The Witcher catch-all

Enhanced Edition Coming

This is awesome! Responding largely to fan requests, a huge update to the game is coming including massive technical and performance improvements, new animations and models, new content, a module editor and a new English translation! It's due to ship in MAy and CD Projekt RED claims a free update will be offered to all existing owners. I hadn't really dug into this yet and I'm glad I didn't. I can't wait to plasy it with this update. Mega huge kudos to CD Projekt RED for this!

The guys at CD Projekt RED are good people, and the Polish gaming industry is still free enough that developers can get away with this sort of thing. I'm also glad they've been doing well with their game, 600,000 copies sold so far, without a great deal of marketing fanfare in markets like North America.

Some of the information:

Module: "The Price of Neutrality"
Gameplay length: 2 hours
Quests: 3 (1 main quest, 2 side quests)
-Completely new Geralt's adventure with intriguing story.
-Placed in the surroundings of the Kaer Morhen stronghold, in the location not used in The Witcher storyline.
New graphic assets: 2 NPCs models, one tent model, 2 new erotic cards, 2 new flashbacks.
Concept: Geralt comes back to Kaer Morhen for winter. He finds a small camp near the stronghold where he meets a nobleman and a sorceress Sabrina Glevissig. They came here to find Deidre, a young woman, who is staying in the witchers' stronghold. She is Eskel's surprise child, born under the Black Sun (ancient prophecy says that such children would ruin the World). It turns out that the nobleman is her brother, who wants to make sure she will not have the crown. Sorceress Sabrina wants to kill Deidre and examine her body to find out the truth about Black Sun curse. Geralt has to decide to whether defend the girl or stay neutral.
CD Projekt Red Studio provides the MOD in two languages: Polish and English
Release dates: March 14th (Friday) in the Internet and May 16th with "The Witcher Enhanced Edition".

Module: "Side Effects"
Gameplay length: 3 hours
Quests: 5
-Simple, yet amusing gameplay-oriented storyline.
-Several ways to complete the MOD.
-Shows how to create adventures exploiting various gameplay features.
-The MOD does not use any new graphic assets.
Concept: Dandelion gets into trouble in Vyzim. Geralt has to collect a certain amount of money to buy him out and pay for his excesses. He collects the money by completing various tasks. Player can join effects of one task with another. For example: in a fistfight competition he can win cash or a bottle of alcohol. If he chooses to take the booze, he can use it to get one bandit drunk. Then he will give Geralt a key to a chest with loot. The mood of the story is similar to Dandelion's incidents with Vespula and Bibervelt's economics.
CD Projekt Red Studio provides the MOD in two languages: Polish andEnglish
Release dates: May 16th with "The Witcher Enhanced Edition".

Some of the more interesting fixes and additions:
-Auto-sorting of items in satchel,
-Special slot area for sorting alchemy ingredients in satchel
-Character differentiation mechanism (effectively generating approximately 50 new character appearances).
-Auto-looting of containers (player may collect all contents of a container without opening the container panel).
-Corrected English translation and voice work (over 5000 dialogue lines re-written and re-recorded).
-Loading times reduced by 80%.
-Improved game stability.
-Improved AI for Dice Poker mini-game
-Inventory and map texture caching (accelerated map and
inventory load/ display)

That is a pretty decent sales number considering how useless Atari is at marketing and in how many territories they published this game.

Oh a new english translation? Really?

I wonder who suggested that earlier and was cruelly shot down?

I just read about that, what they are doing is just so great. Even though I have the European version of Witcher already I am going to buy this Enhanced version too!

You won't have to buy anything to get the new content apparently. A large patch will be made available to turn the old games into the new one and it's supposed to be free. If they do that, they'll definitely become one of my top-rated devs.

I bought the European version too but I never got past Act I because of the huge amount of games I had to play. I will just wait for this enhanced version. Great work from CDProjekt!

Oh no you misunderstood me Parallex. I know that they are going to release all those contents for free on March 14th online. But I just want to support them as much as I can, and get another copy of the game. Besides, I know quite a few friend of mine that I would like to lure back to PC gaming

Actually, it looks like they will be releasing only some of the content online in March, and the rest in May, when the Enhanced Edition is released.

I'm considering buying the Enhanced Edition, to support CD Projekt RED a little more, they really are great guys. A little bit of hope in this bleak industry and all that.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

You won't have to buy anything to get the new content apparently.

Yep. I'm impressed. It seems that they've tackled all the issues that were gaining the Witcher negative feedback. I haven't seen dedication to RPG title such as this since... well, since fanpatches for Fallout and Bloodlines. And input is coming from devs, not fans. Once again I'm proud from my compatriots ;]

the Polish gaming industry is still free enough that developers can get away with this sort of thing

Well, I'd say that it's rather another approach to marketing model. It's still marketing, because they'll get their money from this, but I'd love to live in a world where all games are marketed in that way ("Look, we care about our game, and so we care about gamers that play it"). Still, this approach is probably effect of target group. Game which has to sell on European market well must realize that it has more hardcore than casual gamers. And what they look for is quality, which CDP RED delivers them once more.
Cheers for them ;]

#
New In-Game Features

Code Features:

# Improved inventory:

* Filtering of alchemy ingredients by content
* Auto-sorting of items in satchel
* Special slot area for sorting alchemy ingredients in satchel

# Auto-save option (on/off).
# Character differentiation mechanism (effectively generating approximately 50 new character appearances).
# Look-at feature (characters look at Geralt, deepening player immersion).
# Auto-looting of containers (player may collect all contents of a container without opening the container panel).

