Welcome to My World
The Witcher is powered by BioWare's Aurora 2007 engine, a heavily modified version of the engine behind Neverwinter Nights — and it really is heavily modified, to the point where if the BioWare logo wasn't present on the box, you likely wouldn't make the connection. Initially launched in late October 2007, The Witcher is set in a dark, violent world perched on the brink of destruction. Your job, naturally, is to take the role of the Geralt, the White Wolf (from The Witcher books — now apparently resurrected without much of his memory) and set things right.
 It's good to be the king |
How you happen to define "right" will affect certain aspects of the game; as the box says, "There is no good, no evil — only decisions and consequences." If you read the marketing material, you'll find information about how you have to make tough decisions that have world changing consequences. Depending on the choices you make, the game will branch down different paths with three supposedly unique endings. I'm also a big fan of the Fallout games, so perhaps I got my hopes up a little too much. Suffice it to say, while there are a few major decisions to make throughout the game, the actual impact on the game world appears to be extremely small, mostly determining whom you have to fight and which characters "like" you. The three "unique" endings are achieved by deciding to side with the bad guys, the other bad guys, or by refusing to choose a side and remaining neutral — and you get to fight both parties of "bad" guys.
 The ice age cometh |
Okay, so perhaps it's not quite that simplistic, but if you're looking for an ending where everything turns out okay, prepare to be disappointed. This is not to say that the ending is bad, but this isn't a story put together by your typical Hollywood think-tank, and Walt Disney definitely wouldn't approve. This is a mature game with mature themes, and like the real world rarely do things and "happily ever after". That said, the ending was satisfying, even if it does leave the door open for future titles.
 American dryads have long hair and wear thongs; European dryads are less inhibited |
One final item worth mentioning before we get into the heart of the review is that this really is a mature game, in every sense of the word. The Witcher definitely earns its 17+ ESRB rating, with the following content: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, and Violence. Yes, that's correct: your in-game avatar can actually participate in sex during the game, with a variety of women. Before any of you get too excited, the reality is that the sexual content doesn't even match what you're likely to see on primetime television or soap operas, basically giving you a fade to black with a picture of a woman in a revealing pose. Of course, if you're capable of reading this article, you're more than capable of finding much worse material in a matter of seconds. [Note: The non-US version is apparently less prudish, featuring actual nudity at parts. The European version would qualify as an R-rated movie, in computer game form.]
If you enjoy listening to the Jack Thompsons of the world, games like this are contributing to the downfall of society and turn people into raging sociopaths. Apparently, The Witcher doesn't have a large enough following as yet to warrant his attention, and I have managed to stave off the urge to kill anyone or go looking for a prostitute. Still, if any of the last two paragraphs offend you, definitely give The Witcher a wide berth. [Ed: There goes another three readers….] Okay, with that out of the way, let's get into the nitty-gritty details of The Witcher.
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punko - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Is the demo North American or European ;)legoman666 - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
I had major problems with the games DRM scheme. It absolutely refused to load even though I had a legal copy and the DVD was in the drive. It kept telling me to enter the original disc. I was at my wits end trying to fix it and I was about to take my copy of the game back.However, then I installed Vista x64 and it worked perfectly. (had XP x64 prior).
kilkennycat - Friday, January 25, 2008 - link
Er, did you have any virtual-disk software (Alcohol etc..) installed on the machine when you had your so-called DRM problems? If so, did you try experimentally uninstalling it to see if the problems cleared up?legoman666 - Friday, January 25, 2008 - link
Yes, I did have Daemon tools installed, but I uninstalled it and made sure there were no traces of it left in the registry.Ironcically, Using Daemon Tools Pro is how some people with DRM problems managed to get the game working. The game will install fine with the original disc, but then fail to load the game. A solution is to make an image of the DVD, and mount it using a virtual IDE drive with Daemon Tools Pro.
The reason it has to be an virtual IDE drive is because of the draconian DRM scheme that the game uses; It will not work on a scsi virtual drive (what Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120 use by default). Some people even reported having issues trying to play the game with their original disc using a sata drive.
BikeDude - Saturday, January 26, 2008 - link
Uninstalling the "offending" tool might not have much of an impact.I had briefly tried a tool for ripping discs (or similar -- I don't recall its name or purpose) and one game refused to run. Using Sysinternal's regmon (now Process Monitor) revealed that the DRM was looking at HKEY_CURRENT_USER and found the offending utility's user setup there. Most uninstallers leave HKCU alone, since users want to keep their settings in case they ever reinstall (or upgrade).
So, before you reinstall the OS, simply create a new user (thus giving you a fresh HKCU) and see if that helps. I think such DRM approaches warrants a full refund from the game's publisher. It is despicable.
FWIW: I use daemon tools to mount ISO images downloaded from a pirate site called msdn.microsoft.com. I get all sorts of OS and utility ISOs from there! grrr....
JarredWalton - Friday, January 25, 2008 - link
Amazing how often that clears up problems.... Anyway, I have Daemon Tools installed on many of my PCs, and that didn't interfere with The Witcher. I think I had it whine about not having the correct disc once in all of my testing... I just closed out of the dialog and restarted and it worked. I will say that I'm not using any SATA DVD drives right now, so maybe that helped?ecat - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Nice review. Though I'd consider less emphasis on the problems to be more in keeping with the actual game play experience, I'm glad to see The Witcher receiving more main line coverage.I played this game in the run up to Xmas, best game I've played since VTM: Bloodlines. The writing and cross plots create a level of involvement that leaves Oblivion looking, well, empty. Bioshock ? Stalker ? Best I don't go there.
On stability:
XP, AMD 64 x2 (2.8GHz), 2Gb, 7800gt, DFI on board sound.
I could certainly play for 2 or more hours without a crash, but sometimes less. Crash was usually proceeded by voices starting to stutter.
Re-booting before starting the game appeared to help.
Greatest improvement came from forcing the game to run on a single core - fixed issues with stutter and allowed hours (and hours and.. lol :) of play.
dragosmp - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
The fix for the crashes is very well put on the official forums, but for whoever is interested here's how it goes:Start Command Line Console and write this (this DOES NOT apply to 64bit OSes):
"BCDEDIT /set IncreaseUserVa 3072"
This increases the max adresable memory/process from 2GB to 3GB. It works in 99% of the cases, but it's true that this game seems to urge for a 64 bit OS where the UserVa is no longer limited at 2GB.
Sc4freak - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
The reason it didn't crash as often on Vista x64 is probably because it allows the full 4gb virtual addressing range to any 32-bit program linked with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag. On Vista/XP 32-bit, this limit is by default 2gb (and expandable to ~3gb).Incidentally, you'll find the same behaviour with Supreme Commander. 32-bits just isn't enough for modern memory-hungry games.