The Witcher

[Roman Budzowski]

Hi everyone :)

Have you ever heard of The Witcher? It is RPG game in the fantasy realms, not made for kids. It's the biggest Polish game ever made (and yeah, I am from Poland).

Here's the nice preview:
http://shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=628

This game deserves some fuss :)

best
Roman

[Coyote]

I have heard, however, that its copy protection makes it not play well with other software on your machine, like emulation software and things like Daemon Tools...

[papillon]

I have heard that someone we know around here worked on it. :)

But while I'm definitely interested, I'm paranoid enough to always hold off for reviews and checks on compatibility / copy protection issues...

[jankoM]

I saw some cool video review + interview (right when I started discovering magic of rpg-s a month ago) and it really impressed me... to bad my computers are all to old for such games :/ ...

They said it is from Poland and were recording interview there but then later they mixed it all up with some other country .. Latvia I think... it seems no good maps exists for eastern parts of europe.

[Ryan Clark]

Is this the same Witcher that was in development 3 years ago?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/10/24

[mrkwang]

As I heard, [MAGI] maker was hired at the last process of [Witcher].

Not major job, but seems to be good job, to experience major studio's work as an young indie.

[Roman Budzowski]

@Ryan,
It's probably the same The Witcher. The game was in development for 5 years. It started as an "indie" project with 5 people and ended with a studio of 60-70 and almost $8 million development costs (20mln PLN).

take care
Roman

[DaveGilbert]

I want to play this, if I one day get a computer that can handle it. A friend of mine worked on the English localization.

[TeeGee]

Yeah, indeed I worked on The Witcher in it the last stages of its development. Pretty nice job, good learning opportunity as well. I moved on after the release - now I work at Codeminion (guys of Magic Match fame).

It's probably the same The Witcher. The game was in development for 5 years. It started as an "indie" project with 5 people and ended with a studio of 60-70 and almost $8 million development costs (20mln PLN).

It is the same Witcher and it's not. It's pretty much the same project, but the whole thing was drastically changed few times - concept, engine, gameplay, main hero... everything. The Witcher as we know it now was in development for about 3 years (if I'm not mistaken). At the end there was almost 100 people working on it and budget exceeded 20 mln PLN.

The game itself is a mixed bag for me. It has some great concepts - particulary in combat, alchemy and the whole adult-themed story. And the main character consists of pure cool factor. On the other hand, the game has some gameplay flaws and annoying perks - like running around too much with long loading times that doesn't help the whole thing. It's hard for me to judge it - I only had one occasion to play it for real. It's certainly not perfect, but for a first game from a new studio and for a game from Poland, it certainly has a lots of quality. And the theme really stands out on the current RPG market - at last something diferent from the "demons/orcs/widgets are attacking our beautyful empire - hero wanted" cliche. And damn, Geralt's awesome ;).

[ManuelMarino]

This game is impressive... when it's raining, people run to cover themselves under the shelters!