The Witcher 2

[Pedro]

I'm away so just a quick word about blocking - it doesn't work if your stamina is low, so it appears like your keystrokes are only registering half the time. I wish I had known this before I stopped playing (for various reasons, not just that one) as I found it extremely frustrating.

[Li-Ion]

I figured as much, but I still don't know which of all those bars represents my stamina.

Speaking of ARGH!, just finished the boss-fight with that tentacle monster. What a broken piece of rubbish! I died a couple of times until I noticed the sorceress shouting I should use the yrglpfrtlz-sign (or something like that), which I wasn't even aware of yet. Fair enough. After that I got stuck at the second stage of the battle. Nothing worked, wherever I went I hit an invisible wall, was stuck between a tentacle and a hard place.

After running back and forth for about 20 minutes I consulted youtube and thought: "wait a minute, that doesn't look like on my computer!" For some reason the path I was supposed to run up was blocked by an already hacked-off tentacle which was clearly not supposed to be there. After another reload this stoopid boss was finally stuck as intended and I could casually walk up and kill it.

but seriously, wtf?

[Li-Ion]

If I continue playing the Witcher 2, I should consider going to anger management courses.

Minor spoilers ahead.

I just came to the second boss fight. I kinda was expecting a fight so I planned on drinking some potions beforehand. Unfortunately, just before the boss that doesn't seem to be allowed anymore. I had the squirrel Iorveth tied up to get to the kingslayer, when I noticed it's not possible to meditate here and the potions I drank earlier only had about a minute duration left. After talking to the kingslayer the inevitable boss fight happens and I had exactly 4 seconds of potion-time left. Considering the amount of hitpoints the kingslayer has that is hardly enough time. Even when skipping through the cutscenes and dialogue as quickly as possible I only had about half a minute of potions.

...

To add insult to injury, the kingslayer has every piece of the arsenal I have, just better. The only thing he doesn't do is dodging. But that doesn't matter, since his quen deals damage every time I touch it and my aard is so weak that I need two of them to disable his quen, leaving me essentially helpless. I tried circling around him for a while but then he just throws grenades and replenishes his quen. In this case he doesn't kill me, but I also don't kill him. It's the eternal circlestrafe. When I decide to go in for some damege, one hit of him takes away half my health respectively disables my quen. One hit of me tickles him just a little. Unless his quen is active, then a hit of me staggers me, allowing him to hit me for half my hitpoints worth.

So, yes, I died a lot. I got annoyed and switched difficulty to easy, and suddenly the guy was a pushover. No resistance at all. What happened to balancing? The gap between easy and normal for this fight is so vast, you could fit in a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and would have room to spare. There was no satisfaction or sense of accomplishment for beating him on easy. But the worst part (for me, at least) was yet to come.

After I take away a bit more than half of his life without him doing nothing about, a cutscene starts where I suddenly loose. WHAAAAAAT?!? When I'm supposed to loose anyway, why wasn't it enough how I lost on normal that dozen of times earlier? Why can't the same cutscene play regardless? When he wiped the floor with me anyway the cutscene would have been perfectly appropriate, but after the easy-pushover it just doesn't. At all. Until the cutscene he didn't even touch me once. I hate it when games do this, when they let you fight a fight you're supposed to loose time and time again, until you loose 'properly'. I was so mad I immediately switched off the game and went jogging for 10km to cool off. Afterwards I launched Deus Ex again on Deus Ex difficulty without crosshairs or object highlighting. A much better game.

[Mike Doolittle]

Originally Posted by Li-Ion

If I continue playing the Witcher 2, I should consider going to anger management courses.

It seems to me that since the patch, the difficulty is more balanced. That, and on my second playthrough (and toward the latter part of my first) I've paid more attention to keeping weapons and armor upgraded, and having a good stash of ranged weaponry.

