The Needles: The Witcher 2 Interview

Nalgas D. Lemur

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ZippyDSMlee said:
I dunno Dragon age and Mass effect 2 and to a lesser extent KOTOR and ME felt like half a game due to poor or unfinished implementations, story is nice but it dose not make up for annoying or lacking game play and yes I am looking at you bioshock and you fallout 3 as well......
I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say half a game, but I do kind of agree with you on this. Haven't played Dragon Age yet, but I think BioWare's combat systems have generally gone downhill since KotOR, which I mostly liked. Jade Empire was a so-so brawler tacked onto a good RPG, for example, and Mass Effect was a very mediocre third-person shooter tacked onto a great RPG (if you ignore the side quests; the main storyline was a lot of fun, but most of the side quests were pretty awful; the Mako was a heap of junk, and driving it across the same planet to the same building to kill the same guys copied and pasted in every single system in the galaxy got old after doing it a couple times). I was also really underwhelmed by BioShock, too. The setting and story and art direction and music were all really interesting, but the gameplay was pretty meh, enough so that I got bored of playing it about 3/4 of the way through and just looked up how it ends online.

Ideally, I'd like a game that's good in all areas (Star Control 2 comes to mind (yes, I played it when it was new, and get off my lawn, heh), mostly because someone accidentally typo-ed it earlier tonight in place of StarCraft 2), but those are hard to find, so if it's at least ok in all of them and stands out in some of them, that's usually enough for me to at least enjoy it, whether it's great story and ok gameplay or great gameplay and ok story. I am kind of picky, but I guess not nearly as much or in quite the same way as you are.
 

Dectilon

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Andy Chalk said:
Zippy, old son, you sound like a hard man to please.
And you too easy. ;)

Also, while you may argue that RPG isn't so much role-playing game anymore as a genre defined by the player having an abundance of character customization options and the combat being decided by dice rolls there's really no point to it. In that case you might just say ME2 is a whole new game entirely (a sociopath simulator maybe).

Nalgas D. Lemur said:
Ideally, I'd like a game that's good in all areas (Star Control 2 comes to mind (yes, I played it when it was new, and get off my lawn, heh)
I didn't, but I love that game. As for Dragon Age it hearkens back to Baldur's Gate, so if that's your only concern then do by all means get it. The main story is weak, but there's some good writing here and there in the sidequests. And since you'll spend most of your time doing those anyway it's no big loss.
 

ZippyDSMlee

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Nalgas D. Lemur said:
ZippyDSMlee said:
I dunno Dragon age and Mass effect 2 and to a lesser extent KOTOR and ME felt like half a game due to poor or unfinished implementations, story is nice but it dose not make up for annoying or lacking game play and yes I am looking at you bioshock and you fallout 3 as well......
I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say half a game, but I do kind of agree with you on this. Haven't played Dragon Age yet, but I think BioWare's combat systems have generally gone downhill since KotOR, which I mostly liked. Jade Empire was a so-so brawler tacked onto a good RPG, for example, and Mass Effect was a very mediocre third-person shooter tacked onto a great RPG (if you ignore the side quests; the main storyline was a lot of fun, but most of the side quests were pretty awful; the Mako was a heap of junk, and driving it across the same planet to the same building to kill the same guys copied and pasted in every single system in the galaxy got old after doing it a couple times). I was also really underwhelmed by BioShock, too. The setting and story and art direction and music were all really interesting, but the gameplay was pretty meh, enough so that I got bored of playing it about 3/4 of the way through and just looked up how it ends online.

Ideally, I'd like a game that's good in all areas (Star Control 2 comes to mind (yes, I played it when it was new, and get off my lawn, heh), mostly because someone accidentally typo-ed it earlier tonight in place of StarCraft 2), but those are hard to find, so if it's at least ok in all of them and stands out in some of them, that's usually enough for me to at least enjoy it, whether it's great story and ok gameplay or great gameplay and ok story. I am kind of picky, but I guess not nearly as much or in quite the same way as you are.
I really can not come up with a better expression than "half a game" it works on many games tht are either unfinished/poorly implemented,lacking content or just pure spam.

