Tag Archives: The Witcher

Playing the Witcher 3 again

So, I got a new graphics card (970 GTX) to play through the Witcher 3 again with higher graphics qualities…

But upon installing it, I was reminded that I could import my save game from The Witcher 2:

Screenshot 2015-08-27 15.06.57

Having played through 3 once already, I know there’s a simulated save game import through a barber shaving interrogation scene, but I thought… ah hell… I should prob just replay 2 so I can remind myself what the story was about and have a more meaningful experience with 3. I remember thinking that there’s all this mention of Yennefer that really didn’t make sense to me when I played 2 way back when, but now having played 3, I could appreciate mention of her like people who’ve read the source books…

I don’t have much space on my HD, though, so I had to uninstall 3 to make room for 2. Then I got this:

witcher 2 decision

 

Jeez. Ok. What the hell… Might as well uninstall The Witcher 2, install The Witcher, and start completely over!

I do remember The Witcher relatively well, having done a review of it for E-Learning, but I never played through the Enhanced Edition.

But, you know, then I thought: there’s probably some good mods that’ve come out since The Witcher was first released… And lo and behold:

witcher.rise of the white wolfHurrah!

So, last week, I finished The Witcher with Rise of the White Wolf. The Enhanced Edition seemed like an improvement, but it was still pretty clunky. Combat takes some getting used to, characters clip and stutter like crazy in cutscenes, and there’s something seriously wrong with how Zoltan looks…

Anyway, this week and next and maybe longer, I’ll be playing The Witcher 2 (with mods). And hopefully in October I can finally do my second comprehensive playthrough of The Witcher 3. Maybe by then there’ll be some good mods for it, too.

*Knowing what I know now, it seems crazy that no one in The Witcher mentions Yennefer explicitly (though, interestingly, there are little tidbits here and there of the Wild Hunt and a tale of a witcher and a sorceress being in love, etc.). And, wow, Triss totally took advantage of Geralt’s memory loss… Making me rethink what choices I want to make in 3 next month…

 

Uh… I don’t *think* I’ve written about Ashton Kutcher…

I was checking out my site stats for the first time in months, since I thought maybe my post to Terra Nova got me some hits (it did but not significantly–I get about 130 hits a day).

And, man, look at my most popular pages:

Title Views
Home page 26 More stats
Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War 16 More stats
The Witcher 12 More stats
Splinter Cell vs. Hitman 2 11 More stats
Half-Life 2 mods 4 More stats
Dr. Video Games: Reflections of a PhD Graduate 3 More stats
Dissertation ready for download 3 More stats
A bunch of short game reviews 2 More stats
Communication, Coordination, and Camaraderie in WoW 2 More stats
Bike USA: July 10-20, 2000 – Wall Drug, Badlands, Kadoka, Murdo, Valentine, Norfolk, Fremont, Omaha 1 More stats

That’s from today but it’s pretty much the same top ones every day. A large portion of my site visitors are interested in Deus Ex, The Witcher, Hitman, and Splinter Cell. A part of me feels like I really ought to capitalize on that somehow…

And what’s more? Why, check out these search terms that got people to my site:

Search Views
hitman 2 9
deus ex 6
the witcher 5
half life 2 mod 3
deus ex inventory 3
deus ex 2 invisible war 2
overland maps in neverwinter nights 2
ashton kutcher naked 2
deus ex 2 inventory screen 2
colossus movie 2

Lol. I swear I don’t have a thing for Ashton Kutcher… though I guess writing this post will make my website even more relevant for that search term. :/

(Now, why did I just add ashton kutcher to my tag list?? This makes me think of GNU and other self-referential acronyms… THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT ASHTON KUTCHER! There hopefully, that’ll satisfy the google bots.)

[Edit: Oh.. it was a post on cmgp (which is now archived on my website) about ashton kutcher… lol. Yes, I can do searches on my own website, thanks. Still.. doing a google search shows that my website doesn’t appear in the first 10 pages of results. Someone’s gotta really be digging deep for those photos to try clicking on my link…]

Discussion on mature games and moral ambiguity/development

I met Sande Chen, one of the English writers for The Witcher, at this year’s State of Play conference last month. She runs the blog Game Design Aspect of the Month where different industry folks, academics, etc. write about games and features of games, etc.

Anyway, this month is on mature games, and Sande was able to convince me to submit something, which was helped by the post before mine where Nels Anderson wrote about Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.

Given that I wrote about moral ambiguity and mentioned Kohlberg in my review of The Witcher for E-Learning last year, it made sense to bounce off of Nels’ post with a follow-up. 🙂

The Witcher

This past week I’ve been playing The Witcher, an RPG by CD Projekt Red using the Aurora Engine (the one Bioware used for Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, etc.). The Witcher is based off a series of short stories and novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski set in a wartorn grim fantasy world. Witchers are a clan of superhumans devoted to destroying monsters and evil. I had heard, however, that there was a lot of moral ambiguity in the game, which made me interested enough to download the demo. From what I saw in the demo, I was impressed enough to buy a copy.

The Witcher screenshot


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