The Witcher

The Witcher is one of those games where you've heard of it, didn't really put much thought to it at the time, eventually got around to playing it, didn't understand what all the fuss was about, but then three days later you find yourself diving back into its arduous, 80 hour-ish journey. A lot of time has passed since 2007, yet only a handful of decent RPGs have been released. It was an interesting decision on CD Projekt Red's part in building The Witcher on BioWare's Aurora Engine (Neverwinter Nights) as it was very dated even in '07. Yet, to this day, The Witcher has turned out to be one of those rare gems that still manages to hold its own against the vast array of role playing games available. However, it has not exactly been an easy ride; game breaking bugs, poor dialogue and voice acting and buggy mechanics have plagued The Witcher since its release. This has consequently led to the release of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition.

Players will assume the role of Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher, or professional monster-slayer. He is an amnesiac trying to get to the bottom of a conspiracy that runs deeper than he had previously comprehended. In order to avenge the death of his friends and to understand who he is, Geralt embarks on a quest that soon leads to other revelations about Witchers and their place in the world. Through game-changing decisions and investigations, Geralt must become the ultimate assassin to defeat his enemies. As a player-character, Geralt is somewhat of a blank slate for the player to inhabit. He has a fairly monotone voice, stark-white hair and your average, "manly" facial structure. However, the appearance described is more or less how he is also described in Andrzej Sapkowski's original novel "The Last Wish". In terms of an actual character though, Geralt could almost be considered the "James Bond" of Sapkowski's fantasy; he's an intelligent badass who has sex with anyone with nice cleavage and kills people while looking great doing it.

The blurb on the back of the box states that the game is made up of "over 80 hours of non-linear role-playing", this statement couldn't be more right. The game consists of five chapters, a prologue and an epilogue, so seven chapters all up. Now, I wouldn't go as far as to say that the game kicks off with a "bang", in fact, it has an incredibly slow start. One of my biggest gripes about this game (and I'm sure a few would agree on this) is that it takes a good 25 hours of playing in order for the story to really pick up. Mind you, I am a bit of a completionist, so about 7 of those 25 hours was taken up by side quests. Also, the game takes decision making to the extreme. Making a small, seemingly insignificant choice early on in the game will have large consequences in later parts. This is one of the things that I found that really set The Witcher apart from other RPGs, small choices with large consequences adds a whole new layer of depth and maturity to the game, it really forces you to question each decision thoroughly and craft your own experience.

The game's quest journal is somewhat of an anomaly. You have your standard primary and secondary quest tabs, as well as a third tab to list all current quests. It is interesting to note how CD Projekt Red have chosen to link several secondary quests with primary quests. This was particularly frustrating in the game's second and longest chapter, in which there were several primary quests that I could not complete unless I had completed their secondary links. The game eases up on this slightly as the game progresses further, but it almost makes switching between primary and secondary quest tabs totally redundant when some of the secondary quests are necessary to the progression of the primary quest line anyway.

The inventory system is fairly basic in its productivity; all items take up a single square slot and stack to ten. However, seeing as alchemy and potion brewing is such a large part of the game, it is incredibly annoying when your alchemical ingredients get mixed up with random loot. As stated previously, CD Projekt Red released The Witcher: Enhanced edition roughly one year after the initial release of the original. This has ultimately led to a revised inventory system, in which your random loot and alchemical ingredients have been split to different parts of the inventory: much easier to manage. Weapons and armor cannot be carried in the inventory as there are three armor sets throughout the entire game and your weapons are perpetually equipped onto your character. Should you wish to remove all items, all you need to do is speak to an innkeeper and store all your goods.

Depending on the difficulty you choose, alchemy can be considered either not important, useful, or imperative. The potion system in The Witcher is vastly different from many of the other potion-poppers around. Many of the potions simply enhance Geralt's abilities or create an augmented reality to make it easier to track down monsters. The game's most important potions are referred to as "mutagens"; potions that grant abilities that were previously inaccessible or grant talent points to use when you level up. These potions, like all others in the game, require the formula before you can successfully brew it. When consuming these potions, players must watch the toxicity meter, as too many potions can adversely affect the player character. Certain secondary ingredients also boost certain attributes of a potion in order for Geralt to gain the effects. You can also blindly experiment with different ingredients and hope for the best, although 9 times out of 10 you can guarantee failure.

The Witcher sports an interesting combat system. It is a single click attack mechanic, in which the cursor will turn into a flaming sword to indicate that you can begin the next combo sequence, this will happen five times until you complete the entire attack sequence and then you start again. Geralt comes equipped with a steel sword for humans and a silver sword for monsters. The silver sword is much faster and the fighting styles show much more finesse, whereas the steel sword shows a slightly more basic and subdued fighting speed. The animations are also very stylish. It is clear that a lot of work went into the motion capture for the combat. As it turns out, the Strong style, Fast style and Group style are homages to real sword fighting techniques. The system itself is very repetitive early on, but as you level up and gain more attack sequences, the fighting becomes much more fun.

Levelling up in The Witcher is about as standard as it gets. Your talent points are split up into Bronze, Silver and Gold, and with each new level of an ability, comes a tree of sub-skills to compliment. Your base attributes affect your skill with the weapon that the attribute is linked to. For example, levelling up Strength increases the damage that you deal in all strong styles, Dexterity affects increases the chance of critical hits and dodging as well as affecting your skill in fast styles, Stamina increases the chance of hitting opponents in group styles and Intelligence affects your Signs and Alchemy. Signs are The Witcher's version of magical abilities found in most role playing games. You have the Aard (force push), Igni (fire blast), Quen (shield), Yrden (magical trap) and Axii (hex).

One of the downsides about The Witcher is the audio and soundtrack. The music itself is pretty forgettable, although the standard for a good game soundtrack was nowhere near as high in 2007 as it is now. The sound effects for weapons also seemed very basic. It may sound pedantic when I say that there weren't any memorable sound effects, but this is simply something that I notice in games. The voice acting is mediocre at best, not a lot of emotion. It felt like the voice actors were just reading the lines, this was most likely due to poor or very little direction. One of the many fixes that the Enhanced Edition introduced was the correction of several spelling mistakes in subtitles and journal entries due to mistranslated text from Polish to English. Although, funnily enough, these little mistakes are what gave The Witcher a bit more charm for me. The Enhanced Edition also comes with a "Music Inspired By" disc, which includes tracks by Nightwish and several other bands performing songs inspired by the game.

Since its release, The Witcher has been plagued by many bugs and production oversights. The Enhanced Edition has addressed the majority of these issues and in turn, made an excellent, but rough game, into a much smoother experience. In Chapter II particularly, before the Enhanced Edition Patch, there was a certain order in which you had to do the quests, otherwise a line of dialogue from a character would lock you out permanently from progressing the plot, causing you to have to start the game again; The Enhanced Edition has since addressed this and Chapter II can be tackled in whatever way you please.

Despite many of its common trappings as an RPG, The Witcher is an incredibly deep and mature role playing game, one that should not be overlooked. Sure, some of its charm came from the spelling mistakes on mistranslated text, but also from a unique story with many variables and twists depending on the small choices you make. While at times the story can feel a little convoluted and repetitive, the end of each chapter always brings a sweet mini-finale that gets you geared up for the big one. So far it seems, it is a faithful adaption/continuation of Sapkowski's original work. While some of the characters, even Geralt himself, may not quite add up to their original profile in the novel, the character is still strong enough to hold interest. With a deep story, mature characters and oddly addictive gameplay, The Witcher is a must for all RPG enthusiasts. It is a title that simply cannot go untouched. It will be well worth your time and money.