ESRB Outs Witcher 2 for Xbox 360

[Andy Chalk]

Interesting twist in the tale: CD Projekt hasn't responded to our inquiry (which is a bit unusual, they're normally very responsive) but the Xbox 360 mention has now been removed from the ESRB rating. Perhaps they're determined to keep mum until E3?

 

[thenamelessloser]

1) You choose members for your party and develop them in particular way (distributing atribute points, choosing spells and skills, picking new prestige classes) to fit your strategy. In the Witcher you just choose what abilities you want first.
2) You choose items that fit your strategy and distribute them among party members. In The Witcher it was just best sword/best armor.
3) You have multiple party members to control. "Programming" their AI was also something pretty complex.

But all of that is really just hanging cut-out clothes on paper dolls. In my eyes, party management in DA:O was a joke; I suited the "party" up reasonably well but otherwise just let them do their own thing for the most part. Combat, inventory, potion-brewing, conversation, etc., were all so much more well-developed (or pain-in-the-ass, depending on your perspective) in The Witcher.

I am heavily biased. I didn't like Dragon Age and I generally don't consider two cardboard-cutout mules who can fight to be a party. But Dragon Age, a hardcore RPG? Seriously? I'm willing to acknowledge that my dim view of the game could be colouring my opinion, but man, I just don't see it.

You give me the awful impression, and I hate to have to say it, of someone who hasn't actually played The Witcher 2 through, or at least for a while, and who's just going off of what one thinks the game is like.

Facts of the matter:
1) In terms of items, there's barely any choice in the game at all. They exist on a linear progression of power, with really minor bonuses to the side. Every time you pick up an item, it's either better or worse than what you have. And the even more annoying thing with the itemisation is, the "epics" you'll find - or make[footnote]Which is doubly disappointing. Crafting is near useless.[/footnote] - will be just as quickly discarded as the rares and the magicals.

2) Customisation in the forms of mutagens and armor enhancements is also pathetic. The bonuses they give are really, really minuscule. Not to mention you can't even have many of either of those and stack those bonuses to something noticeable.

3) They gimped alchemy. Fucked it in the ass. Probably because they were trying their hardest to make it as optional as possible. Most of the potions' drawbacks are insane - much outweighing the actual bonuses, and the rest are simply weak as hell. The first potions you'll encounter - swallow (health regen) and cat (vision in the dark) - are the only ones you'll ever come even close to needing.

4) There is no balance in this game. The Quen sign basically wins the game for you. After you realise this, the game becomes a cakewalk, even on hard. Use that and you'll have no problems with anything but the Kayran. The Yrden sign can be used to take a boss from a range from full hp to zero, again, with no difficulty.

5) There are less choices in terms of how you want to play the game. The initial choices of DA:O trump TW2 right there, because there are three, not even counting the specialisations and the amounts of skills you can pick up later on. In TW2, you either specialise in signs or in swordfighting (Alchemy? Hah), both of which have less depth than their counterparts in DA:O.

6) This is sort of to your earlier points, but TW2 is designed for a console through and through. Everything from the inventory to the combat is designed not only with consoles in mind, but specifically for them. There will be no difficulties whatsoever apart from graphics in porting this over to consoles.

So yes, DA:O is more hardcore than TW2. However shallow it was, it managed to have more depth than what people are touting as the second coming of the hardcore or the oldschool RPG, of which TW2 is neither.

I don't think Any Chaulk was talking about the second Witcher here....

 

[thenamelessloser]

Interesting twist in the tale: CD Projekt hasn't responded to our inquiry (which is a bit unusual, they're normally very responsive) but the Xbox 360 mention has now been removed from the ESRB rating. Perhaps they're determined to keep mum until E3?

A different video game news site did get a response- "2: CD Projekt has responded to Joystiq, saying, "We've said for some time that we'd love to bring The Witcher 2 to consoles, but we haven't made any announcements to that effect. Our focus has been and continues to be on the PC version. We're going to be showing off something at E3, and we'll announce what that is shortly before the show."" -http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/25/esrb-rates-witcher-2-for-xbox-360/

 

[Andy Chalk]

A different video game news site did get a response- "2: CD Projekt has responded to Joystiq, saying, "We've said for some time that we'd love to bring The Witcher 2 to consoles, but we haven't made any announcements to that effect. Our focus has been and continues to be on the PC version. We're going to be showing off something at E3, and we'll announce what that is shortly before the show."" -http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/25/esrb-rates-witcher-2-for-xbox-360/

That's not new, that's the statement they issued last month in response to the Polish television program in which Kicinski said CDPR was working on a console version.

