The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Review
Submitted By Greg on Oct 24 2008 at 4:16 PM
Intro, Story
CDProjekt RED's
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
The Witcher is the first game produced by CDProjekt RED, the development arm of the Polish game publishing company of the same name. Before the founding of RED studio, CDProjekt's claim to fame were their all-encompassing Polish translations of many popular Western Role-Playing Games – games which undoubtedly influenced the development team's premier project. The first edition of The Witcher, released in the Fall of 2007, was generally well received. Although it was lampooned for a wide range of technical, aesthetic, and gameplay errs, the title was labeled by many as one of the best RPGs of the that year. One year later, CDPrjekt has re-released The Witcher. Now dubbed The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, the title has been proclaimed to be the definitive version of the company's 2007 masterwork. This revised version of The Witcher is complete with reworked textures, some refurbished gameplay mechanics, and a retouched script and accompanying audio. Will the updates and bug fixes be enough to draw in weary RPG fans?
The Witcher (game) takes place in the fantasy universe created by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. Sapkowski's world is much like your traditional Tolkien-inspired, high fantasy universe – complete with elves, dwarves, magic, buxom peasants (of course), and a healthy helping of popular folklore. What sets Sapkowski's fiction apart is the inherent friction between the involved parties. In this realm, the different races and factions are not bound by a sense of mutual cohesion, and they are most certainly not stricken by benign vindictiveness. The empires of men are at one another's throats and the “elder” races (dwarves, elves, etc.) are scapegoats for the ails of human society. The tenets of corruption, fanaticism and extremism have taken hold, and crime and plague wallow in the slums. As such, this fantasy is much more in line with the Brothers Grimm than Mother Goose. In the end, Sapkowski has created one of the more 'realistic' (irony acknowledged) takes on the fantasy genre. To date, Andrzej Sapkowski has penned five novels, and three short-story compilations, in this setting – all of which follow the same character, the witcher, Geralt of Rivia.
Although Mr. Sapkowski was not directly involved in the development of this videogame, his lead character did carry on. In The Witcher, the player takes on the role of the infamous monster hunter, the White Wolf, Geralt of Rivia. To indoctrinate those who are unfamiliar with the fiction's backstory (a wise decision given the fact that most Sapkowski's writings have not been translated to English, yet), CDProjekt has utilized everyone's favorite plot-device, amnesia. While woefully cliché in most instances, here the gamble works for both gameplay and story purposes.
