INTRODUCTION
Nowadays The hype around Cyberpunk 2077 is huge but it's a triple A game that is not coming from one of the usual publishers. While in the last few years CDProject made themselves known quite a lot with Witcher 3 which was a hit and now with Cyberpunk, at one point they tried making one game, based of a licence they bought quite cheap from the author, and that is the Witcher license. Today we will (re)visit the game that slowly pushed CDProject where they are now as developers. The Witcher, and more precisely the Enhanced Edition.
The Witcher was originally released in October 2007 to quite positive reviews averaging an 8 out of 10 and a year later it got an Enhanced Edition which featured all the patches, overhauled combat, a lot of dialogue rewritten and re-recorded.
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| Good Ol' Vizima. Over the shoulder point of view is quite immersive. |
It's a Witcher game, it plays like Witcher 3 on unglier graphics, no?
Well, sort of, ish, kinda, no? Depends on how you see it, I'd say it is different. First of all, The Witcher was built on a modified Aurora Engine(the Engine featured in Neverwinter Nights, successor of the even older Infinity Engine. You can play with high isometric, low isometric and over the shoulder cameras, depending on preference. I liked OTS more for the immersion it provided.
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| Inventory Screen. Quite simplistic, and sadly there are only 3 armor pieces in the whole game. |
The combat relied mostly on Combo hits, more commonly known as a rhythm based combat even though it was criticized by many players that either disliked it or found it broken and unresponsive due to confusing it with a hack and slash spam type of combat. you have 3 weapon slots, one for a silver weapon against monsters and 2 for 2 different weapons against humans. each sword combat comes with 3 sub-types focused You purchase your skills and then upgrade them with bronze,silver and gold coins(points) you earn when leveling up. It may take a while to get used to it but it can be quite enjoyable afterwards.
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| Hero/Skill panel. Now imagine that for each category on the left there are pretty much these many skills to choose from. |
So... What was doing Geralt back then?
The story was played quite on the safe side. Geralt has amnesia and everything focuses on an issue around Vizima. The story has multiple endings, introduces the player to the universe but it has an ending that didn't really matter in the second game. The story is nice, enjoyable, has some twists but if you started playing the series from the second or third game you won't really feel like there was this first game.
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| High Isometric, for some reason it just doesn't cut it for me. |
Ok, Ok so it's just an old looking Witcher 3 game in the end
Oh no, no, no. While you can view it like that I'd say that the art approach in The Witcher is the darkest compared to the successors. the colors aren't that vibrant, giving the game quite the scary and dangerous feeling while the second and third one have a more western approach, focused on shiny stuff to make them more "attractive". The sounds overall in the game are okayish, wouldn't say AAA but it really helps you get into the world. The only real problem is the voice acting which instead of feeling more medieval, appropriate to the setting, is quite modern and american sounding. At least it tends to get vulgar!
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| Oh Vizima...Why do I have a feeling that I'm about to be attacked? |
So what do I have to change to make it work on my modern system?
Well honestly nothing. At least for the GoG version. Install, the game, start the game, go to settings and crank everything up. The UI scales right up to 4k(couldn't test higher,sorry) and everything fits on the screen nicely.
We should wrap-up now...
Yeah, we should. So almost 11 years have passed since we were first introduced into the world of Geralt Of Rivia, the Witcher. Playing this game after 11 years for this article made me want to do another full run of it, while it looks old I'd dare say the game aged better than the second one and if you haven't played it you should pick it up, Totally worth it!
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