2007 in the gaming industry was incredibly rich in significant releases. We can say that this was the year of the origin of one of the most important franchises for the game industry: Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Bioshock and, finally, The Witcher .
I have always heard about the Witcher, but I never touched this franchise – neither books, nor to games, nor to the series. However, recently I began to notice that almost all the people in my environment, if they made my acquaintance with the franchise, then only due to the game in the third or sometimes in the second part of the series. But the first part, for some reason, left overboard. And I thought that the first part of such a sensational series did not go through the test of time? And I decided to find the answer to this question in The Witcher itself. And it turned out to be very surprised.
Developed by the Polish studio game CD Project Red. Initially, the studio was engaged in the usual porting of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance on PC, but due to the threat of bankruptcy InterPlay The Poles began to think about where to put existing developments. The choice fell on an attempt to adapt the popular series of books Andrzej Sapkovsky – "Witcher". The author was not against and after 5 years of work, rethinking and other creative and production problems, in October 2007, The Witcher still saw the light.
After the war, 5 years passed between the northern kingdoms and Nilfgaard. People try to get to their feet after a devastating war, the plague is rampant everywhere, a huge amount of different evil spirits have divorced on the roads, so non -people – elves and red -luggages – rebel against racial segregation, going into the forests and replenishing the ranks of the partisans, known as Skoy’teli.
The plot tie starts from the moment of the discovery in the forest by several witches of their old comrade – Geralt from Rivia, which at that time everyone considered the dead. He almost completely lost his memory and knew only his name. Within a few days, he is re -taught in the fortress KAER Morhen the basics of witcher art, but the idyll quickly ends – a gang of bandits who click themselves attacks the fortress Salamander, Under the leadership of some Professor – Alchemist and Azara Yada – Sorcerer’s apostate. They manage to penetrate deep into the fortress and steal witch mutgenes and various literature with witcher secrets. Why do they need it? Who actually stands behind this attack? Unknown. Therefore, Geralt will have to go a long and difficult way in search of revenge and answers to many questions, including the question – “Who I am?"
The plot in the game clings and intrigues, makes the player move on and learn more about the world and the main character, although he sags by dynamics.
In general, The Witcher raises a lot of serious and adult issues. Here is the problem of segregation and racism, the price of revenge, in the end – whether the target justifies the means? And questions do not hang in the air, but are directly reflected in the plot and additional tasks. In the course of the game, the player will have to make quite a lot of simple moral elections that will never be unequivocally bad or good. In fact, there are no evil and kind characters in the game, for they are all registered humanly, with dark and bright sides inherent in each person. Each character in The Witcher is a multifaceted person with his skeletons in the closet and opinions. Thanks to this, the world The Witcher is not felt by another fantasy with the salvation of the princess (although the salvation of the princess is present in the game), but quite real and integral.
In practice, in the game, this is implemented by a standard dialogue system with answers options and a small setting. It is impossible to say that the dialogs in the game are a conversation between two pillars, because sometimes the characters still gesture, but in general, the speakers in them are extremely few, although this does not interfere with perception.
What is the Witcher in terms of gameplay in general? This is an Action RPG with a third -person camera, or with an isometric camera. In fact, both options for the location of the camera work equally well from the point of view of gameplay, except that in isometry the keyboard is practically not needed, and you can dispense with mouse alone. However, in my subjective opinion, playing a third person is somewhat more convenient, because it is more familiar, although almost all the main teams remain on the mouse.
