Game Review: The Witcher enhanced edition director's cut

The witcher is a series of fantasy short stories written by the Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski about the witcher Geralt of Rivia. The books were published in the early 90's in Poland and never had an English version until recently, and the books were actually quite popular in Europe and eventually had a big screen adaptation along with a TV series. The setting is much like other high fantasy stories such as Lord of the Rings, and this made it perfect for a video game.

Polish rookie developer CD projekt started designing the game in 2004 utilizing the then popular Aurora Engine from Bioware. It was their first game ever release but being that the Aurora Engine was very well designed and had pretty much all the coding in place it is only fair to view this game not as a debut effort and a quaility western RPG going head on with the likes of Bioware's own games.

The original Witcher was released in 2007, and the enhanced edition smoothed out many of the bugs with updated graphics. Later the director's cut version was added for the US to uncensored all things considered to be too risqué for America.

-Story

Much of the story is told through the opening cinema before the games main menu but it still doesn't tell you a whole lot about the witcher. The game itself starts right off without any background stories, I guess the developers really expect you to read the books. You really only learn small pieces of the background story and who you really are much later in the game so for those who don't know the witcher story you are left out in the dark trying to figure out what is going on. This is unlike any of the Bioware's games as they tend to be very story heavy, not to the extend where the game is shoving unwanted info in your face but definitely not like the witcher where you are thrown into the dark.

The story of the witcher or from what I gather in game and wikipedia is that the witcher is a secrete organization of monster slayers for hire, they go through special trainings at a young age where they go through a series of mutations making them stronger and tougher. They are also looked down upon by some people since they are mutants. Geralt who is the main character of the story is a cold bastard who doesn't display a lot of emotions and seems to be only occupied with killing for gold. At the beginning of the game he loses his memory and is on the verge of dying until he is revived by the fellow witchers, and then the witchers base is attacked by a group of mysterious assassins known as the salamandra. They steal a sacred witcher artifact where you will attempt to recover through out the game while trying to get your memories back. Over all its another high fantasy themed story but its slightly different this time with some European flavors.

-Game Play

The game play is quite interesting unlike any other Bioware games. First of all you will not have any party members at all, the whole game you control Geralt. So right off the bat there is no party macro management that is famous in some of the Bioware's games such as Baldur's gate and Dragon age. And since there are no party members another Bioware trait is out of the window; the ability to gather interesting background stories from your party members by repeatedly talking to them and slowly influencing them ala character development. There is not to say the witcher doesn't have its share of interesting support characters but they are nothing like a proper Bioware game. For example you meet a group of interesting witchers in the beginning but that was just the tutorial and you will never see them again until the end of the game. The story itself however is like pen and paper RPG in many western RPGs where you go through the story in the style of conversation and different choices will have different consequences.

The combat is quite different too as all Bioware games utilize the dungeons and dragons formula implementing what is known as dice roll or random number generator. This game plays more like an action game where the pause function is still intact but you really dont need it for any tactical reasons. You have two swords one for human and the other is for monsters, with each sword you get three styles suited for heavy, agile, and group enemies, and the rest if like hack and slash with some timing involved.

The rest of the game play are pretty standard for an RPG, you have your stats and potions. Run around killing/gathering for this quest and that trying to advance in the story. One thing different is that the game does have day and night and some events will only happen in the day while others only happen at the night.

overall I think the game play is pretty simple but enjoyable enough that you don't really missed the hardcore tactical stuff that Bioware tends to put in their RPGs.

-Presentation

Like I said the game uses the Aurora Engine that was made in 2004 so it looks a little outdated today very similar to Neverwinter Nights 2 which is also an Aurora game. There are a few places you visit through out the game but they aren't huge open areas where you can explore unlike some other RPG games such as Elder Scrolls series made by Bethesda where its a totally free roam open sandbox type of game. So in this regard the game follows closely to Bioware's footsteps as Bioware games are not known for huge open explorations either. The game play takes around 60 hours to finish so by no means is this a short game.

Oh and last but not least it wont be a proper Bioware influenced game without talking about sex scenes. Throughout the game there are subtle hints that the witchers are not only this league of mutants for hire but they also show up and take all your women. This was pretty apparent in the game as almost all female NPCs that you can actually talk to, you will have a chance to...plow. One second you are having a normal conversation about the weather and next second you know you are banging the bejesus out of her. Maybe its a thing with the European women, I don't really know or it just comes with it being a European product.

-Conclusion

Overall the witcher is an above average RPG that was build on a well established RPG engine but its still a game worth checking out for all RPG fans out there. The story is kind of disappointing and the game play is a bit on the simple side but its still a fun game, besides sometimes you just don't want to play a hardcore RPG like Dragon Age.

With the Witcher 2 on the horizon and a brand new engine at work I am truly excited to see what improvements CD projekt can bring in this exciting second chapter.