The Witcher 2

[SuperBeatBoy]

JciyoGmnGyo

First showing of the game got leaked. I'm really happy about this news, The Witcher is one of my favourite rpgs ever made. If you haven't played the original and do like rpgs, what are you waiting for... pick it up you fool!

[Orgun]

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-debut-the-witcher/63501

New trailer

[SuperBeatBoy]

Its coming 17th May 2011 on PC. YES!

Hopefully i have a proper job by then so i can invest in a new PC!

[PeteJ]

Great stuff, I still rate The Witcher EE as one of the best fantasy RPGs ever made. Would rather a console version over PC these days though...

[Sane]

This has been unlocked now. I'm installing my GoG version as we speak, can't wait!

[Jusatsushi]

Installing the disc edition as I type... EXCITEMENT!! I<3 Geralt.

[C']

I've installed and got it running but the game is saying it can't detect my save game from the first Witcher and don't want to start unless I can import my decisions from that game. :(

Just booted The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and the saves are still there so not sure what the problem is.

[abigsmurf]

If I play this not having played the first, will I missed out massively in terms of plot?

[PeteJ]

It's a whole new storyline apparently so you can jump right in. You'll miss the background story for all the returning characters though, of course.

I really want this but my PC doesn't even make minimum spec. Time to upgrade this year I think, especially with Battlefield around the corner...

[Number45]

I'm comfortably past minimum on this, but I'm not sure what performance I could reasonably expect.

[Jusatsushi]

It's pretty well optimised and should look good even on the lower settings to be honest. There's some comparison screens between low and high at this link but a couple are NSFW:

http://www.gamesblog.it/galleria/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings-13/1

[Number45]

I saw some lovely spoiler free shots on GAF this morning, can't find them now.

EDIT: Here (stretch incoming)

http://i.imgur.com/cvSgD.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/MmGdA.jpg

<3

[Sane]

Performance wise I'm pretty happy, it's running quite well on my mid range PC (3ghz dual core, 4GB Ram, GTX460). I put it on ultra at first, that was a bit too much, but after turning off depth of field (shame, because it's a nice effect) and ubersampling and lowering the lighting and shadow settings to high it's running at a very acceptable framerate. My one technical gripe with it is the letterboxing, I'm playing on a 4:3 monitor and I'm getting black bars. No clue why they didn't do proper widescreen.

Anyway, I've just played through the intro and it's excellent so far, lot's of action, though I suppose that will slow down after the intro. I'm very interested on seeing where they will take the story.

Time to go brew some potions and get laid :D.

[Jusatsushi]

I'm too busy absolutely LOVING this to be playing around with optimised performance settings all evening. I switched it on, hit auto detect and away I went. Three hours later and I'm very close to getting caught up in a bucketload of honeymoon hyperbole.

By christ this is good...

[SuperBeatBoy]

I got my premium edition this morning, installed it. But i haven't started it yet! Trying to get my 2nd play-through of dragon age origins done first, hate leaving things half done. I just have the end left. As soon as I'm done I'm all over this!

[SUMIRE]

My bro got this and said something about theres a bug or something were you cannot remap the keys?

[Cepp]

She's a stunner, the game auto configured it for Ultra settings on my rig but Ultrasampling just kills it. Disabling that makes it much better but I might just drop it down to High.

I'm aiming to finish off the original by the weekend, then I can get well and truly stuck in :D

[gaz@manc]

I'm not a PC gamer so please forgive the newbie question, but...will this work with nVidia Geforce 9500 GS? Game.co.uk say 8800 but I have no idea how you tell whether your card is better/worse. I have 4Gb RAM and AMD Phenom 9150e so should be able to run on mid to high based off those, its just the graphics card I'm not sure about.

[PeteJ]

I'm not a PC gamer so please forgive the newbie question, but...will this work with nVidia Geforce 9500 GS? Game.co.uk say 8800 but I have no idea how you tell whether your card is better/worse. I have 4Gb RAM and AMD Phenom 9150e so should be able to run on mid to high based off those, its just the graphics card I'm not sure about.
Checkout this site - http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/
Find The Witcher 2 in the list and click Can you Run It and it'll tell you what you need to know. I don't know the answer what is better of the two cards, been out of the PC scene too long!

Has the game been changed from the original much, apart from the engine obviously :)

[Jebus]

Those screens look stunning, I really might have to grab this one sooner rather than later, as the Witcher was quite underrated imho.

[SuperBeatBoy]

Is everyone playing this on a Nvidia card then? I think its currently gimped on Ati cards, i'm getting 30-45fps. The framerate can be inconsistent.

[SuperBeatBoy]

Tweaked with it a bit. Make sure Ubersampling is disabled unless you have a pc from the future. Bloom should be disabled on principal because it is awful. Everything is set to Ultra on mine apart from them, i have vsync enabled using D3DOverrider, which i recommend everyone should use for any game not just The Witcher 2.