DA suffers from completion of themes a sublet of unfinished implementations, enhancement is half assed and I really really enjoyed making my own weapons and stuff. Other than that the on the rails feel to it was stark as well the wonky skill pathing and 2nd classes.

If you want to nii pick my nit pick its mabye a 3/4s a game LOL. All in all every thing else was up to snuff the dailog,voice action and writing was good to great even if at times cliched and formalistic. Dialog trees are still pretty simplified I will rant about those in detail here in a bit.

I loved jade empire(mabye due to my love of bad kung fu) I wish more games would get into attack/dodge mechanics yes I realize it and fable can be boiled down to inane button mashing but there is something about dodging,stricking,ect under your own power that is just irreplaceable and dice rolls and crap just do not cut it. I mean you can use a mix of dice rolls to caluc damage and if in a roll it either misses or dose less damage,ect this is one of the things I over focused on on the whitcher well that and the grimy sex filled world is a turn off but even this idiot saw the setting/story,ect was top notch I just didnt care for the daibloesqe game play it felt to much like a point and click snooze fest(oh god as a TB combat fan could I even play a TB game now these days? ..>AAARRHHH!!! I have ....become........uuuussssssss. ........ooneeeee off. .......uussss....... bbwwaiinnnssssss).

Anyway where was I ah yes raved and drooled some over JE, now for ME I liked me for the maki and the tweaking dailog and such was solid dailog tree old, liked the side quests but I did not care much for the combat, they should have put in melee stuff and done the AI to go from hide to cover to all and all attack. Most of the time I was just driving into a area to get the bee hive a buzzing and then go hide and pick them off one by one.

I think ME would have done alot better if it game people a choice of play style do it as a FPS or dose it as a over head TB/RT RPG.

But alas they went completely with the lowest demographic...... I did enjoy the mako not so much for the quests and such but just for the rock cralwing, they should have offered upgrades to weaopns,armor,shiled and wheel type(track,stickywheel,hover,ect) tossed in more enimes and made it a full fledged game within a game. Bu even still I enjoyed it for what ti was...whitch is strange as I RARELY do that anymore.


Oh I thought KOTOR was to simple and to short,even if I liked it, its emphasis's everything thats wrong with the lite RPG sect of today's gaming, I mean look at DA and you wonder its trying not to be a lite RPG but it sure as hell has the trappings of one.

Now on to Bioshock I have ranted and droooled over it in acouple threads I started
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.173063-Bioshock-yet-another-zippy-rant?page=1

But to put it simply its poorly balance and paced, level design(and by that I mean layout) is good enough if a bit small. The game is too simplified and missing normal balancing themes and rules it like FO3 its a train wreck you may get varying mileage from.
I can over look story and characters in a heart beat if here is something there I enjoy Dark Messiah is a highly under appreciated game IMO while its a bit clumsy and cumbersome the AI is alone some of the best seen in a FP game in a decade.....

IMO a dailog tree and morality/karma system should do 3 things first off you have 5 options to chose from very bad/evil response, bad ass/selfish response , neutral response selfishly good response holy man savior response. These responses and your actions do 3 things the Frist is to raise or lowers what the NPC you are talking to, next it sets the general regions(town area or area around a town or cluster of towns) thoughts of you and then it sets the score for what the world thinks of you. Also for stealing and thievery there is a huge difference in being seen and not being seen,some fable dose rather well IMO.

All of this goes to how the world sees you and thus how the NPCs treat you, you can make it so that good area treat you as a criminal if you are playign a bad guy and bad areas treat you as a sibling. Which is another thing I am shocked RPGs anywhere have not done something better with, in fable the guild treats both hero and hero turned villain with respect thats beyond silly. It should be that if you become a villain the good parts of towns hate you as do the guards, at night its easier to slip into and get to the bad parts of town to find a meal a bed or weapons....even Fallout 1-2 dose a poor job at it...... oh well I will stop rambling now...


edit
rambling game maker mode
Specking of star control I been thinking how to make a new one.

