Penny Arcade on The Witcher 2

[webby]

No..that crap is easily implied and should be intuitive. The manual is tutorial in written form, if you fail to put its advice to proper use, it's your own fault. You should know to dodge when you see an enemy try to take a swing at you, you don't need extensive tutorial to teach you this stuff. You can easily learn what to do by reading the manual, you can't equate learning video game mechanics with school work like so many people are foolishly doing.

I really couldn't disagree with you more. Not only are manuals NOT tutorials, but they're 100% inferior to tutorials. A manual is a repository for information; it can't teach you how to play the game.

Take the training course from COD: MW2. Yes, I could go through the manual and read what each button does, but just knowing what the button does is not the same thing as allowing the player to get a feel for how those functions work in an environment that won't punish them for failure. Telling me that the left shoulder button tosses a grenade doesn't let me figure out how far the grenade flies, what the damage radius is, yadda yadda. Telling me that I can release and re-pull the aim trigger to snap to a new target is fine, but until I see it in action, I don't have a way of appreciating how that functions.

The tutorial offers a way for the player to experiment and get their bearings in a game in a non-hostile environment. Just throwing the player right into the game and trusting them to read the manual is not only discouraging to new players, but it's lazy and sloppy game design.

You have said pretty much what I wanted to say.

Simply knowing what button does what is not the same as knowing the game mechanics or even close to knowing the best method of implementing those mechanics. A tutorial should teach you the ropes, let you get a handle on the game. A tutorial that doesn't tell you what you need to know until it is too late is poorly designed.

A manual is a good way of giving you the very rough basics and a more detailed insight into the facts and figures, it should not be used in lieu of actual in game experience. If simply reading the manual gave people a complete understanding of game mechanics most multiplayer games would be a much more even place.

 

[Agayek]

The Witcher 2 had a very poor tutorial, no question there, but 47 deaths is a bit ridiculous. I died 7 times on that first opening bit where you had to fight like 8 guys standing around a ballista, all the time learning the combat mechanics. Once that was done, I've yet to die again in the entire game.

Though I am only playing on "Normal" so meh.

 

[Condiments]

I agree that in this day and age, most people are flabbergasted at the old-school approach to the beginning. It essentially throws you into the deep end of the pool, and laughs at your futile attempts to swim.

That said, the game isn't exactly rocket science. After trying and failing to glean the necessary information from the in-game tips(they disappear so fast), I opened up the journal and looked at the list of commands. Its unfortunate they didn't show me how to play right away, but after doing the reading, I didn't die at all through the prologue.

I have faith in the intelligence of the Penny Arcade writers but...47 times? FORTY SEVEN! How in the world is that even possible?! I would have at least at some point given up or looked at the manual.

 

[ImprovizoR]

Those casual gamers are retarded. All you have to do is step a couple of feet into the sidewalk and then just go back and let the dragon burn the damn thing. Then go there and kill the three guards if they're not dead already from dragon fire. Do the same for the other part of the sidewalk and then just finish of the guys at the gate. Is it really that hard? You can do this on insane difficulty in one go if you just use your brain a little bit and figure out the dragon's pattern. It's not a real dragon, it's not gonna act differently. It's a scripted AI, nothing more.

 

[Agayek]

Those casual gamers are retarded. All you have to do is step a couple of feet into the sidewalk and then just go back and let the dragon burn the damn thing. Then go there and kill the three guards if they're not dead already from dragon fire. Do the same for the other part of the sidewalk and then just finish of the guys at the gate. Is it really that hard? You can do this on insane difficulty in one go if you just use your brain a little bit and figure out the dragon's pattern. It's not a real dragon, it's not gonna act differently. It's a scripted AI, nothing more.

Hell, I ignored the dragon almost completely. I just ran down one side of the thing killing bitches as I saw them. The only thing I bothered with was to stay inside the little huts/roofs while I was fighting. Beyond that, I didn't do anything special and I got through it on my first try.

The only "difficult" part of the whole tutorial was the first real combat bit, where it's you against N bad guys. That itself isn't overly difficult, but without a proper intro to combat mechanics/signs/potions, it was annoying.

 

[seditary]

Was I the only one who managed to get by just fine with only the tooltip tutorial that came up on the right of the screen now and then?

It told me everything I needed, including the existence of other signs etc.

Do people just not pay attention to their own game?

 

[rsvp42]

In their defense, it really was a tough game to get into. It has these kind of hack n' slash controls, but really punishes you if you just go in swinging, which isn't quite what I expect in the beginning of a game. That being said, figuring out how to deal with the enemies on my own was really satisfying. Yes they don't tell you how any of the signs work without using them yourself first, but once I started exploring them and trying things out, I actually felt more accomplished. Dying sucks, but figuring out the right way to fight and finally breaking past is awesome. That being said, the beginning enemies really could use some nerfing, at least on normal. I don't expect it all to be handed to me, but I feel like normal should at least allow for a few more mistakes than it did.

