Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You couldn’t wish for a vaguer statement, but when it comes to what may well prove to be the year’s best RPG, talk of a ‘new and improved PC version 2.0′ is EXCITING TALK. This news comes from the end of a noodly, AOR music video featuring some silly rocker put out by CD Projekt RED late last week. Most of the video is Geralt striking a pose, but the end boasts of the upcoming 360 port – and a major new patch for the PC version, dubbed version 2.0.

I have no details for you than that, but at a guess it will involve bringing the various tweaks, updates and newosity from the console edition into the PC original. Win-win, hopefully. You can watch the music video below, if you must.
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With The Witcher 2 looming like a dark juggernaut of RPG-based distraction, we thought it might be a good time to go back and poke around in the original game. Just what was it that really made it sing? (There may be some mild spoilers ahead.)

Forget about the sex cards, forget about the five hour slog through the Outskirts, ignore the occasionally shoddy writing and voice work, and let’s focus on how The Witcher deals with choice. It’s a piece of game design that demands respect.
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Richard has a brand new T-Shirt that says ‘One Of The World’s First Players Of The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings’. They don’t give those to just anybody. He’d probably better tell you about what he saw while questing for the right to wear it…

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It took me eight straight hours to crawl through the sewers, beneath Cologne’s conference centre and then up through an impossibly tight U-bend into a disused toilet somewhere in the North Hall, but finally I was back at GamesCom. The guards had turned me away when I’d tried to enter through the main doors – disgusted by the foul breath that had resulted from eating a sleeping tramp’s shoes and by the rotting pigeon-skin loincloth I had been forced to don once I’d sold my last clothes to afford a cup of frightening grey coffee. I thought of Quintin, and his shoes made of finest unicorn hide. Perhaps he could spare me a promotional t-shirt to cover my filthy body? But not. He would have his minders throw in the Rein on sight. Better to carry on, and to my next appointment. At least the world of this game would mirror my own condition. Onwards, and to the Witcher 2.
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After yesterday’s video, UberJumper on the SA forums noticed it includes on a one-frame message to the devoted (i.e. Those heroically mental enough to advance it frame by frame). Click through the image above to see the whole thing. Paraphrase: we sold 1.5 million! Awesome! Unlike people who say PC RPG is dead. Witcher was awesome, but we’ve learned a load since then. Next one will be better, and built with our own tech rather than Bioware’s Aurora engine to allow non-linear plots and living world. Key quote: “A game created by a team of independent thinkers, immune to corporate priorties, who don’t care what’s trendy at a given moment”.

EDIT: Now with trailer, below.

There’s a big number ’2′ on the front page of TheWitcher.com. I think it might mean something. But what? I’m pretty sure it’s related to the number of eggs the CEO of CD Projekt RED likes in his ham and mushroom omlettes, but then I’ve been know to be wrong before. I mean, some people think could be something to do with there being a sequel to quietly huge RPG The Witcher, but c’mon, who makes sequels to videogames these days?

The site forbids any interaction at the moment, but I suspect it’ll relax that very, very soon. (Now, in fact.)
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Polish role-playing epic The Witcher: Enhanced Edition has a muscular new patch. It flexes its 369mb torso to remove DRM, the CD check, to fix a couple of tech issues and to add in five of the best community-made scenarios into the game, for more fantastical adventures. You can download it here, but I can’t find any confirmation of whether it updates automagically on Steam, but I have to assume it will. Maybe. I’m waiting for an answer from CD Projekt, but does anyone know?

Still no word on The Witcher 2, and we can only hope it’ll raise its wolfish head soon.

And the award for Most Prosaic-Ever RPS Headline goes to…

All’s been a bit quiet around well-received, dodgily-translated blood’n'boobs’n'moral deliberation RPG The Witcher for a while, with its fans hoping E3 might offer news of a follow-up. No such luck, unfortunately, but there is more Witcher inbound – the 1.5 patch, which promises two rather exciting changes. Also, CD Projekt RED’s cavalier mention of a “Director’s Cut” will doubtless fuel a speculatory fire.
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You probably spotted this from last week, but I wanted to reprise the story to lead into some other thoughts about The Witcher. Polish fantasy RPG The Witcher has sold 1 million copies. That’s a fair amount for a game on any format. Developers CD Projekt are rightly pleased with this, and I’m glad that this unexpected success has allowed them scope to continue and expand their RPG-building projects. The Witcher was one of those games that made me say: “I’d like to see what they do next.” I usually say that only to find that the company in question has gone bust (sorry, Troika) but it looks like that won’t be the case here.
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That’s right, The Witcher: Enhanced Edition patch is now available for those of you who bought the game the first time around. It’s a beefy 1.2gb and there’s a mirror here.

I’m grinding my way through the Enhanced Edition at the moment and finding The Witcher to be an uneven experience. There’s plenty to like about it – especially with Polish voice-acting and English subtitles glossing over the dodgy dialogue – the grim art style, decaying fantasy world, and general melee combat are all to my tastes. The mechanical elements of the RPG, however, are less slick. It’s full of annoyances in the way some quests are structured, as well as they way character development is introduced. These needed as much of an overhaul as the cosmetic stuff the Enhanced Edition dealt with. And sex cards thing? Wow. That’s so, so crass. I’ll probably write some more on the game generally when I’ve managed to get myself unstuck from the end of the first chapter.

Eurogamer get me to review the Enhanced Edition of the Witcher. Wherein I start like this…

Not having read a film mag in years, I don’t know if they still do this, but… I always despised the dual-mark DVD review section where they give separate marks for films and add-ons, with a similar sort of split shown in the actual reviews in terms of what they talk about. Because if a film is rubbish, who cares if it’s got voiceover commentary by the entire cast’s family? It’s rubbish. You’re reviewing. That’s all that bloody matters.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition has provided me with the latest in a long string of opportunities to be a dirty great hypocrite.

And continue for 1500 words or so. Read!