Graphic Features:

# 100 new gesture animations in dialogue and cut-scenes, giving conversations with NPCs a more natural feel.
# Improved facial expressions.

Corrections

Code Fixes:

# Corrected English translation and voice work (over 5000 dialogue lines re-written and re-recorded)
# Corrected German translation and voice work
# Loading times reduced by 80%
# Improved game stability
# Improved combat responsiveness.
# Improved AI for Dice Poker mini-game
# Improved weather settings for locations
# Vitality indicator problem resolved (did not display at times)
# Inventory and map texture caching (accelerated map and inventory load/display)
# All corrections contained in game patches released to date

Graphic Fixes:

# Animation improvements:

* Draw/sheath sword animation accelerated.
* Greater clarity of "sequence failed" animation.

# Improved character model for Triss Merigold.

lethial wrote:

Oh no you misunderstood me Parallex. I know that they are going to release all those contents for free on March 14th online. But I just want to support them as much as I can, and get another copy of the game. Besides, I know quite a few friend of mine that I would like to lure back to PC gaming :P

I'm re-purchasing the game as well for the same reasons. It is probably one of the best games I played in years, and for a new Eastern European developer to not only release a surprisingly polished game, but an RPG that managed to involve you in the gameworld in a way most higher budgeted games claimed they would do, I want to vote with my dollars and let publishers know that I'm willing to pay for efforts like this. Plus it would be nice to have the definitive edition in one package like a limited edition I couldn't have before, with the map and behind-the-scenes videos and whatnot in one package.

I can't believe they're doing the new translation, the cost of getting the voice actors to come back and read more lines must have been substantial. I was at the beginning of my second playthrough with the extended script and polish voices but now I think I'll wait.

EDIT: Give Americans the tits and this package will be flawless.

kuddles wrote:

I can't believe they're doing the new translation, the cost of getting the voice actors to come back and read more lines must have been substantial. I was at the beginning of my second playthrough with the extended script and polish voices but now I think I'll wait.

Dialogues and voice-acting in Polish version is probably the best voice acting in game I've heard since the Last Express (1997).

I'm also buying enchanced edition when it arrives.

Interestingly as well, I found out that they are actually shopping around for publishers for the North American release of this, meaning that they aren't using Atari. From what I've been reading, it was Atari who forced them to butcher the English translation so they could cut back on the voice acting budget (likely because Atari is nearly bankrupt due to stupid moves like this) and it appears that CD Projekt RED isn't bound to them to release this next one. Who knows, maybe it'll even get some marketing this time too. I'm hoping that since the original did fairly well as PC games in North America go, that this time they can find a publisher with a bit more muscle to put this out for them. I think they should definitely talk to Valve about going on Steam too. More people need to play this game. If I'm employed again come time for this to ship, I likely will buy it again too.

If it hits Steam, it becomes an immediate purchase for me. Definitely great news about the Enhanced Version.

I'm interested, and frankly cannot wait to play the side modules. Go CD Projekt.

*chants* Steam, steam, steam!

MoonDragon wrote:

*chants* Steam, steam, steam!

I second the motion!

MoonDragon wrote:

*chants* Steam, steam, steam!

How about Stardock's Totalgaming network!?

This game should just be sold (and bought) everywhere.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

This game should just be sold (and bought) everywhere.

Already bought, still waiting till summer to play through though.

Sinatar wrote:

Oh a new english translation? Really?

I wonder who suggested that earlier and was cruelly shot down?

You, me, and 90% of game journalists.

BASTARD!

I've been playing the game to review it, and the niggles that I had with the game, it now appears they are fixing!?!? Who heard of a game devlopers trying to do that, and give even more?

Fair play to these developers, they deserver our support and more, we need more like them on the PC market.

By the way, it looks like The Witcher is being ported to the XBox 360 and the PS3, there is a newspost about it in Polish. Basically a CDProject RED employee let it leak on a social networking website, though the mention of this has since been deleted.

Basically, the news was that on one of community sites CDP dev wrote in his portfolio that he's currently responsible for developing technology to port Witcher for PS3 and X360. Still, official statement from CDP goes like this (translation is mine):

Informations circulating about console port of the Witcher are exagerrated. It's quite obvious that we look for people who could write console-specific code, there is even an advert on our jobs page. We have different ideas regarding use of consoles but nothing has been officially confirmed. Our increase of interest regarding consoles is due to recent merger of CDP with Metropolis Software which effects with sharing some ideas. To sum up, we surely think about making something for consoles but at this moment we have not even confirmed these plans internally
UCRC wrote:

Basically, the news was that on one of community sites CDP dev wrote in his portfolio that he's currently responsible for developing technology to port Witcher for PS3 and X360. Still, official statement from CDP goes like this (translation is mine):

Informations circulating about console port of the Witcher are exagerrated. It's quite obvious that we look for people who could write console-specific code, there is even an advert on our jobs page. We have different ideas regarding use of consoles but nothing has been officially confirmed. Our increase of interest regarding consoles is due to recent merger of CDP with Metropolis Software which effects with sharing some ideas. To sum up, we surely think about making something for consoles but at this moment we have not even confirmed these plans internally

Yeah, rumors about that abound....I'll pick this up if they do a 360 port. Can never have too many quality RPGs on consoles.

RockPaperShotgun has an interview up now:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1407

I just finished this game 5 minutes ago. The story is amazing. I am so glad I got a chance to play this. I'm sad that it's over. I've played through the whole damn game and there's no more left to play!

Don't worry. I just picked it up. Live vicariously through me, mortal!

A new patch is out, along with the beta of the editor and the first official mod.