The Witcher

**Navaros** · 09-10-2008, 00:06

Oblivion gives you lots of freedom to do nothing meaningful. Therefore that 'freedom' doesn't amount to anything IMO.

The 'characters' in Oblivion are talking heads. There is no sense of relationship with them to your character or emotional investment in them.

The same is true for Oblivion's 'story' and the quests in Oblivion, which feel meaningless compared to The Witcher's quests because there is no sense of accomplishment in beating a quest in Oblivion since it doesn't amount to rewarding you with any emotional payoff that you might care about.

The Witcher is one of the best games I've ever seen in terms of developing meaningful relationships with NPCs and fleshing them out deeply into as close to an illusion of real persons, being your real friends, as is possible to do in a video game. The only other games I've seen do something like this is Deus Ex or maybe KOTOR. Plus The Witcher gives you lots of different options to choose that have different effects on how the story develops. I would say The Witcher does give you a large degree of freedom, and it always remains emotionally meaningful (the total opposite of Oblivion's 'freedom' which IMO is emotionally meaningless).

I've actually made some of the dialogues in The Witcher not make sense because I made my character do things in an odd order that the programmers didn't account for in the programming code. It's not perfect by any stretch, but at least it does give you some choices about how to proceed and what order you want to do quests in.

I'd say Witcher is a million times better of a game than Oblivion. I've give Witcher 8.5/10 (not even the enhanced edition which would be higher, probably). I'd give Oblivion 3/10.

**Kekvit Irae** · 09-10-2008, 09:10

I'm hoping the download comes with a torrent file. There's nothing worse than being 99% complete on a several gig download, only to have your computer crash.

**FactionHeir** · 09-10-2008, 12:04

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae

I'm hoping the download comes with a torrent file. There's nothing worse than being 99% complete on a several gig download, only to have your computer crash.

You mean the free update for game owners? I'm guessing it probably won't officially as its only meant for game owners and not for those who don't own it.
Eriash said that they'll have enough server power internally to handle all the demand, so that should hopefully be sufficient. I'll have another word with him though if you like

**Justiciar** · 09-19-2008, 03:08

I bought this game months ago, but my old computer just couldn't run it. Now, however, I'm hardly able to pull myself away. This is a stonkingly good game, and one that I suspect will have a greater degree of replayability than most of the other RPGs on my shelf. Not quite as dark and gritty as I'd hoped, but it's a well realised world, and I'm loving the moral ambiguity and constantly scheming characters so far. I'm only at Chapter 2.. who the hell do I trust?!

**AggonyDuck** · 09-19-2008, 04:15

Originally Posted by Justiciar

I bought this game months ago, but my old computer just couldn't run it. Now, however, I'm hardly able to pull myself away. This is a stonkingly good game, and one that I suspect will have a greater degree of replayability than most of the other RPGs on my shelf. Not quite as dark and gritty as I'd hoped, but it's a well realised world, and I'm loving the moral ambiguity and constantly scheming characters so far. I'm only at Chapter 2.. who the hell do I trust?!

By the way, the Enchanced Edition download for owners of the normal game should be out soon.

**FactionHeir** · 09-19-2008, 12:43

Its out now

http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=16804.0

Additional mirrors:
http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=16808.0

**rajpoot** · 09-19-2008, 13:28

I've got a depressing 30 Kbps connection speed, so downloading the whole thing at once would never be possible, but those split rapidshare links now; Tell me are the five links on top of the page the ones that contain the patch or what else?

**rajpoot** · 09-10-2008, 09:25

Originally Posted by Navaros

The 'characters' in Oblivion are talking heads. There is no sense of relationship with them to your character or emotional investment in them.

The same is true for Oblivion's 'story' and the quests in Oblivion, which feel meaningless compared to The Witcher's quests because there is no sense of accomplishment in beating a quest in Oblivion since it doesn't amount to rewarding you with any emotional payoff that you might care about.

I think you're being unfair, for one, Oblivion's freedom meant that the main storyline had to be loose, secondly the charecters in the main story are pretty well done considering the game and the atmosphere. There were more than few memorable moments in the game, one that I remember instantly is when the player has to close the Great Gate opened near Bruma, the scene looks and sounds great.
Voice acting for the generic charecters might not be awesome, but it's no better in the Witcher, the main charecters on the other hand have had their voices done by pretty well known people, I remeber reading that Sean Bean did it for one of the major charecters.
The dialouge is quite nice too......nothing compared to the Witcher (but again remember, that is a different kind of game, a game with a series of book behind it); A good example is the dialouge of Sheogorath in the Shivering Island xpack.