Heres some shots.

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/3779/witcher2exe201105181434.jpg
http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/3623/witcher2exe201105181435.jpg

Another thing keep an eye on this thread http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=430456 on NeoGaf for any new performance tweaks.

I'm just hoping someone finds out a way to remove the film grain.

[Alex WS]

http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings/review/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings-review/a-201105171466879070/g-20100323131251436086

Looks like a awesome game. Anybody know when the console ports are getting here? Probably have a good enough PC for it, but I like to play these types of games on the couch, where I can mull over every decision while sipping some soda.

[SuperBeatBoy]

I don't think they have confirmed anything yet. But i'm heared a year at least. But from all the interviews they have done they say they work on one project at a time and can spare no other person to do anything else.

[Number45]

The original (or a port/translation anyway) was all set for consoles before as well, so I'm not holding my breath (I'll wait a while though for some more concrete information). It's a shame really, because there's really not much here that wouldn't fit on a console (the loading in the original is quite prevalent, and the areas small) and there's no reason it couldn't have had the same impact as Oblivion (budget aside, obviously).

[SuperBeatBoy]

I noticed you said you were hoping to have a better framerate on the original Number45. Download this http://www.majorgeeks.com/download737.html don't bother with Rivatuner itself just use D3DOverrider instead once its installed. You don't need to use v-sync in games then and you will get a lovely bit of a performance increase as it does it all through that.

[Number45]

Not in the original, I'm running at max settings and the framerate is flawless. Just worried what I can expect from this.

I have heard of that though, I'll download and give it a try. TW2 looks good enough that I'd consider upgrading to be honest, but I'm prioritising other things at the moment (living room speakers top of that list! :D).

[Sane]

I noticed you said you were hoping to have a better framerate on the original Number45. Download this http://www.majorgeeks.com/download737.html don't bother with Rivatuner itself just use D3DOverrider instead once its installed. You don't need to use v-sync in games then and you will get a lovely bit of a performance increase as it does it all through that.

Thanks for the tip on D3DOverrider, can't believe I've never heard about this before.

I've now got the game running quite smoothly in 1080P on my 55" telly, just a touch under 30 fps I'd say. Combined with the awesome gamepad support (they did a great job on this, it even recognises my 360 pad and it shows the correct buttons on screen) it makes for a lot better experience than playing letterboxed on my 4:3 monitor.

Now I gotta go find some boots, I think I accidentally dropped mine and now Geralt's running around bare feet :lol:.

[eastyy]

got this on its way now....on amazon its £24 (about 38 $) on gog its $65 ....went for amazon

[Uli]

http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings/review/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings-review/a-201105171466879070/g-20100323131251436086

Looks like a awesome game. Anybody know when the console ports are getting here? Probably have a good enough PC for it, but I like to play these types of games on the couch, where I can mull over every decision while sipping some soda.

console versions were definitely on the way at some point but i guess due to sales strategy have been kept quiet lately. if there are still coming we should soon know. hopefully.

however, i wont buy the PC version as underwhelming PC sales will most likely help to get the game out on console sooner than later.

[Number45]

I'm pretty sure it was the lack of demand that caused the first console port to be canned.

[SuperBeatBoy]

I think they just didn't like how it was turning out & scrapped it. I like a developer than can actually go and do that rather than release a PoS to consoles.

[Number45]

Granted I'm not far into the first game, but there's really nothing there that couldn't have been handled on the consoles (they could tone down the number of useless NPCs in the large areas). The areas are relatively small and the loading quite frequent. I'm literally using the mouse along with QWEASD (ZXC too, but Q & E toggle those) for everything aside from the menus. Weird that they couldn't get it working satisfactorily.

[Sane]

Witcher 1 was pretty poorly coded though, it takes quite a lot of horse power to run smoothly on PC. I can see them having problems trying to run it on consoles.

[eastyy]

i think the console conversion of the first game was to be done by another developer and there was a disagreement about payments

[SuperBeatBoy]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-05-24-new-witcher-game-to-be-announced-at-e3

Looks like you console gamers might have something to look forward too.

['Press Start To Begin']

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-05-24-new-witcher-game-to-be-announced-at-e3

Looks like you console gamers might have something to look forward too.

Oh yes! I hope it's Witcher 2! I hope it's been secretly coded along side the PC version and that it's due for a July release.

I know, VERY wishful thinking!

[Super Grover]

I've been reading that the 360 pad works a treat on the PC, but it's a bit fiddly when navigating the inventory.

The announcement has got PS3/360 written all over it. I want to believe :happy:

[SuperBeatBoy]

Would be nice to see if the original game would get a console release. Would love to earn some achievements on that.