 

[RA92]

TW2's difficulty curve is ridiculous, but otherwise it's rather rewarding.

I can see why people might be put off, but I would ask them to breeze through the tough parts on Easy mode rather than giving up altogether.

Edit: Is this why Escapist's TW2 review is so belated - because the reviewers can't stop dying?

Or are we just waiting for the XBox release somewhat around November?

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

In the old days of PC gaming, manuals worked simply because people were willing to invest time in it, but they're not necessary now that our tutorials are smart enough to work with the player through a particularly easy learning part of the game. You know; the standard "crouch under the low barrier to learn the Crouch button" and stuff.

Be honest though - have those "particularly easy" sections of the game wherein the (usually mandatory) tutorial insults your intelligence by making you do painfully obvious things in contrived scenarios, have they ever actually been fun?

I get it, modern game design is geared around ensuring that just about everyone who picks a game up will be able to see it through to the inevitable conclusion, but I hail from an era where finishing games was rare because they were bloody hard, so making me sit through the usual tutorial rigamarole for anything less complicated than a bloody flight simulator is only going to make me resent you for it. I know how to bloody well play video games - the only thing I ever need to learn are the controls and the specifics of any unique mechanics a game might have.

Looking at what the designers of The Witcher 2 gave us, namely trial by fire in a bloody skirmish on a castle's walls, that is just way the hell more fun than a series of contrived scenarios wherein all the individual gameplay elements surface one by one would have been (it was certainly a lot more fun than the corresponding tutorial from the original game was). Yes it was hard (there are difficulty settings for a reason, and it's not like there's some stupid achievement for never turning things down to easy until you get the hang of it), but it was hard in the sense that if you fail you really have no one to blame but yourself. It was genuinely refreshing to play a "tutorial" that would provide me with the information I needed but otherwise expected me to get shit done on my own.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Oh man ... reading through this thread again got me thinking I should make a video walkthrough of this game.
'cos you know, every part of The Witcher 2 is like "if you know what you're doing it's moderately easy."

I mean .. from the looks of it, nobody even tried using the freakin' mind control spell.

Ok sure .. the game could have told you that you have a mind control spell, but it's actually quite dangerous to use.

I love Axii, by the way, at any point where you think "if only I can crowd control ..." well, you have the technology.
Speaking of which, make bombs. Lots and lots of bombs. All they cost you is herbs, and they are stupidly good against hordes of weak foes.

 

[Timmehexas]

I probably died about 10 times on hard mode at that exact part before I switched it to easy to get through, I think the only thing that annoyed me most about it was the randomness of when the fire could get through your cover. A few times the dragon would only just start burning it and I'd be randomly hit by a ball of fire and roasted on the spot.

 

[Waaghpowa]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/

I'm wondering what the Escapist makes of this comic, which went along with this explanation:

Spoiler

I installed The Witcher 2 on the PC we have in the office here so that Gabriel could see with his own eyes some of the things I've been telling him about. While I was home this morning teaching my daughter which berries are to be avoided, he was here playing through the game's nominal "tutorial", a sequence of retrospective vignettes that can be played in any order. When I got in, he told me that he had died twelve times at the same spot and then quit. I knew the spot he was taking about; I'd died there myself.

Forty-seven times.

He didn't believe me when I said "forty-seven," but I started counting it. It's partly my fault. I wanted to see if something was possible, and it wasn't! It really, really wasn't.

I'm not sure what they were thinking with this stuff, I honestly don't; this dogged refusal to help the player. If I had to guess, it is this way because they didn't want to do some boring, typical tutorial sequence that insults the player and makes their titular warmaster out to be some concussed dipshit, taking part in some remedial course for monster slayers. That's certainly something I can understand. What's happened in the absence of a true "booster phase", though, is that people who want to play the game but lack psychic ability are forcibly driven out.

It has tooltips that pop up from time to time, but if you're under active assault by a dragon maybe you aren't looking at that. This game doesn't really play like others, your skills either from action titles or the role-playing genre won't really cross apply. A Witcher is tough, but he's not optimal unless he takes time to prepare for a fight, which involves the brewing, consumption, or application of various things inside or outside the body. This is one of the things that make up the odd cadence of this world. So much is left to chance.

PC Games can be cantankerous, idiosyncratic, occasionally unrelenting, and unwilling to make concessions. I happen to like that kind of thing; that's more or less my own philosophy. We are just... unreconstructed, is the word. If they're serious about bringing this to consoles, the first hour of the game needs to go up on the lift. Those nines and tens it's pulling now won't survive contact with that audience.