Frist off have a nice 4D grid where you place ships and what not. This is RTS mode you do RTS like things. Now for the fun bit you can get off your command chair and explore youer ship, even play the class ST games or a ST game like it. Then you can get into another ship via Doppler tech and plot it. you can take a fighter wing and try and fight and take down other fighters or carriers, Ship flying mode is rather simple think shadow sqaudern/wind comander with acouple extra buttons or SW Xwing/Tie fighter with 4 or 5 less buttons . You can upgrade all kinds of stuff and take to various people to find new ways to save on doing stuff and such.
 

Karacan

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I adored the first Witcher. And I actually liked collecting the cards, even if I do agree that the approach was juvenile at best. But fun! As long as the combat and alchemy system isn't dumbed down too much, I'll be there to purchase a copy.
 

ZippyDSMlee

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Dectilon said:
Andy Chalk said:
Zippy, old son, you sound like a hard man to please.
And you too easy. ;)

Also, while you may argue that RPG isn't so much role-playing game anymore as a genre defined by the player having an abundance of character customization options and the combat being decided by dice rolls there's really no point to it. In that case you might just say ME2 is a whole new game entirely (a sociopath simulator maybe).

Nalgas D. Lemur said:
Ideally, I'd like a game that's good in all areas (Star Control 2 comes to mind (yes, I played it when it was new, and get off my lawn, heh)
I didn't, but I love that game. As for Dragon Age it hearkens back to Baldur's Gate, so if that's your only concern then do by all means get it. The main story is weak, but there's some good writing here and there in the sidequests. And since you'll spend most of your time doing those anyway it's no big loss.
BG was intricate and a huge game DA not so much. DA is to BG as BS is to SS2......sadly....

Also I think what we knew of RPG has become watered down to where Daiblo could be considered a ture action or CRPG on the same scale of Zelda or the whitcher.

I pretty much call anything thats light on RPG stuff a lite RPG, Even final fantasy is heading in that direction...... really tho I can not see much different between FF13 and DA but for the fact DA has a deeper story, mechanic wise they are both heavily watered down.
 

Dectilon

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I was referring to the combat system only. And there I have to say I enjoyed the system in DA more, at least how melee combat works.
 

ElectroJosh

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I?m also interested to see how the combat in the second Witcher pans out. I enjoyed the combo system used in the first one. It was fun to play, cool to watch and people not used to gaming found it easy to get into (at least in the case of my friends). It wasn?t perfect but it worked very well in the context of a single character RPG. Hopefully the changes don?t go backwards. I could happily keep the current system so any alterations would have to be for sake of real improvements rather than change for change?s sake.

The big improvements I would like to see are in the magic side of things. Either the spells more worthwhile (as well as their upgrades) or look at simplifying it.

To be honest I only used two of them (Aard and Igni) the entire game and didn?t upgrade either beyond tier 2. Perhaps someone who used them more extensively can attest to their usefulness but it didn?t seem to be that big a factor.
 

Andy Chalk

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ZippyDSMlee said:
I know I know I am a SOB game nazi but I want "more" form gaming than lulzy short lived content.
Your list of games is interesting. I just finished up BioShock 2 (which I didn't care for) and next up is Cryostasis, which I've wanted to play since I first heard about it but only recently picked up.

I generally prefer more complex games, but not to the point that I'll deny myself quality games that have been simplified - "consolized," to use a term that'll probably start a fight. System Shock 2 is one of the best games I've ever played, but that doesn't mean I didn't also love BioShock. (I did make the mistake of replaying SS2 just a couple months before I got into BioShock, though, and believe me, it did NOT help the comparison.) Baldur's Gate 2 is probably the greatest RPG of all time, certainly the greatest D&D game of all time, but I'm a big Diablo fan too. Loved Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis, loved Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. I don't want to see simplicity replace complexity, but neither do I think that every game needs to be a deep, epic experience.