 

[Andy Chalk]

You give me the awful impression, and I hate to have to say it, of someone who hasn't actually played The Witcher 2 through, or at least for a while, and who's just going off of what one thinks the game is like.

I haven't played it. I played the original Witcher extensively and loved the hell out of it, and we were (I thought) talking about the overall quality of the franchises here. And although I won't dismiss your opinion outright, you give me the impression that you're a little big angry that Witcher 2 isn't completely and exactly what you wanted it to be.

Let us also remembering that we're disagreeing over which series is more "hardcore," which is really a term that doesn't actually mean anything at all. So while I will insistently insist that unless the Witcher 2 has been drastically changed and dumbed-down from the first game there's just no goddamn way it's "less hardcore" than Dragon Age: Origins, I will do so with the winking acknowledgment that the whole conversation is rather silly.

 

[Andy Chalk]

I can't comment on specifics because I haven't played the game. But I did enjoy a lot of the more cumbersome aspects of Witchering in the original game - collecting ingredients, brewing potions, taking time to prepare for battles, etc. - so mine may not be the "normal" gamer perspective. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that's the case. I desperately want to play it and I strongly suspect that when I do, I'll hold it in much higher esteem than you seem to.

 

[Keava]

You give me the awful impression, and I hate to have to say it, of someone who hasn't actually played The Witcher 2 through, or at least for a while, and who's just going off of what one thinks the game is like.

Facts of the matter:
1) In terms of items, there's barely any choice in the game at all. They exist on a linear progression of power, with really minor bonuses to the side. Every time you pick up an item, it's either better or worse than what you have. And the even more annoying thing with the itemisation is, the "epics" you'll find - or make[footnote]Which is doubly disappointing. Crafting is near useless.[/footnote] - will be just as quickly discarded as the rares and the magicals.

And how often in your mind items should be replaced? You pretty much get 1 end armor 1 end sword recipe per chapter and several minor depending on the materials you happen to have on you and how you handled some of the quests. You can further affect given weapons statistic by using runes/armor enhancements boosting various stats. If you orient on Signs you can stack your swords with +sign effect runes for eg.

2) Customisation in the forms of mutagens and armor enhancements is also pathetic. The bonuses they give are really, really minuscule. Not to mention you can't even have many of either of those and stack those bonuses to something noticeable.

If you take the talent in alchemy that boosts mutagens they give much bigger boost (something like 200% of initial value), as far as items go, again, how much of it would you like to affect your gameplay. Witcher 2 is not based on character statistics. You don't have strength/dexterity/intelligence here. You have armor, resistances, and damage/crit effect chance.

3) They gimped alchemy. Fucked it in the ass. Probably because they were trying their hardest to make it as optional as possible. Most of the potions' drawbacks are insane - much outweighing the actual bonuses, and the rest are simply weak as hell. The first potions you'll encounter - swallow (health regen) and cat (vision in the dark) - are the only ones you'll ever come even close to needing.

Again. Spec alchemy. Alchemy becomes god among men. You get +35% to effect and -85% to drawbacks pretty early in a tree. No one, at any point said you have to focus on single tree. No one forces you to put each and every of those 35 points into single specialization, even more so, you shouldn't if you want to be 'optimal'. In my playthroughs i used about 6-7 different potions on regular basis, switching in and out depending on need. Sounds to me like you don't really want to make decisions based on pros and cons. You just want everything to make you stronger without any side effect.

4) There is no balance in this game. The Quen sign basically wins the game for you. After you realise this, the game becomes a cakewalk, even on hard. Use that and you'll have no problems with anything but the Kayran. The Yrden sign can be used to take a boss from a range from full hp to zero, again, with no difficulty.