Penny Arcade is nothing if not regular gamers, so I'm inclined to agree with Tycho on this point. What I think though, is irrelevant, I'm curious as to how The Escapist feels on this opinion.

So basically he believes that the console version needs a serious difficulty revamp? Assuming I read that right.

I Personally didn't find the game too difficult, but just right. I will admit it took me some time on early fights to NOT die, but I was learning a totally new combat system than that of the original game.

They're guaranteed to put in more hand-holding for the ports regardless, but I don't really think it's necessary given the much simpler nature of console control schemes. Press start -> controls -> and there's likely to be a nice little layout with lines connecting buttons to their respective actions. Looking at that for twenty seconds is all I've ever needed to get a firm grasp on how to play a console game.

Spoiler: Long Winded Response

I think we can all agree that the console version will surely hold your hand more as consoles generally aim for a larger audience. My issue with the console version is not that there will be a console version of this game, but that they might pull a Bioware. To clarify what I mean when I say "Pull a Bioware": I fear for the fact that they might take some of the criticisms of the game from console players too far and change ridiculous things that inevitably oversimplify the game which then translates over to the PC version. Example: The whole deal with inventory in Mass Effect 2. I get that it's a third person shooter, but it's still a sci fi RPG. Having an inventory filled with different guns, armours and weapon/armour mods added an RPG element to the game. Removing it makes the game feel like Gears of War without the gratuitous gore. Not to mention smaller environments and that whole deal with the elevators. What difference does it make to replace watching your characters ride an elevator with a loading screen? You're still sitting there staring at something and NOT playing the game. It at least gave you perspective on how large the areas were.

Though I'm not claiming that the console RPG crowd is dumb by any means, but it seems that developers like Bioware are doing these things to their most recent RPG's because they assume that the majority of their fan base is simple. So they design the game to be as simple as possible to require as little thought as possible. RPG's should have you making serious decisions, weighing the pro's and con's when considering talents, skills and equipment.

Dragon Age 2 is the most recent example, though I enjoyed it for what it was, I couldn't help but feel like there was something missing, wanting more. By comparison Dragon Age 2 is probably the most boring Bioware game I've played to date, it being the first one of their titles I couldn't play a second time through.

The gist of my thought is: I'm not against having a console version of the Witcher 2 available. I just really hope that making a console version of The Witcher 2 wont compromise the quality of future Witcher titles, because this is the first RPG I've played in quite some time that was truly satisfying.

By the way, I love the Mass Effect series, despite my criticism.

 

[Waaghpowa]

Spoiler

I get it, modern game design is geared around ensuring that just about everyone who picks a game up will be able to see it through to the inevitable conclusion, but I hail from an era where finishing games was rare because they were bloody hard, so making me sit through the usual tutorial rigamarole for anything less complicated than a bloody flight simulator is only going to make me resent you for it. I know how to bloody well play video games - the only thing I ever need to learn are the controls and the specifics of any unique mechanics a game might have.

Looking at what the designers of The Witcher 2 gave us, namely trial by fire in a bloody skirmish on a castle's walls, that is just way the hell more fun than a series of contrived scenarios wherein all the individual gameplay elements surface one by one would have been (it was certainly a lot more fun than the corresponding tutorial from the original game was). Yes it was hard (there are difficulty settings for a reason, and it's not like there's some stupid achievement for never turning things down to easy until you get the hang of it), but it was hard in the sense that if you fail you really have no one to blame but yourself. It was genuinely refreshing to play a "tutorial" that would provide me with the information I needed but otherwise expected me to get shit done on my own.

I couldn't agree with you more, but the problem is that a lot of console gamers are the kind of people who want to kill a few hours with a game. Being able to "pick up and play" is the best way to ensure they make money, but like you said, isn't necessarily fun.

 

[Omnific One]

EH, they really need to explain game mechanics better. Even the guide didn't cover many things.

Amazing game, though. Ending was lackluster, however.

 

[Waaghpowa]

Spoiler: Long Winded Response

I think we can all agree that the console version will surely hold your hand more as consoles generally aim for a larger audience. My issue with the console version is not that there will be a console version of this game, but that they might pull a Bioware. To clarify what I mean when I say "Pull a Bioware": I fear for the fact that they might take some of the criticisms of the game from console players too far and change ridiculous things that inevitably oversimplify the game which then translates over to the PC version. Example: The whole deal with inventory in Mass Effect 2. I get that it's a third person shooter, but it's still a sci fi RPG. Having an inventory filled with different guns, armours and weapon/armour mods added an RPG element to the game. Removing it makes the game feel like Gears of War without the gratuitous gore. Not to mention smaller environments and that whole deal with the elevators. What difference does it make to replace watching your characters ride an elevator with a loading screen? You're still sitting there staring at something and NOT playing the game. It at least gave you perspective on how large the areas were.

