I installed the game and it turned out that although I have a widescreen monitor I either have to play with black borders that take up 1/3 of the screen or with the whole picture ridiculously stretched, because THE GAME ONLY SUPPORTS 16:9 ASPECT RATIO!
Unfortunately, after an hour or so of trying, I could not find a resolution I'd be satisfied with.
This must be the first non-console port that has fixed 16:9 ratio. Or let me rephrase that: this is the first console port that's been done backwards, that is - released on PC first. I understand they really want to release the console version as quickly as possible and without too much hassle, but this shortchanging of the PC gamers is outrageous.
Now out of any complaint made against the witcher, the only one I think I can accept is that it has an incredibly mysognistic world view, and if that is your problem with it then you have every right to not like this game or the novels it comes from
With that aside saying this game is more on rails then ME2 or similiar bioware games of recent times is at best ignorance or at worst just complete lieing to bash a game you have a problem with for some unknown reason. Name me any event in ME or DA that changes the course of the game so utterly in the very first chapter that the two plots don't meet again until the very end of the game? Side with Roche or Side with Iorveth completly changes the course of the game, all the events that happen are forever changed and its an entirely different plot, no subtext about it being different.
For example my first event for ME1 was saving the rachni queen did it ultimetly change the entire story of the game? No so was my choice seemingly less important then saying who to side with in witcher 2? Yes
If we look at ME2 crew have a high importance, but if a crew member is lost do they have any future impact within that game? Not really, and definetly not the dlc character that you can kill before the end of the game, so as far as choices go there isn't a lot of heavy impact choices that we see from the game itself and all the heavy choices we make seem more to be speculation on what we hope carries over to 3 So for the sake of argument within the game itself no big dramatic changes happen in just 2 alone or even with 1 carrying over to 2
DA is likewise choosing good or evil doesn't dramatically change things, you might feel it does but it doesn't change the general course of the plot, they all seem more like isolated events rather then events that can be interwoven. This is again the case where we hope the decisions we make about who we gave what freedoms to/saved/destroyed whoever in DAO transfers to Da3 rather then actually changing the world right then and there.
As far as difficulty goes, if you were so worried and saw the game was hard even in the prologue, even more so since yoou saw the dragon timing events and knew you would have them from the very start of the game, you should of come to realize maybe i'm a wuss and need something easy. So the reasonable thing to do isn't to complain but set it on easy, all quick action events are either disabled or so simplistic its laughable. This is a complete your fault move, if I chose a nightmare difficult and say nightmare is too hard, then well its my fault no different here.
As far as a gritty world where you're never too sure who is with or against you, that creates a complete sense of tension always knowing whose good or bad seems like just a simplistic way to look at things. There are far fewer people who are just good or bad in this world then shades of gray, self interest is not the same thing as evil, all the characters are motivated by self interest its all a matter of perspective a freedom fighter or a terrorist in the case of Iorveth is a great way to see iit, he is only evil if you are fighting against him and is good if fighting with.
Not knowing who your friends are makes you more calculating, about which npcs you trust, if you knew they were always good or always evil, wouldn't you then never want to explore a different side? Oh this is my evil playthrough this guy is clearly evil done deal. That seems a cop out for just general storytelling, and immersion. Also this comes from the same people who want realism in their mmos, so you want realistic graphics but not a more realistic version of characters?
The world is utterly beautiful, in fact its so beautiful that most computers can hardly run it at max settings, until you are running ubersampling, saying the game world doesn't look good is a your fault experience because you still think you are entitled to have the best graphics on your old computer.
As far as the world being small or the paths being linear, I guess? I don't know what to say to this? There are usually more then one path to the objective, but you're still covering the same landscape more or less, though the landscape does change by chapter and by choice. Tthough I find it equally puzzling that people say its not an rpg, then completly forget that a good portion of rpgs were very linear in terms of exploration, you had one place to go and there was usually only one route to get to the next town dungeon whatever, so we need to redefine rpg if people are having trouble with their genre history. [Unless you're talking about the nes generation like Dragon warrior, then I hate you because that game was brutal.]
Beyond that, choices change things, even what you do in the tutorial, the god damn tutorial has a latter impact on the rest of the game and how it plays out. What game do you know of has an impact on the world within the tutorial?
Also to those that say Geralt is boring, what is a more intriguing character that you know of? Please also give an example of one of said character's most awesometastic moments. I can name a few that are on equal footing with Geralt, Luca blight from suikoden II for instance is a complete badass with an amazing backstory. Spoilers he fights an entire army by himself and almost wins.
So if you beleive i'm wrong and that the witcher 2 is just a horrendous experience with little to no impact, little to no coherent storytelling, then tell me why you think so and please do give examples so we can have an accurate debate, saying because I said so or just because doesn't help anyone understand if this game is a pass or not, and does not help debate.
Comments
I installed the game and it turned out that although I have a widescreen monitor I either have to play with black borders that take up 1/3 of the screen or with the whole picture ridiculously stretched, because THE GAME ONLY SUPPORTS 16:9 ASPECT RATIO!