Still, this game undoubtedly suffers from some frustrating difficulty spikes where if you aren't fully prepared, you'll get your ass kicked. I'm tempted to say that adding the ability to drink potions in combat would remedy this somewhat, but the reality is that if you make use of the alchemy skill tree your potions last much longer and become much more powerful, so potions don't have much use if you never level those skills.

So I turned the difficulty down on this boss fight the first time through after getting my ass kicked a dozen times or so and barely making a dent in his health. And yet I eventually realized that this isn't like other RPGs where you can ignore this or that and expect to sail through the game above the "easy" setting. If you want to avoid the difficulty spikes, you have to make use of all the resources available to you. The second time through, I kicked his ass!

[Li-Ion]

As I explain in my posting above, the difficulty spike wasn't what caused me to abandon the game (incidentally, Dark Souls is my favorite game this year, talk about difficulty spikes ). It was the botched scripting, that had me 'loose' a fight after trying it half a dozen time (where I actually lost it). It was aggravating to me that I didn't loose 'well enough' in order to get to that cutscene. All the other issues with not being able to use potions etc. just added up to the miserable experience.

[Mike Doolittle]

Well, you did clearly explain that the difficulty spike was a big source of frustration for you, and that's what I was responding to.

As for the issue of the scripting, personally I wouldn't call it 'botched scripting' just because, for the sake of the plot, you ultimately come out on the losing end of the fight. It's simply setting the stage for a more dramatic confrontation in the final act. To each their own, though.

[Li-Ion]

Originally Posted by Mike Doolittle

Well, you did clearly explain that the difficulty spike was a big source of frustration for you, and that's what I was responding to.

Then you misunderstood me, my main source of frustration comes from what I wrote in the last paragraph. Hence the:

Originally Posted by Li-Ion

But the worst part (for me, at least) was yet to come.

And regarding difficulty I also wrote...

Afterwards I launched Deus Ex again on Deus Ex difficulty without crosshairs or object highlighting. A much better game.

...where it is to note that Deus Ex difficulty is the highest and both crosshairs and object highlighting disabled make the game a bit more difficult still

No, difficulty isn't what stops me from playing stuff (especially since I beat the boss on easy anyway, as explained in the posting). The difficulty spike was just an annoyment. But what I can't stand is when there is a huge disconnect between what happens during gameplay and what happens in cutscenes/scripted events. In this specific fight it would have been perfectly fine with me if the cutscene with me loosing would have come when I actually lost against that dude. But when I finally beat him after I can't remember how many attempts just to see the cutscene... no, that is just botched scripting in my opinion. Or was it really important for the story if he looses 5, 20 or 50% of his health before the cutscene plays?

In case of Witcher 2 it was the compilation of all those little annoying things to one big pile of anger. Today I was contemplating continuing Witcher 2, but I decided to continue my NG+ in Dark Souls instead.

[Mike Doolittle]

Originally Posted by Li-Ion

No, difficulty isn't what stops me from playing stuff (especially since I beat the boss on easy anyway, as explained in the posting). The difficulty spike was just an annoyment.

I didn't mean to imply that the difficulty was the reason you stopped playing. Like you said, it was an annoyance for you, and I had a similar experience the first time (having to turn down the difficulty to avoid throwing my monitor out the window), so I just wanted to offer a different perspective.

that is just botched scripting in my opinion. Or was it really important for the story if he looses 5, 20 or 50% of his health before the cutscene plays?

Well it wouldn't have made much sense if you beat him completely, watched his corpse hit the ground, then you watched the cutscene of him besting you and escaping. I suppose that's a broader issue though, whether games should use those plot devices at all. In this case, they wanted you to have an overwhelming confrontation (presumably to show you what a badass he is), and save the real satisfaction of killing him til the finale, after you've beefed up your skills (if you choose to fight him in the finale, of course). Since he's a central plot character it wouldn't have made sense to let him be killed off too early... although if any game would do that, it'd probably be a Witcher game.

