairly well. There were a couple of women who hit on Geralt because of his reputation, a couple that seduce him in the hopes of convincing him to save (or spare, in another case) their life, a couple of working girls, a princess who’s a bit of a wild child, a lonely goddess, and two genuine (if mutually exclusive) romantic relationships, among others. I didn’t find any of their motivations or behavior to be notably male-fantasy oriented or otherwise unbelievable, and Geralt, for the most part, is pretty gentlemanly about it. (Though admittedly you can turn around and betray one of them to her demise, if you’re feeling like being a bastard. I couldn’t do it, myself.) The cards are a bit silly, admittedly, but the art’s lovely. And I prefer it to a simple fade to black or a (god forbid) attempt at a 3D rendered sex scene.
Regarding the cards…
My wife watched me play it for a while… her words:
“If I lived in the middle ages and knew he couldn’t get me pregnant, I’d do him too.”
Kadayi – repeated denial that a word has social definitions outside of what dictionary.com says, backed up with blanket dismissal of those who’ve contributed their research to Wikipedia, isn’t something I feel like headbutting against. Sorry.
More relevantly, I suspect you’re talking about character movitation and action, wheareas I’m talking about the game’s puerile presentation of, and rewards for, sex.
My two cents are that the “nudie cards” are a bit unfortunate, they can turn off ‘cerebral’ people who believe that such things turn the game into a cheap “guilty pleasure”, when actually it’s a very capable RPG with a very different, alternative narrative and setting.
The cards aren’t really that interesting, censored or no, obviously a google search can pull things up that are far more scandalous. One could even just search for something like ‘the witcher deck’ and get the whole shebang without the work, so that they aren’t purchasing and installing The Witcher itself just to get to the slightly pervy bits.
Illustrated nipples and buttocks are not the best reason to buy it, by far, and getting that out of the way can help justify the purchase if what you really want is the story and gameplay.
My point is, I hope that anyone looking for a good RPG can get past this issue anyway that they have to, and get a chance to try out the game in question. It’s good, and I’m looking forward to the polished version.
The real question however, is if they’ll be adding even more nudey cards? :D
“I’m looking forward to the polished version.”
Oh, man – I totally missed a headline gag there. “The Witcher gets more Polish.”
@Alec Meer
I guess the academic in me favours the OED, Chambers, Dictionary.com and the umpteen other recognised literary sources above an internet vehicle which despite it’s popularity, overall content is questionable at best, regardless of perceived Zeitgeist. Even if your talking outside of the game mechanics and purely about the cards, yes they are smutty/purile, but there is nothing to them that implies a ‘hated towards Women’. I mean perhaps arrange an interview with Katarzyna Kuczyńska, as she was the designer at CD Projekt responsible for implementing the storyline and get her perspective on things.
Kadayi: Do you read any feminist theory or just dictionaries?
EDIT: Okay, to do this properly – The story is kind of irrelevant to the Witcher’s Misogyny or not, as Alec has already clearly stated. To make this clearer, let’s switch the subject to – say – Anti-Semitism.
Imagine the most sensitive, intelligent adventure game about Life in the Nazi Ghettos. If, upon someone being dragged off to the concentration camps, you get a customised ANOTHER DEAD JEW card flash up, it’s anti-semitic. That act completely undercuts everything else they’re doing.
KG
Kieron
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison Kieron. In the Witcher the players actions instigate the card appearances., they are not randomly thrown up by the game. In the case of Auschwitz: The RPG, you’d have to be playing the role of a Nazi officer in the first place to cause the Another dead Jew card appear to follow the same mechanic. I’m not seeing much room for intelligent or sympathetic in that role.
I’m concerned that this entire debate might be being derailed by kadayi simply being pedantic over the word, rather than disagreeing with the implication.
For clarity kadayi, are you arguing that there is nothing degrading about receiving collectable nudey cards for successfully shagging women in the game? Or are you simply making a fuss about your conservative definition of a particular word?
(Point taken, Walker: I mean, if we just describe it as degrading and sexist, it doesn’t exactly make it any more likeable)
One thing I was thinking about when following this thread would be… well, I wish a Witcher fan would actually admit it, and then roll with that and explain how it then works. I mean, I was listening to hyperlewd sexist R&B stuff last night. Clearly, sexist as fuck, and into a realm of misogyny at times far further than the Witcher. But that has a specific aesthetic effect, etc. Indefensible things can be interesting art…
KG
John
The definition of the word simply is, there is nothing conservative about it, just as Mauve is a colour, and 6 is a number. The Witcher can be considered all kinds of juvenile smut, but it doesn’t fit that definition, regardless of how one tries to shove it through the letterbox. I mean would you label Fable or Mass Effect as misogynistic?
Is that guy who claimed the cards were a beautiful and tender memento of Geralt’s night of love still reading?
Someone open up a hydrant around here and hose these folks down. KG’s use of “misogyny” was brachylogic, not wrong. On the other hand, his spelling of “semetic” for “semitic” and Walker’s “nudey” for “nudie” are just wrong, not artistic. And Kadayi’s implication that academics refer to dictionaries as authorities makes as much sense as saying that professional journalists like to open with a dictionary citation. If they’ve got that one in their bag of tricks, they’re not pros.
But Walker’s right. This entire debate is being derailed, and the true point obscured:
What is risibly cheesy?
Is there a non-risible cheesiness, and what would that be?
*lacrimably cheesy
or
*hinnibly cheesy
?
As for the Witcher getting announced improvements: I’m not waiting for ya.
Dinger: “brachylogic”. Blimey! There’s a word.
KG
@Dinger
Since when is Misogyny, shorthand for sexism? Hatred and contempt may go hand in hand, but they are entirely different states.
Anyway deadlines to meet…
Put the dictionary down, dude. I didn’t say “shorthand”; I said “brachylogic.” The missing middle term is indeed “sexist portrayal”, and the proof not adduced here is that sexist portrayals, insofar as they are intentional, are particular manifestations of misogyny. You can argue that point if you want to, say by claiming that sexism reveals nothing about the practitioner’s mental attitude towards women.
As for hatred and contempt, you’re begging the question.
Did you know a noun, in this case the action of flashing Achievement Well-Cocked cards at the player, can hold two or even more adjectives at once? ‘Strue. This specific facet of the game can be and is misogynistic, sexist, chauvinistic, degrading and contemptuous – all at the same time! Amazing.
Yahtzee was the video reviewer to whom I referred. Yes, I can call his review a review because it was a review, but you seem to have something against him. Fair enough, I supoose, as he professes to have something against you and me and the rest of the gang, but as a fellow pedant I’m not impressed by your attempted assault on his piece via the perceived misuse of a single word outside the piece. (It’s the intro joke on the site, remember: ‘This week, Yahtzee roleplays a pale, lanky misogynist.’)
It is worth noting to Witcher defenders that this whole girl card thing isn’t an automatic kill switch for me. It’s unfortunate, sure, but a small part of the game and I see it as just a horribly failed joke. As with Kieron’s music analogy I can accept lumps with good. I just don’t like it when people try to pretend problems don’t exist.