What I don't get is why you don't think The Witcher qualifies as a complex RPG. Maybe you already explained and I missed it (apologies if so) but it includes probably the best "morally ambiguous" RPG setting ever created, great combat action, a complicated (some would say unnecessarily so) magic and alchemy system, interesting characters and some very tough decisions that have to made, with far-reaching consequences. The story in the original release was a bit hinky but that was mostly due to translation issues; the EE is apparently vastly improved in that regard.
 

ZippyDSMlee

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Andy Chalk said:
ZippyDSMlee said:
I know I know I am a SOB game nazi but I want "more" form gaming than lulzy short lived content.
Your list of games is interesting. I just finished up BioShock 2 (which I didn't care for) and next up is Cryostasis, which I've wanted to play since I first heard about it but only recently picked up.

I generally prefer more complex games, but not to the point that I'll deny myself quality games that have been simplified - "consolized," to use a term that'll probably start a fight. System Shock 2 is one of the best games I've ever played, but that doesn't mean I didn't also love BioShock. (I did make the mistake of replaying SS2 just a couple months before I got into BioShock, though, and believe me, it did NOT help the comparison.) Baldur's Gate 2 is probably the greatest RPG of all time, certainly the greatest D&D game of all time, but I'm a big Diablo fan too. Loved Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis, loved Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. I don't want to see simplicity replace complexity, but neither do I think that every game needs to be a deep, epic experience.

What I don't get is why you don't think The Witcher qualifies as a complex RPG. Maybe you already explained and I missed it (apologies if so) but it includes probably the best "morally ambiguous" RPG setting ever created, great combat action, a complicated (some would say unnecessarily so) magic and alchemy system, interesting characters and some very tough decisions that have to made, with far-reaching consequences. The story in the original release was a bit hinky but that was mostly due to translation issues; the EE is apparently vastly improved in that regard.
I could not find any good in BS I kept wondering around killing things and carrying to many items never worrying about death or running out of ammo.... but BS aside its not that the witcher is not complex its just the combat is very simplistic with an odd manual change up that just feels cumbersome and poorly implemented. That's why I call it a diablo clone and dismiss it as being a mess, like some dismiss Dark messhia or complain about the forest for the trees.

I can admit the witcher has alot going for it but the combat just turned me off and left me bored and un excited. Now let me change styles and then use combos and blocks ala GOW or batman:AA or even fable(having 3 or so completely different attack styles) anything but click, click click click with fou dodging.....

"morally ambiguous" means gritty content to me, its so over used from the 10 or so hours I played of the witcher story wise it felt like a bioware production which is both praise and a bit of a back handed complement.

I forgot will the alchemy system let you make something that you have the indigents for in a simple manner(glowing item on the alchemy screen ready to make with what you got) or was it more annoying that that? The menu system was quit annoying ...then again I am annoyed by fables 2 menu system...oy......do you people not know what simple navigation to complexity is ....hell do I even know? >>

LOL

PS:Complexity vrs balanced simplicity, lets look at fallout 3 shall we(must we) yes we must..

Anyway frist off lets look at VATS then refine it down to each weaopn has a max range and each weaopn depending on type uses different AP points, then lets it make it so anythign that bosts AP like jet and such doubles the mofoker.

Now lets deal with skills and perks, skills can go beyond 100 even 200 but take more points to rasie at a ratio of 2 to 1 every 10 points above 90. Then we scale back what 100 skill points dose to about half so if you have 100 point on a skill int he current game with the rebalanced it feels like 50. We will also raise what it takes level at each level removing some caps off perks so people play around for 10ish hours and feel like they accomplished something.

