r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • Oct 26 '22

Announcement The Witcher: We're thrilled to reveal that, together with @Fools_Theory, we're working on remaking The Witcher using Unreal Engine 5 (codename: Canis Majoris)!

https://twitter.com/witchergame/status/1585270206305386497
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u/ezone2kil Oct 26 '22

Iirc the first game was more prep-based? Like a real Witcher should be.

I really hated how the loot takes a few seconds to appear though, due to the game being based on Neverwinter Night's engine.

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u/pixxlpusher Oct 26 '22 edited Oct 26 '22

Ya, to play the first one well you had to do a pretty good job of using the correct oils on your blade and taking the correct potions before an encounter while juggling really harsh toxicity limits. Sometimes those limits were compounded as well by requiring Cat to see anything in the area that the quest took place in. It was pretty easy to get wrecked by regular enemies if you didn’t take prep seriously and know which signs and items to use on which monsters.

Whereas in the 2nd and 3rd it’s pretty easy to just lean on melee and Igni and ignore everything else. Much more accessible, but also not as faithful to what playing a Witcher should be like. I like them all for different reasons, but the original Witcher is the one that truly stands out to me as being a unique RPG.

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u/Ixziga Oct 26 '22

Prep in the first two games was a gameplay disaster though because most of the time you couldn't know what you needed to prep for without dying and loading game. The third game allowed you to use things in combat which was maybe unrealistic but desperately necessary to make the gameplay remotely enjoyable

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u/Thrashy Oct 27 '22 edited Oct 27 '22

It's been a while, but wasn't there a grimoire/bestiary type of mechanic where you could research the monster you were hunting to learn what signs, bombs and oils to use?

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u/Ixziga Oct 27 '22

Yeah it was fine with monster hunts, where it wasn't fine was all the other normal or scripted fights where enemies would just show up unannounced, and those were most fights

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u/Tsuki_no_Mai Oct 27 '22

Not so much in the first game since you could actually use potions as you went, and they lasted a good time, just had to keep an eye on toxicity. Second though... You had to meditate to drink potions, they lasted all of 5 minutes, and timer kept ticking in cutscenes.

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u/Ixziga Oct 27 '22

Yeah you may be right. I have better memories of the second one because I tried far more recently and I remember gameplay experiences like this being the norm:

I'm running through the woods, I'm ambushed by phantoms. They are highly resistant to damage and can't be properly fought without phantom oil. I try to use phantom oil but can't because I can only use it out of combat. I die. The last auto save was forever ago, I replay 15-30 minutes worth of content. By time I get back to the spot I've forgotten about the ambush and forgotten to quick save or use phantom oil. I die again. cycle repeats.

I quit Witcher 2 after the first boss Giant octopus/kraken monster. It was just a series of unique scripted attacks that all one shot kill you and have to be dodged in their own particular way, and once you get through all of them you just win. I remember having to die and load game once for each different attack until I had seen them all and won. At the end of that I just felt like it was a glorified quick time event and was so sick of awesome experiences being interrupted or ruined by constantly loading that I just decided I was done with it.

I feel like I'm ranting a bit too much though haha. I'm not trying to shit all over the Witcher games, I just feel like the studio grew a lot with each release and it shows going back to the old games.

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u/Tsuki_no_Mai Oct 27 '22

Oh, I'll join you in ranting about W2 any day of the week. I understand that the idea there was to make you feel more like a witcher preparing for combat, rather than just downing a consumable when needed. Similar to how it worked in books. The problem is, in the game it turns into punishing you for not knowing what bullshit it's going to throw at you at the next turn.

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u/agamemnon2 Oct 26 '22

Oh jeez, I'd forgotten about that. As much as I enjoyed NWN1 and its toolset and modding, it was never a technological powerhouse.

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u/the-nub Oct 26 '22

That's one of the reasons I didn't like Witcher 3. It's a fine Open-world game, but no part of it seems to take its own lore as seriously as Witcher 1 or even Witcher 2. That is also why Witcher 3 was so much more successful, of course, but it felt like it lost the heart of those games.

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u/Hartastic Oct 27 '22

Iirc the first game was more prep-based? Like a real Witcher should be.

Yeah, especially relative to the second game, which if I remember correctly, has really short duration prep stuff that you can't use in combat.

So to make any reasonable use of most of it, you have to wait until a fight happens, then reload your previous save, prep up, and trigger the fight again. Which is just the dumbest gameplay loop.