[Li-Ion]

Originally Posted by Mike Doolittle

Well it wouldn't have made much sense if you beat him completely, watched his corpse hit the ground, then you watched the cutscene of him besting you and escaping.

Well, yes, but that was not my point. My point was that in terms of story there is no reason why it shouldn't be "enough" to chip off only 20% of his health before the cutscene comes, if the player happens to loose the fight at that point.

I suppose that's a broader issue though, whether games should use those plot devices at all.

Exactly, or: if games use plot devices like this they should be more careful or at least better planned out. There is this excellent satire on Modern Warfare 2's plot device (video contains a big spoiler)...



I've been playing my share of P&P RPG when I was younger (often as dungeon master) and always considered it bad form to have an unkillable deus ex machina npc to unravel the plot. My rule of thumb: if your plot relies on a deus ex machina, it probably wasn't all that good to begin with

Since he's a central plot character it wouldn't have made sense to let him be killed off too early... although if any game would do that, it'd probably be a Witcher game.

Exactly! The issue with this encounter in the Witcher 2 is not just that he is unkillable by means of scripting, but that until this point the players decisions mattered. Suddenly control is taken away. In a game that doesn't allow much player control from the get go (e.g. every modern military shooter) the loss of control is something the player is accustomed to. In a game of perceived freedom the sudden loss of player choice hurts me much more. It's like playing Skyrim where you could walk wherever you like, but would suddenly run into an invisible wall at some pretty looking river.

[Li-Ion]

I'm back playing the Witcher, after friends convinced me that the game get's "so much better" after this particular bossfight that made me quit. Arguably it couldn't have gotten any worse. But I had some time off and almost forgot how terrible that bossfight was. Also, some patches rolled in (more than 700mb!) and v2.1 plays indeed a bit more fluid. However, still worlds apart from the combat in Dark Souls.

So, now I sided with the rebel alliance and went to the dwarf city in chapter 2 having a lot of dirty, medieval sex. I saw that someone created a towel-mod for Witcher 2, due to "unexpected nudity". Seriously? All the dismemberment and suffering is ok, but when seeing half a naked body there's the need to cover up?

I'm getting sidetracked here: Witcher 2 did indeed get better (not only the sex). Some issues are still bothering me, however. For example that I already died twice during a brief cutscene. Or that the game froze repeatedly after finishing one specific quest. Or the weird disconnect that I feel every time Geralt takes his sweet time to react after my button presses, particularly for the Quen-sign and when climbing/jumping from ledges.

[Pedro]

When the podcast listeners voted it in the top three GOTY, I came back here and was surprised how enthusiastic my comments were at the start. It must have gone badly wrong as my current thoughts are that it's a terrible game. I'm interested to see how I got here from there and will probably give it another go when I get a new PC in the next few months.

[Li-Ion]

I can surely see the appeal of Witcher 2, as it has a quite vivid game world with colorful characters. The world of Witcher is not clear cut as your standard fantasy world and everything is morally ambiguous. Basically almost everyone's a dick and wants to grab more money and power. Sex is not displayed as something odd and nervously pushed off-screen or shown as awkward dry humping, but something rather normal. Choices matter. They matter to such an extend, that you can basically play the game two times have a completely different storyline with different sets of characters supporting and opposing you. Also, it is a truly pretty game, both technically as in terms of art style.

However, for each ray of light there is some darkness. With version 2.1 the controls still feel unresponsive and sluggish. I almost got stuck on one occasion, because I couldn't click on the door I was supposed to walk through, unless I was in a very specific place. Since Geralt always takes two extra steps after releasing the WASD-keys, putting him in this very specific position took me about 5 minutes. Signs sometimes just don't cast, or with a precious second delay, which makes them difficult to use in the thick of combat. Really bad checkpoints that don't allow to take potions before a boss battle. Bad boss battles in general. The list goes on.

Yeah, most of my complaints are about the controls and bugs. I don't share Richard Naik's sentiment of the story being boring or bad. I've seen plenty of much worse storytelling in RPG.