Now lets move to weapons and armor there should be about 5 versions of each piece of weapon or armor, from rusty taped together crap to cleaned up but still rusty, to rebuilt to near perfect and then perfect rebuilt. The lets make it so you can upgrade a weaopn to the next version on a work bench as well as add options to it like a scope, larger clip, fire suppression for better accuracy,range,damage,ect


Now I ask you is this making things too complex or just making things more fun by adding reasonable limits and extras?
 

Nalgas D. Lemur

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Dectilon said:
As for Dragon Age it hearkens back to Baldur's Gate, so if that's your only concern then do by all means get it. The main story is weak, but there's some good writing here and there in the sidequests. And since you'll spend most of your time doing those anyway it's no big loss.
Oh, I definitely plan to play it and expect to enjoy it, since other people have told me similar things. I need to clear out my list of stuff I already own but haven't finished (or in some cases started...curse you, Steam sales!) first, though. Hopefully by then I can pick it up on sale, too.

ZippyDSMlee said:
Also I think what we knew of RPG has become watered down to where Daiblo could be considered a ture action or CRPG on the same scale of Zelda or the whitcher.
I may be repeating myself, but...what? Diablo, Zelda, and The Witcher are barely even in the same genre, unless you want to go as broad as "games in a fantasy setting that have swords" or something. Diablo's a straight up hack-and-slash, loot-whoring action game with fairly limited RPG elements. A lot of people don't even consider Zelda an RPG at all and more of an action adventure game, since there's not much role playing of any kind going on, and character development is pretty much limited to "yay you got the hookshot". The Witcher is by far the closest of the three to traditional RPGs.

Maybe you're just focusing on the "hitting stuff with swords" part more than I am. I don't know. I'm not entirely sure why I'm trying to figure it out anymore, either, other than that I'm bored and it passes time while transferring files to my new computer and organizing them (which is quite an adventure, considering I have at least of 20 years of digital crap that I've accumulated). Heh.
 

ZippyDSMlee

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Nalgas D. Lemur said:
Dectilon said:
As for Dragon Age it hearkens back to Baldur's Gate, so if that's your only concern then do by all means get it. The main story is weak, but there's some good writing here and there in the sidequests. And since you'll spend most of your time doing those anyway it's no big loss.
Oh, I definitely plan to play it and expect to enjoy it, since other people have told me similar things. I need to clear out my list of stuff I already own but haven't finished (or in some cases started...curse you, Steam sales!) first, though. Hopefully by then I can pick it up on sale, too.

ZippyDSMlee said:
Also I think what we knew of RPG has become watered down to where Daiblo could be considered a ture action or CRPG on the same scale of Zelda or the whitcher.
I may be repeating myself, but...what? Diablo, Zelda, and The Witcher are barely even in the same genre, unless you want to go as broad as "games in a fantasy setting that have swords" or something. Diablo's a straight up hack-and-slash, loot-whoring action game with fairly limited RPG elements. A lot of people don't even consider Zelda an RPG at all and more of an action adventure game, since there's not much role playing of any kind going on, and character development is pretty much limited to "yay you got the hookshot". The Witcher is by far the closest of the three to traditional RPGs.

Maybe you're just focusing on the "hitting stuff with swords" part more than I am. I don't know. I'm not entirely sure why I'm trying to figure it out anymore, either, other than that I'm bored and it passes time while transferring files to my new computer and organizing them (which is quite an adventure, considering I have at least of 20 years of digital crap that I've accumulated). Heh.
Let me simplify it for you, daiblo you click on target to kill it on the witcher you click on it to kill it with a cumbersome manual change style gimmick with crappy timed combos to kill things faster.

As for RPGs being less RPG ME2 is the new standard for action RPGS...... and FF13 for RPGs.
 

Andy Chalk

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ZippyDSMlee said:
I can admit the witcher has alot going for it but the combat just turned me off and left me bored and un excited. Now let me change styles and then use combos and blocks ala GOW or batman:AA or even fable(having 3 or so completely different attack styles) anything but click, click click click with fou dodging.....
Different strokes, I guess. I've said numerous times in the past that I really enjoyed the combat in The Witcher, in large part because it was so different from anything else I've run into. I also really liked the rhythmic part of it, it felt very organic, like the natural, smooth swinging of a sword. I thought it was fun and added a certain element of player skill to the proceedings.