Unfortunately, after an hour or so of trying, I could not find a resolution I'd be satisfied with.
This must be the first non-console port that has fixed 16:9 ratio. Or let me rephrase that: this is the first console port that's been done backwards, that is - released on PC first. I understand they really want to release the console version as quickly as possible and without too much hassle, but this shortchanging of the PC gamers is outrageous.
Witcher 2 seems like a great game, but it is certainly a European RPG. It's buggy, cheap, lacking in direction, and hard.
Now out of any complaint made against the witcher, the only one I think I can accept is that it has an incredibly mysognistic world view, and if that is your problem with it then you have every right to not like this game or the novels it comes from
With that aside saying this game is more on rails then ME2 or similiar bioware games of recent times is at best ignorance or at worst just complete lieing to bash a game you have a problem with for some unknown reason. Name me any event in ME or DA that changes the course of the game so utterly in the very first chapter that the two plots don't meet again until the very end of the game? Side with Roche or Side with Iorveth completly changes the course of the game, all the events that happen are forever changed and its an entirely different plot, no subtext about it being different.
For example my first event for ME1 was saving the rachni queen did it ultimetly change the entire story of the game? No so was my choice seemingly less important then saying who to side with in witcher 2? Yes
If we look at ME2 crew have a high importance, but if a crew member is lost do they have any future impact within that game? Not really, and definetly not the dlc character that you can kill before the end of the game, so as far as choices go there isn't a lot of heavy impact choices that we see from the game itself and all the heavy choices we make seem more to be speculation on what we hope carries over to 3 So for the sake of argument within the game itself no big dramatic changes happen in just 2 alone or even with 1 carrying over to 2
DA is likewise choosing good or evil doesn't dramatically change things, you might feel it does but it doesn't change the general course of the plot, they all seem more like isolated events rather then events that can be interwoven. This is again the case where we hope the decisions we make about who we gave what freedoms to/saved/destroyed whoever in DAO transfers to Da3 rather then actually changing the world right then and there.
As far as difficulty goes, if you were so worried and saw the game was hard even in the prologue, even more so since yoou saw the dragon timing events and knew you would have them from the very start of the game, you should of come to realize maybe i'm a wuss and need something easy. So the reasonable thing to do isn't to complain but set it on easy, all quick action events are either disabled or so simplistic its laughable. This is a complete your fault move, if I chose a nightmare difficult and say nightmare is too hard, then well its my fault no different here.
As far as a gritty world where you're never too sure who is with or against you, that creates a complete sense of tension always knowing whose good or bad seems like just a simplistic way to look at things. There are far fewer people who are just good or bad in this world then shades of gray, self interest is not the same thing as evil, all the characters are motivated by self interest its all a matter of perspective a freedom fighter or a terrorist in the case of Iorveth is a great way to see iit, he is only evil if you are fighting against him and is good if fighting with.
Not knowing who your friends are makes you more calculating, about which npcs you trust, if you knew they were always good or always evil, wouldn't you then never want to explore a different side? Oh this is my evil playthrough this guy is clearly evil done deal. That seems a cop out for just general storytelling, and immersion. Also this comes from the same people who want realism in their mmos, so you want realistic graphics but not a more realistic version of characters?
The world is utterly beautiful, in fact its so beautiful that most computers can hardly run it at max settings, until you are running ubersampling, saying the game world doesn't look good is a your fault experience because you still think you are entitled to have the best graphics on your old computer.
As far as the world being small or the paths being linear, I guess? I don't know what to say to this? There are usually more then one path to the objective, but you're still covering the same landscape more or less, though the landscape does change by chapter and by choice. Tthough I find it equally puzzling that people say its not an rpg, then completly forget that a good portion of rpgs were very linear in terms of exploration, you had one place to go and there was usually only one route to get to the next town dungeon whatever, so we need to redefine rpg if people are having trouble with their genre history. [Unless you're talking about the nes generation like Dragon warrior, then I hate you because that game was brutal.]
Beyond that, choices change things, even what you do in the tutorial, the god damn tutorial has a latter impact on the rest of the game and how it plays out. What game do you know of has an impact on the world within the tutorial?
Also to those that say Geralt is boring, what is a more intriguing character that you know of? Please also give an example of one of said character's most awesometastic moments. I can name a few that are on equal footing with Geralt, Luca blight from suikoden II for instance is a complete badass with an amazing backstory. Spoilers he fights an entire army by himself and almost wins.
So if you beleive i'm wrong and that the witcher 2 is just a horrendous experience with little to no impact, little to no coherent storytelling, then tell me why you think so and please do give examples so we can have an accurate debate, saying because I said so or just because doesn't help anyone understand if this game is a pass or not, and does not help debate.
For the first 5 seconds I'd just have taken this statement as your typical next-door troll-attempt. But after 'lacking in direction' I got the joke
M