Though I'm not claiming that the console RPG crowd is dumb by any means, but it seems that developers like Bioware are doing these things to their most recent RPG's because they assume that the majority of their fan base is simple. So they design the game to be as simple as possible to require as little thought as possible. RPG's should have you making serious decisions, weighing the pro's and con's when considering talents, skills and equipment.

Dragon Age 2 is the most recent example, though I enjoyed it for what it was, I couldn't help but feel like there was something missing, wanting more. By comparison Dragon Age 2 is probably the most boring Bioware game I've played to date, it being the first one of their titles I couldn't play a second time through.

The gist of my thought is: I'm not against having a console version of the Witcher 2 available. I just really hope that making a console version of The Witcher 2 wont compromise the quality of future Witcher titles, because this is the first RPG I've played in quite some time that was truly satisfying.

By the way, I love the Mass Effect series, despite my criticism.

With you 100% there, man. I loved Mass Effect and DA:O, liked Mass Effect 2, and kinda hated DA2. I'm just hoping the sales numbers will speak to EA and encourage them to back off a little and let Bioware do their thing. Give them more time to make RPGs with some depth, rather than reducing them to the level of simple action-adventure games.

It's precisely the reason why I hate every Fable game after the first one, they don't do anything but beat it into the ground and add more bullshit good or bad choices. I thought it was kind of insulting when the Lionhead team thought that increasing the difficulty and improving graphics on Fable 3 would be sufficient to appease PC gamers.

 

[Danceofmasks]

On the subject of console versions of Witcher 2 ...
I have encountered quite a few bugs in the game, some of which involves the responsiveness of the controls.

I reckon, if they fix the bugs and the UI glitches, the work is mostly done.
The game plays quite well on a controller.

Maybe add a couple of forced pause sections at, say, the wall "this is a good place to use Axii on the big dude" or "use Quen before rushing those archers" or "this guy with a shield, Yrden him then backstab him for double damage"

BUT, they should not otherwise nerf the game. At all.
This game is way easier than Bayonetta.

 

[Trolldor]

The only time I died at all during the prologue was during the sequence where you're running from a dragon, and that was mostly because I read the tutorial prompt and then was looking for an indication that I should press the right mouse button - no such prompt appeared however. So on the 3rd go I just ran and pressed that button whenever it looked like the dragon was going to take a swipe at me, and that did the trick.

Of course I was playing on easy, but you'd be surprised how many people ram their heads into walls in the prologue before remembering they have a magic shield, heh.

Thing about that dragon is I can make it without ever pressing the right mouse key. Seems random as to whether or not you'll actually get hit.

 

[Danceofmasks]

The only time I died at all during the prologue was during the sequence where you're running from a dragon, and that was mostly because I read the tutorial prompt and then was looking for an indication that I should press the right mouse button - no such prompt appeared however. So on the 3rd go I just ran and pressed that button whenever it looked like the dragon was going to take a swipe at me, and that did the trick.

Of course I was playing on easy, but you'd be surprised how many people ram their heads into walls in the prologue before remembering they have a magic shield, heh.

Thing about that dragon is I can make it without ever pressing the right mouse key. Seems random as to whether or not you'll actually get hit.

Eh, I just hold down "S" the whole time, and click RMB every time it comes up.
Guaranteed to work that way.

 

[Coldie]

Then you must be one of the lucky few cause all of my friends (and internet acquaintances) have the same problem, that is with and without programs such as game booster.

I am hoping for a patch cause i am not one to waste a purchase.

If you have a physical disk, then it might be the DRM's fault. Allegedly, the SecuROM DRM used in the retail version of the game is the framerate killer.

The next patch (1.1) is promising to improve FPS by up to 30%, with the biggest improvement for retail versions.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

The gist of my thought is: I'm not against having a console version of the Witcher 2 available. I just really hope that making a console version of The Witcher 2 wont compromise the quality of future Witcher titles, because this is the first RPG I've played in quite some time that was truly satisfying.

I don't think there's much chance of that happening under CD Projekt's current ownership and management. From other things they've done, should The Witcher 2 sell poorly on consoles, they're more likely to say "You don't like our game? Well fuck you because we've got enough gamers who DO like it that we don't need you" than to start chopping things out to try for wider appeal. These are basically the same guys who stuck their thumbs in the eyes of some rather large distributors over being forced to charge higher prices than they wanted for digital copies of The Witcher 2 and remove IP-based region validation from their sales scheme. If you were to ask me which developer is least likely to start changing the style of their games to chase wider appeal even if they went multiplatform, CD Projekt are 2nd on my list... and the top 3 names are all Eastern European developers... must be all that socialism they grew up with or something.

Of course there's also the possibility that enough console gamers out there are actually looking for a challenging and engaging game that TW2 console version turns a decent profit for CD Projekt and everyone can go home happy.