[eastyy]

the footage of the original witcher for console looked really good and the combat looked much improved....i actually miss the timing based attacking

[PeteJ]

First Eurogamer, then:

The American age ratings board ESRB has outed an Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

There's no mention of PS3.

This ties nicely to what Eurogamer was told by developer CD Projekt yesterday: that a new Witcher game will be announced at E3 next month "that console gamers might be interested in" wink wink.
Yay :)

I've already set my mind into buying a new PC later this year so maybe I'll go PC and maybe I won't...but whatever happens, it looks like The Witcher 2 is coming to 360. Let's hope they don't cut stuff out for the console market, TW is deep, dark and dirty and that's how it should stay!

[SuperBeatBoy]

So you console owners here is the news you have been waiting for!
http://uk.kotaku.com/5807950/the-witcher-2-fighting-its-way-to-the-xbox-360-by-years-end

This November for the xbox 360, they say it isn't a port but an adaption what ever that means. They promise there will be no quality compromises and it will contain all the additions & fixes the pc version will have by that time.

Also Patch 1.02 is due tomorrow!

[Number45]

I'm pre-emptively throwing my toys out of my pram here... :'(

['Press Start To Begin']

HMMmmmm. November/December gaming release just got more crowded.

[Silanda]

This November for the xbox 360, they say it isn't a port but an adaption what ever that means. They promise there will be no quality compromises and it will contain all the additions & fixes the pc version will have by that time. Well, no quality compromises except for the graphics. I'm really interested to see how this will run and how big the cuts will be seeing as the PC version eats a lot more RAM than the 360 has, already has a fair amount of loading, and the 360 version will have to have the option of running from DVD.

[PeteJ]

November is a very bad month for them to launch. An action RPG against Skyrim? Sent to die, sadly.

[Supergoal]

Having just got this for the PC and seeing how it nails my system I'll be intersted how they get it on the 360. I'm guess a PS3 version is out of the question.

[Jebus]

Game of the year contender imho. Amazing news that they are bringing it to 360.

[Flabio]

They said they were bringing the previous one to console as well remember...

[abigsmurf]

The patch apparently addresses the horribly designed prologue.

Guessing the biggest change will be to the dragon section. Woe betide anyone who picked that when starting the game.

[Jebus]

@Flabio

I think this time might be a little different...

[PeteJ]

360 version looking very impressive. They are aiming for PCs medium settings at 30fps.

http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/2011/158/997903_20110608_screen007.jpg

http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/2011/158/997903_20110608_screen008.jpg

[Supergoal]

I suppose a game like this doesn't need to be 60fps like racing games really benefit from. Yet when running at 60fps it looks amazing.

[Alex WS]

Why is it either 30 or 60? I'd be perfectly happy with something like 45 FPS. Anything more than 30 really. Is it because most displays in the US had a native refresh rate of 60hz, and that it flows better with number dividable by that?

[InvisibleKid]

It's that most displays refresh rates are 60, 75 or 100. By going for 60 (or divisions thereof) you're avoiding tearing. Tearing will occur when you don't hit the vertical sync (vsync) - so by going for 30 they're going to hit every second vertical screen refresh.

[crazytaxinext]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-26-new-witcher-2-on-xbox-360-details

The Xbox 360 version has been confirmed as having:

-Extra story content
-Version 2.0 improvements
-Dark Mode
-Arena
-New tutorial
-New 4 minute intro

PC gamers will recieve all the new content for free on the 360's release date or soon afterwards. The presentation highlighted that there will be 8 more additions to the new version/update which will be revealed at a later date. The 360 version is also said to likely span across 2 discs, it was also suggested the 360 version might include something to explain the story of Witcher 1. A PS3 version isn't ruled out but as yet doesn't look to be on the way. No release date but still aimed at 1st Quarter 2012

[Guts]

CD Projekt seems to be a really awesome developer, always bringing FREE content for their customers and working hard to make their games better. Hats off to them. :)

This game sounds delicious and I'm very pleased that it's coming to the 360.

[FSW]

It's a great game. Loads to do!

[eastyy]

i really hope they tweak the combat a bit to make it a bit more visceral

[Ian(not Ian)]

Orange.
Why do video game devs saturate us with orange?

[Daragon]

How does this play on PCs now?

Have there been patches to fix the low FPS scores that people with high end systems are reporting?

[FSW]

I didn't buy at launch so had a number of patches installed before I first played it. However, here are my numbers:

With everything except uber sampling on, at 1080p I get 30+fps on an i5 with a 6870 card. I've dialled back about 3 of the options from ultra to high and now I get 60fps. It's the best looking game I've ever played.

[Daragon]

Any idea what the nvidia equivalent of the 6870 is? My gfx card is a 525m 1GB. Probably have the same processor as you if it's a sandy bridge.