But your concern seems to be something that CDPR wants to address: Complexity in battle for those who want it, simplicity and ease of progression for those who just want to Diablo their way through it. Will it work? Hopefully. But the mere fact that they're making this move in response to complaints from players is very encouraging.

I also have to think that if you sunk more than ten hours into The Witcher, it must not have been all bad. Was it at least worth the price of admission?
 

ZippyDSMlee

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Andy Chalk said:
ZippyDSMlee said:
I can admit the witcher has alot going for it but the combat just turned me off and left me bored and un excited. Now let me change styles and then use combos and blocks ala GOW or batman:AA or even fable(having 3 or so completely different attack styles) anything but click, click click click with fou dodging.....
Different strokes, I guess. I've said numerous times in the past that I really enjoyed the combat in The Witcher, in large part because it was so different from anything else I've run into. I also really liked the rhythmic part of it, it felt very organic, like the natural, smooth swinging of a sword. I thought it was fun and added a certain element of player skill to the proceedings.

But your concern seems to be something that CDPR wants to address: Complexity in battle for those who want it, simplicity and ease of progression for those who just want to Diablo their way through it. Will it work? Hopefully. But the mere fact that they're making this move in response to complaints from players is very encouraging.

I also have to think that if you sunk more than ten hours into The Witcher, it must not have been all bad. Was it at least worth the price of admission?
uhg I hope its less like daiblo combat wise and more like batman AA you have timing,attacking,dodging, using different "styles" to preform fluid and fun attacks.

There is an "aesthetic" to the witchers combat/mechanics I just hate same for bioshock, I think I will dust it off after I get done with overlord and try and play it again with some of the tree up my bum cut off...mabye I can stand it for longer period of time.... LOL.

Its not that hard to crate 2 different script sets for 2 completely different modes of play for one game (OW:SW did it nicely)but not many games care to put time and effort into it and IMO as gaming becomes more diversive you are going to need more than one main core gameplay type to widen your demographic and sales more.
 

Nalgas D. Lemur

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ZippyDSMlee said:
Let me simplify it for you, daiblo you click on target to kill it on the witcher you click on it to kill it with a cumbersome manual change style gimmick with crappy timed combos to kill things faster.
Well, in Diablo, you click on stuff to kill it. In The Witcher, you click on stuff to kill it. Going through my games currently installed on Steam, in Borderlands, you click on stuff to kill it. In Titan Quest, you click on stuff to kill it. In Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead, TF2, Multiwinia, Torchlight, AvP, Deus Ex, Freedom Force, STALKER, Serious Sam, Trine, BioShock, Darwinia, the Half-Life series, Mass Effect, Max Payne, Zeno Clash, Painkiller and Far Cry, you click on stuff to kill it. I'm sure I'm missing a few dozen. As I said before, in nearly every game that involves killing things and has a mouse-based interface, you click on things to kill it. Also, that has nothing to do with what I was saying, but I'll let that slide.

On another note, you've said more than once that The Witcher has no dodging. Fun fact: not only can you dodge in The Witcher (which is really useful), it uses the same default controls for it as Jade Empire, if I'm remembering right. The combat is actually not a whole lot different from JE in a lot of ways. You have multiple styles available at any given time with different types of attacks, you string them together into combos, using the right type of attacks on different enemies, with the usual strong and quick attacks and active dodging (but no block button in The Witcher).

And on an even more off-topic note, I'm starting to remember how utterly broken the combat in Jade Empire was now. You could pretty much power through the entire game with any one of a handful of broken styles and ignore all the rest. I personally abused Storm Dragon (holy crap is area effect stun cheating) and Mirabelle (holy crap is a ranged weapon in a kung fu fight cheating), but I hear a couple others are equally broken and make just as much of a joke out of the combat system.
 