Quen isn't neither that strong nor that essential as you make it. I rarely used it on my playthrough. Even more so, if you fail to pay attention Quen won't save you because it will be down in 2-3 hits on your back.

5) There are less choices in terms of how you want to play the game. The initial choices of DA:O trump TW2 right there, because there are three, not even counting the specialisations and the amounts of skills you can pick up later on. In TW2, you either specialise in signs or in swordfighting (Alchemy? Hah), both of which have less depth than their counterparts in DA:O.

Clearly you didn't try to play Alchemy specced. I did my first play through, hard, alchemy focused. The bonuses you get when under effect of 3-4 potions + Mutant adrenaline skill are as competent if not more competent than other trees. Guess if a tree doesn't have I-WIN button it's broken? Because DA was all about picking the I-WIN button. How broken the 2h combat was in DA i don't even bother to elaborate, mage was all about freeze -> shatter combos that made it feel like WoW pvp again, archer tree was crap all the way except final shot and still barely worth even looking at it.

6) This is sort of to your earlier points, but TW2 is designed for a console through and through. Everything from the inventory to the combat is designed not only with consoles in mind, but specifically for them. There will be no difficulties whatsoever apart from graphics in porting this over to consoles.

I disagree. Being adaptable to consoles does not mean being made for consoles. Plus, didn't we hear that argument with DA:O as well? I remember hearing all the time that DA:O sucked because it was ported to consoles thus the RPG genre has died, let's go back to replaying AD&D based games hurray.
People like different things, even among PC gamers you have people with different tastes. I Never praised BG/Planescape for the way they handled mechanics, i never liked D&D, i never liked class limitations...and i haven't owned a console since SNES,

So yes, DA:O is more hardcore than TW2. However shallow it was, it managed to have more depth than what people are touting as the second coming of the hardcore or the oldschool RPG, of which TW2 is neither.

For me hardcore stopped being "exactly like BG" ages ago. Sorry. Wan't to talk hardcore old school RPGs go play Ultima series. Because that was hardcore, everything that came later was not by it's standards and even those series did evolve over the course of years, getting streamline din some places to improve the end experience.

Sometimes i feel like the whole "hardcore classic RPG" debate is getting too much bitter vets vibe, common in every genre you will find people that will always say that "the grass was greener back in their days". It wasn't. In many cases people just didn't know alternatives were possible. The bigger pool of options the more people will start to complain.
It's pretty easy. If you would have only one TV station you would watch it, because you wouldn't have anything else to watch, when you get cable TV with 200 station suddenly everything is crap.

 

[Choppaduel]

*MAXIMUM OWNAGE*

Bravo keava! A point by point deconstruction the likes of which I haven't seen on the escapist in a long time.

I didn't have the patience for hard on my first play through,(plus I wanted to get thru the juicy story without much interruption) but the next time I might try it.

 

[thenamelessloser]

If you take the talent in alchemy that boosts mutagens they give much bigger boost (something like 200% of initial value), as far as items go, again, how much of it would you like to affect your gameplay. Witcher 2 is not based on character statistics. You don't have strength/dexterity/intelligence here. You have armor, resistances, and damage/crit effect chance.

I... But...

Again. Spec alchemy. Alchemy becomes god among men. You get +35% to effect and -85% to drawbacks pretty early in a tree. No one, at any point said you have to focus on single tree. No one forces you to put each and every of those 35 points into single specialization, even more so, you shouldn't if you want to be 'optimal'. In my playthroughs i used about 6-7 different potions on regular basis, switching in and out depending on need. Sounds to me like you don't really want to make decisions based on pros and cons. You just want everything to make you stronger without any side effect.

Noooo!

Clearly you didn't try to play Alchemy specced. I did my first play through, hard, alchemy focused. The bonuses you get when under effect of 3-4 potions + Mutant adrenaline skill are as competent if not more competent than other trees. Guess if a tree doesn't have I-WIN button it's broken? Because DA was all about picking the I-WIN button. How broken the 2h combat was in DA i don't even bother to elaborate, mage was all about freeze -> shatter combos that made it feel like WoW pvp again, archer tree was crap all the way except final shot and still barely worth even looking at it.

Woah, this is crazy, Did someone actually win AN ARGUMENT On the INTERWEB??? WTFBBQ