Malf on 20/5/2015 at 07:49
Quote Posted by Fallen+Keeper
That's strange... considering that W2 and W3 share the basic technology I would have expected more imported elements than W1->W2.
On the other hand however items imported from W1 to W2 were useless anyway so I can live with it. I love what they did with everything else though.
Asset-wise however, a lot of NPC models have been imported from Witcher 2, including the ridiculous nappy-clad peasants. I suppose it makes sense and maintains continuity, but still, those nappies were always stupid.
I had quite a few crases when I settled down with it last night. Turns out that a lot of people are, and it seems to be nVidia users mostly affected by crashes to desktop or lock-ups. From what I've read, ATI users don't fair much better, getting less crashes but poorer performance.
I've knocked a couple of settings down a notch after reading a lot of people reporting increased stability with little visual impact. I've killed the hair tech completely (or YenniFur as some wag over on RPS named it :D ), and knocked foliage draw distance down to minimum, as well as setting maximum framerate to "Unlimited" as opposed to 60fps. I only did that this morning mind you, so can't report whether it was successful or not.
My biggest tip so far?
Quicksave is your friend.
To be honest, I may end up knocking the difficulty down a notch, as every encounter takes 2-3 attempts to resolve on "Blood and Broken Bones" difficulty, and the levelling curve seems to be incredibly steep. I've got to level 2, but I've only found two packs of monsters that were the same level as me. Everything else has been level 4 or 5. Yes, they're killable, but I take too much damage fighting them (block/parry is useless against wolves and drowners; works on nekkers though).
The first ability point I spent was on the ability that regens your health outside of battle during the day. Before I had that, all of my remaining cash was going on food that I'd constantly be chomping in and out of battle to regain what I'd lost. Even then though, I start most fights at half health, because the regen rate is incredibly slow.
The game also seems to be incredibly stingy with cash at this low level, and repairs end up draining most of what I earn. Really not sure I like the introduction of gear damage, especially as by default, pressing X on the pad to draw my weapon seems to draw the steel sword, which ends up getting damaged very quickly when fighting monsters.
They did learn from The Witcher 2, and crafting components weigh nothing, but the crafting system seems quite over-complicated. Almost everything can be salvaged into components, which okay, is fine, and creates a use for all that junk you pick up. But savaging costs gold, and annoyingly 99% of the components you salvage can be further salvaged. This is really confusing, as I've no idea where I should stop. Is it more efficient to salvage things to their very base level, or should I try and maintain a stock of components from each salvage level?
However, a distinct improvement is that once you've crafted a potion now, restocking it simply requires alcohol, not all of the components. I'm not sure how plants and other potion ingredients maintain their relevance now because of this, but I suspect it'll be for bombs.
Which I still don't have, nor the much-vaunted crossbow.
Don't get me wrong, I am really enjoying it, but I'm thinking some of the systems I've mentioned may be some of the first to be modded to be more forgiving..
Beleg Cúthalion on 20/5/2015 at 08:52
Quote Posted by bukary
Beleg, it is definitely a translation problem. Sapkowski is known for his mastery of language. I teach literature. Citations from Sapkowski's books are often used as an example of sophisticated stylization (with postmodern flavour). He is like, say, Italo Calvino of fantasy.
It's really hard to see if this is good sarcasm or not. :p The reason being that one the one hand, Sapkowski has indeed won several awards and some German guy wrote on his blog that to his knowledge Poles who read both English and German think the German translations are better. On the other hand, my humble knowledge of modern translations suggests that (technical) vocabulary might get screwed up but style and content usually don't – or it would be a major transgression, but we're not talking about old languages here where it would be much more difficult to translate style. Since my criticism extends into both fields, I have a hard time accepting that it is a translation thing.
A good comparison might be Perdido Street Station. At first it put me off due to its brutal attempts of establishing crazy fantasy and steampunk elements, often the usual stuff but with slightly altered spelling (alchymy) which gave it an oh-so-special appearance. But at least it was more or less consistent and made this into one of its traits. In the Witcher texts all the freaky stuff and change of styles (most remarkably between gritty pragmatic narration and those few attempts at being artsy) seemed like it was trying to be diverse and depicting something heterogeneous while being in fact arbitrary and poorly-executed.
Thirith on 20/5/2015 at 09:02
My impressions were pretty similar with respect to the English translation of the first two games. It's not bad, but it feels like genre literature that tries too hard to be Game of Thrones, so I already felt it fell short of its ambitions in that respect, and the anachronisms felt tacked on rather than clever.
van HellSing on 20/5/2015 at 09:29
It's definitely not sarcasm. The translations of The Last Wish and Blood of Elves at least are abysmal. It's like the translator only cared about bringing the story across in language as bland as possible, without any attempts at conveying the style.
Thirith on 20/5/2015 at 09:32
As a side-note, since Beleg Cúthalion mentioned Miéville: I'd love an (probably story- and character-heavy) RPG or adventure set in the world of Perdito Street Station, or any of his worlds, really - just as I'd love an Iain M. Banks-based game. Those worlds are so rich and miles from generic fantasy and sci-fi, there'd be so much potential.
Fallen+Keeper on 20/5/2015 at 09:41
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
It's really hard to see if this is good sarcasm or not. :p
I don't think so, Sapkowski is really good. But I'm also coming to believe that it's only good in polish. I've read the first book in italian as well and I must say it's really a far cry from the original version. Unfortunately, aside from many polish idioms contained in the books that do not translate at all, it's one of those rare cases where it's only effective in its original language.
Yakoob on 20/5/2015 at 14:01
I read the Polish Witchers and they were my intro into Fantasy. While I've read quite a bit since and thus might concede that it's not as great as I first thought, I would say the language and wordchoice Sapkowski uses in Polish are superb - there were so many sentences that put a smile on my face.
Same with the game. I am playing in Polish and watched a Let's Play of the same intro sections after. The Polish feels far more believable for the time period and drew me in way, way more than the English one. Imho English GoT does a much better job of creating believable period dialects than English Witcher.
Granted I may be biased here since it is my mother tongue, even tho I've been using English much more in recent decade.
Fallen+Keeper on 20/5/2015 at 14:47
Personally I don't like polish version very much. I tried it because everyone said it was the best way to experience the game, but I find the polish voice acting way to forced and stiff, expecially Geralt himself. Everytime he says something he really means "I'm the most badass polish voice actor you can get". The english one is still very badass but oozes personality and love for the work he's doing, unlike the polish voice actor - that's my opinion, ofc.
bukary on 20/5/2015 at 14:59
Just for the record: I wasn't being sarcastic. Sapkowski's language is quite admirable.
I was working with CDPR on the Polish version of The Witcher 1. The English version seemed much more "sterile" and "raw". In short: if you find some texts in this series good, interesting, funny, it's probably because the writers tried to imitate Sapkowski's style.
Tony_Tarantula on 20/5/2015 at 19:49
One question for those who've started playing:
Does the PC version allow me to manually re-create a witcher 2 save the way the console version do or do I have to import a save? If I can how do I do that?