[FSW]

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

T (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html)he 6870 looks like it's in a different tier to the 525m mate. Mobility gfx are never gonna be that awesome. I believe the graphics scale very well on this game though. Forgot to mention my i5 is currently clocked at 4.4ghz although I think the gfx card is the main thing with the witcher games, not the CPU.

[eastyy]

Any idea what the nvidia equivalent of the 6870 is? My gfx card is a 525m 1GB. Probably have the same processor as you if it's a sandy bridge.

a nvidia 470 is about the same specs to a 6870

[Supergoal]

My GTX 460 768mb managed 720p at 60fps. Looks pretty amazing. Just have to turn off the uber sampling.

[eastyy]

at the moment with my 460 2gb with phenom II x4 3.2ghz 4gb ram running 1366 x768 with everything at maximum bar the uberscaling i get around 42 fps with the uberscaling on i get about 30fps

[Supergoal]

at the moment with my 460 2gb with phenom II x4 3.2ghz 4gb ram running 1366 x768 with everything at maximum bar the uberscaling i get around 42 fps with the uberscaling on i get about 30fps

Is that an older setup? Shouldn't you be getting higher than that?

[Daragon]

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

T (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html)he 6870 looks like it's in a different tier to the 525m mate. Mobility gfx are never gonna be that awesome. I believe the graphics scale very well on this game though. Forgot to mention my i5 is currently clocked at 4.4ghz although I think the gfx card is the main thing with the witcher games, not the CPU.

Blimey, that chart seems to be a bit out - my card's right near the bottom.

It's supposed to be a mid-range one.

[eastyy]

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/940/unledqz.th.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/90/unledqz.jpg/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us) thats what i have the graphics settings on

[FSW]

It's a mid-range laptop card. It's never going to compete with a mid-range desktop card. My card has 2 large fans and a massive heatpipe on it and it's not there for the fun of it! It's huge and it's heavy. You can't just shrink that sort of thing down and put it in a laptop without some compromises!

Presumably you'll be running a lower resolution though? so for your resolution you might still get decent performance.

@eastyy - I get 30ish FPS with those settings at 1080p so I'd say that looks about right? You'd expect more fps at a lower res.

[Daragon]

Yeah, my laptop doesn't support superhuman resolutions sadly.

No 2000xwhatever for me!

[eastyy]

to be honest i never used high resolutions never saw the point as i always thought at around 1024x768 looked good enough especially with anti aliasing enabled

though its probably because i have never seen a game running in super high resolutions

[Daragon]

I wouldn't want super high ones either - any text must need a magnifier to read!

[SuperBeatBoy]

The lower the resolution the blurrier it gets for me. I've got my pc hooked up to a 1080p Sony Bravia and it looks sweet.

[Malc]

Anything above 1024x768 on PC games and I struggle to see menu/UI stuff clearly (using a 17" monitor).

[FSW]

A 20" + monitor and 1080p at normal viewing distances is great. As soon as I drop below that resolution I can tell and it generally looks worse. I'll usually drop gfx effects before I drop res.

[SuperBeatBoy]

http://www.thewitcher.com/community/entry/93

2.0 Patch Notes have been released. Nice looking patch.

[Sane]

Sounds good, great excuse to play this again. Hats off to CD Projekt Red for keeping the updates free and substantial.

About the performance, for me it's been very good even on launch day. It ran on my modest PC (3Ghz dual core, 4GB ram, GTX460) at 1080p with almost everything on ultra (except ubersampling) at 30 fps on average.

[FSW]

Excellent news. I'll hold off playing any more of this til the patch.

[eastyy]

patch is up 744mb

[eastyy]

well the tutorial is pretty good...didnt know about the z button highlighting things...and to be honest didnt know much about the signs to getting more and more polished now :)

[Family Fry]

360 Version is due April with 4 hours of new content and new CGI intro (which will be patched into PC version) from the footage it looks very nice indeed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oMt-jCYgb0
Hasn't been on my radar at all until I started reading some impression from PC players, sounds pretty good.

[Adam]

The new content will be patched into the PC version aswell as the intro? or just the intro? Gonna start this soon.

[Family Fry]

Well at the moment it's just the intro confirmed but I don't see any reason why CD Projekt RED won't patch it into PC version at later date, they love PC development.

[crazytaxinext]

Finally it rears its head, will be nice to see the 360 finally give me another reason to turn it on.

[crazytaxinext]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-04-04-witcher-2-enhanced-edition-amazon-copies-signed-by-dev-team

Order before or at launch with Amazon and your copy will be signed by one of the massive development team.

[eastyy]

http://www.thewitcher.com/community/entry/192 people who own the pc version on disc can get a free digital copy.....very handy as my dvd drive had packed in and i needed to reinstall it :)