In "isometry" it is enough to look https://nonukcasinosites.co.uk/review/genie-riches-casino/ at the smallest environment, but it is more convenient to respond to various threats
Here it is immediately worth touching the combat system. On the one hand, it may seem that the battles in the game are completely deprived of the dynamics, for the enemy, in theory, you just need to sprinkle with blows. But in practice, everything is much more interesting. In order for Geralt to successfully apply damage to the enemy, the player must press the blow button in a strictly definite time so that each subsequent blow strikes the opponent more and more damage. But you should only miss once – you have to start a series of shocks again. And the enemy at this moment can manage to inflict a sufficiently significant damage to the player. The pace at which the hero can apply impacts depends on the chosen combat style. There are three of them in total: power, fast and group. Each is suitable for a certain type of opponent. Power – for especially armored and large enemies, fast – universal, suitable for most opponents, and group, As you can understand from the name, it will come in handy in the battle with a large group of enemies, or with small and piercing enemies. During the fights, the player will skillfully juggle with combat styles and successfully maneuver in the arena, so that battles in the game are felt very dynamic. True, nevertheless, a spoon of a tar throws the constant responed opponents on the trails of locations, because of which you start to get tired of the fighting very quickly. Ultimately, with ordinary opponents, I preferred not to enter the battle, just to run away from them on the road, so as not to waste their time on a meaningless battle.
At first, it’s hard to get used to the location of the enemy strip of HP, but it does not distract the player from striking in timing
To destroy the hordes of enemies in The Witcher there is an extensive arsenal of weapons of several types: silver swords for battles with monsters and undead, steel swords for battles with people, as well as daggers, axes, clubs and bombs.
But apart, of course, are “signs”. Signs – These are magical abilities that can allow Geralt to more effectively withstand opponents. There are 5 of them: Aard – a power wave that knocks down opponents and destroys small obstacles, Irden – Trap, Quen – Magic shield, Ignny – Fiery wave and finally Aksius, which allows you to influence the mind of the enemy. It will not work out to constantly use signs during the battle, because their use spends mana, which is gradually restored. Each sign requires an individual number of mana costs for use, which allows you to use signs in different ways to achieve the greatest efficiency. However, signs are not available at once. To begin with, they will have to open them, finding strength stones in various chapters. True, despite your effectiveness, there are often no need to use signs of signs. For the whole game I used only two signs – Aard and Ignny. Ordinary swords were enough to cope with most opponents, including bosses.
Signs often allow you to gain time in order to accept the elixir, deliver a series of strokes or retreat
In general, a certain opportunity came out with the bosses. The very first boss in the game – Beast – It passes quite difficult. Before I could overcome it, it took a dozen tense attempts, but not a single subsequent boss caused such difficulties, even the final. Perhaps at the end of the game the character turns out to be quite pumped, making a threat to bosses from the character, and not vice versa.
By the way about pumping the character. A branch of skills in the game is arranged in a very interesting way. To pump skills and abilities, you need to earn money "Talents", which are given each time for increasing the level of the hero. Talents are divided by color: Bronze – The simplest, Silver – average level and Gold – The best talents. During the first chapters, the player will not be able to earn silver and gold talents, and will be forced to pump only the simplest, most basic skills and abilities. This does not allow the player to pump the character too early and make a murder car out of him. Access to stronger talents will open as the game is going through and pump the hero level. In addition, some skills can only be obtained for the destruction of bosses. And then, the fact of the murder of the boss is not enough. It is necessary to extract a certain component from the enemy’s corpse, which subsequently must be used to prepare an alchemical drug, which, in turn, will already open access to the player to the skill.
There are only 30 levels of character in the game, because of which it will not be possible to pump all skills, so you will have to choose wisely
Alchemy – This is a fairly significant part of the game. Almost the entire lout that the player finds in the world of the game can be used in alchemy. But it’s not enough just to mix a couple of herbs. To create a potion, you need to get its recipe, which can either be obtained on an assignment, or find or buy. Then you need to find the necessary components – herbs, parts of monsters, etc. D., And also to get an “alchemical base”-some drink, preferably strongly alcohol, on which the elixir itself will be mixed up. The elixirs themselves are an incredibly necessary thing for any witcher. In battles at the average level of complexity, their importance is difficult to overestimate. They can not only heal or increase damage, but also give the opportunity to more actively evade blows or nullify some negative effects, and in some locations, in the dungeons, for example, it will not be possible to stick without an elixir, which allows you to see in the dark. However, the player will not allow the player to pour a huge number of different elixirs into Heralt at a time to make it almost indestructible. There is a scale in the game "Intoxication" elixirs, when filling out which the character can begin to lose health points. This brings more balance to the combat system and makes it much deeper.