ZippyDSMlee

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Nalgas D. Lemur said:
ZippyDSMlee said:
Let me simplify it for you, daiblo you click on target to kill it on the witcher you click on it to kill it with a cumbersome manual change style gimmick with crappy timed combos to kill things faster.
Well, in Diablo, you click on stuff to kill it. In The Witcher, you click on stuff to kill it. Going through my games currently installed on Steam, in Borderlands, you click on stuff to kill it. In Titan Quest, you click on stuff to kill it. In Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead, TF2, Multiwinia, Torchlight, AvP, Deus Ex, Freedom Force, STALKER, Serious Sam, Trine, BioShock, Darwinia, the Half-Life series, Mass Effect, Max Payne, Zeno Clash, Painkiller and Far Cry, you click on stuff to kill it. I'm sure I'm missing a few dozen. As I said before, in nearly every game that involves killing things and has a mouse-based interface, you click on things to kill it. Also, that has nothing to do with what I was saying, but I'll let that slide.

On another note, you've said more than once that The Witcher has no dodging. Fun fact: not only can you dodge in The Witcher (which is really useful), it uses the same default controls for it as Jade Empire, if I'm remembering right. The combat is actually not a whole lot different from JE in a lot of ways. You have multiple styles available at any given time with different types of attacks, you string them together into combos, using the right type of attacks on different enemies, with the usual strong and quick attacks and active dodging (but no block button in The Witcher).

And on an even more off-topic note, I'm starting to remember how utterly broken the combat in Jade Empire was now. You could pretty much power through the entire game with any one of a handful of broken styles and ignore all the rest. I personally abused Storm Dragon (holy crap is area effect stun cheating) and Mirabelle (holy crap is a ranged weapon in a kung fu fight cheating), but I hear a couple others are equally broken and make just as much of a joke out of the combat system.


It has fou dodgeing yes? You can dodge but it dose not always dodge or lessen an attack thus its fou dodging and not really needed.

I don't think I said JE was perfect and fable is pretty much a 2 trick pony(flourish or magic to to brake a block) but you can move around and try and hit things within the reach of your weaopn the whitcher dose not let you do this its a strict click based XRPG like Daiblo,KOTOR,BG,Dungeon Siege,Fallout,ect,ect in that respect. The cumbersomeness of it and wonky implementations that just annoyed me to know end.
 

Andy Chalk

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I suspect what we're really getting at here is that the only real similarity between the combat in Diablo, Witcher, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, KOTOR, etc., is that you didn't like any of them. ;)
 

Frotality

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sigh...if only more developers realized that easy mode is for accessibility, and that completely retooling a series for a broader audience and alienating your fans isnt at all necessary.

the changes listed here are mostly pretty basic fixes; the timed clicking thing was a gimmick that often got annoying as keeping the cursor on certain enemies was quite difficult at times. alchemy wanted us to believe experimentation was integral, but there were so few potion types and a total of about 1 that you actually needed to experiment to get (it does nothing but make you pass out by the way). making the basic process simpler while dynamic changes improve the result sounds like an improvement to me.

you know what? the porn cards were a great idea. so many RPGs reward your tireless attempts to seduce characters with nothing but a fade to black and perhaps some implication of sex; the witcher at least gave you an actual in-game reason to bed women by making it a collection quest; so here is hoping your "encounters" have some plot significance if thats the direction theyre going with.

i thought it was quite realistic actually; most characters would whine about being infertile for drama's sake, but geralt, medieval ubermensch that he was, took a much more plausible viewpoint; free reign to screw everything in sight without consequence. it fit in quite well with the all-to-rare accurate portrayal of the scientific ignorance and draconian morals that actual medieval times had; why the hell would the main character have modern morals when no one else does? compared to the rapists and psychotically misogynistic priests geralt is surrounded by, hes a bloody feminist by comparison.