The game world in The Witcher can be called "conditionally open". It is divided into several sufficiently large locations that can be moved freely, however, the transition to neighboring locations opens only as the plot passes, while the transition to the already investigated closes is closed.
Locations in the game are diverse and when studying them does not arise a feeling of deja vu. Here you are also dirty streets of the poor streets of the temple quarter Visits, And spacious fields, swamps and so close to us in the spirit of the village, as if descending from the pages of epics. However, visual uniformity within the framework of one location often leads to difficulties in orientation on the ground. In addition, the size of the locations themselves forces the player to stomp quite a lot, and the amount of backing in the quests often just runs out.
Tasks in The Witcher can conditionally be divided into 3 parts: plot quests, side quests with their mini-historia and finally orders for the destruction of the monsters. The latter are only interesting because they force the player to buy or find a certain in -game literature, which will allow the witcher to learn more about the creatures that he will have to kill, so that the player subsequently can extract the components from the corpses to complete the assignment. But side quests with stories can often throw many interesting situations and plots, which sometimes even intersect with the main story, complementing it and expanding the ENT of the game universe. The plot quests, perhaps, are most interested in, since they often throw the player the opportunity to accept this or that side in the next conflict, or, choosing between one evil and the other, prefer not to choose at all. However, it is precisely the plot tasks that will most often make the player run as a crazy back and forth by locations. As the game passes, this will be leveled by the possibility of rapid movement between a pair of locations, but such an opportunity will be provided for only 1-2 chapter, at a time when it will not be so necessary.
By the way, in addition to the usual battles with crowds of enemies, the game has the opportunity to entertain yourself behind the game in the bone, as well as fights in fist battles
Returning to the visual aspect of the game, it is worth saying that in comparison with other major releases of 2007, The Witcher from the sky is not enough. The game looks neat, but without revelation. At the same time, some locations really give the eye aesthetic pleasure, while others catch up with boredom, such as swamps or streets of Vyzima, where each lane repeats the previous one. But this does not interfere with a whole perception, and even rather, on the contrary, it brings a drop of realism, because where you saw repeated swamps or residential areas? Nonament gaming screensavers are worth it, which, although not perfect, but still very stylish.
The only thing that can really overshadow this picture is visual bugs that will often remind of themselves. Then the character will have hair on his head “dance”, the face of Geralt himself will bend so that it will become scary. However, visual bugs do not carry serious harm, but rather forced to grin once again. What can not be said, for example, about the frequent flights of the game that pursued me throughout the passage, forcing me to constantly persist before switching to another location.
But what really succeeded in the game is a sound row and a general atmosphere. Music, an emboss, screams of monsters – all this creates an incredible atmosphere that delays the player and does not let go to the end of the game, and locations are not so much clinging visually as with their sound. Catacombs and various caves at the same time scare, and intrigue, and make you constantly be in tension. And walks along the city streets with constantly talking about something talkers are forced to believe in the reality of what is happening. And the game soundtrack, although it does not inspire a desire to add it to your audio recordings, always plays the topic and works for the mood. All these elements are organically combined and lead to the fact that the game world becomes almost tangible.
The Witcher is a truly unusual and important game not only for the East European Gamdev, but also for the RPG genre in particular. Adult issues, gloomy and attractive setting, interesting gameplay, intriguing history and such a prolonging world. Having gone through the game, I was very regretted now that I hadn’t done this before. Those who did not play games about the White Wolf at all, or bypassed the first part because of any prejudices, it is definitely worth it to give this game a chance. She deserves it exactly.
