[HN Gopher] CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unr... ___________________________________________________________________ CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5 Author : ibobev Score : 173 points Date : 2022-10-27 16:17 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.gamedeveloper.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.gamedeveloper.com) | efficax wrote: | here's an idea: make Witcher 4 instead | FractalHQ wrote: | To be fair, they are also working on the Witcher 4 in Unreal | Engine 5. | generationP wrote: | "Canis Majoris" hehe, they sure know who the main boss of the | game is. | Arubis wrote: | I don't want to get my hopes up, but already know they can have | my money. | danschuller wrote: | Remakes make business sense. Every game is a risk. A portfolio of | products that includes remakes reduces that risk. A game that was | previously popular is easier to remaster than trying to make some | new that's less tested. There are always brand new gamers to | introduce to your IP as well as existing gamers who may have | missed or want to replay earlier games. If you're a mature studio | it's almost irresponsible to not do this. | | The more interesting part of the story is Unreal is being used. | For a while Unity and Unreal have been pushing out in-house | engines. Again standard tools make it easier to hire expertise | and use existing solutions and assets, they're also far cheaper | than running a full engine team. Supporting a custom engine is a | massive undertaking at the high end (ignore the tech, on-boarding | people, docs, QA, surrounding tools for artists, sound designers, | localisation etc. And then making it work on a wide variety of | hardware and working around any graphics bugs etc). | _the_inflator wrote: | I agree with you. And it is still hard to get it wright in | order to be sold. | | If you want to stand up to competition, you need a cash cow. I | don't blame any independent studio to do just that. They have | to balance risks. | daemin wrote: | You'd think using Unreal Engine makes it easier to hire but | that's not the case, it just means there's more competition for | the people knowledgable in it, and it drives the people that | want to work on something different to other studios. It also | doesn't cut down on development time or the needed number of | engine programmers since studios pretty much have to modify and | enhance the engine, often replacing several components in order | to ship the game. In some cases you'll end up with an | incompatible fork which requires its own team to extend and | enhance it, meaning that to upgrade to a newer version from | Epic you'll need to spend months merging the codebases. | | Overall I see the adoption of Unreal Engine as a net negative | for the industry, it's reducing the landscape to a monoculture. | For all the talk that Epic does about being against monopolies, | Unreal Engine is becoming one in a big way, and killing the | ecosystem as it grows. | WorldMaker wrote: | > The more interesting part of the story is Unreal is being | used. For a while Unity and Unreal have been pushing out in- | house engines. | | This is exactly the case for CD Projekt Red. They built their | own engine (RED Engine) for Witcher 1 and built on top of it | for the two Witcher sequels and also pushed it to its very | limits for Cyberpunk 2077. A lot of useful criticism of the | technological pains (delays, marketplace reception issues) they | experienced with Cyberpunk was that they were using an in-house | game engine unprepared for that genre (jumping from a game | series where the fastest vehicle was a horse to one with cars | and flying cars and planes is maybe not the easiest straight | line). CDPR responded to that criticism, especially from their | shareholders, that they would be minimizing that risk in future | games development and externalizing that dependency and moving | to an out-of-the-box game engine moving forward (including in | that announcement that it would be Unreal). | | This announcement for the Witcher 1 remake seems like a proper | and interesting "full circle" for this story: CDPR's last | engine was built entirely for Witcher 1. Using off-the-shelf | Unreal to remake Witcher 1 sounds like a smart way on paper to | get their feet wet and move on from the old engine to the new | one using a project they are already familiar with and can help | them realign from old pipelines to new ones. | msbarnett wrote: | > This is exactly the case for CD Projekt Red. They built | their own engine (RED Engine) for Witcher 1 and built on top | of it for the two Witcher sequels and also pushed it to its | very limits for Cyberpunk 2077. | | Close. REDEngine was created for Witcher 2: Assassins of | Kings. Witcher 1 was built on a modified copy of Bioware's | Aurora Engine (the Neverwinter Nights engine). | | REDEngine versions were: | | REDEngine 1: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings | | REDEngine 2: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - Enhanced | Edition | | REDEngine 3: The Witcher 3 | | REDEngine 4: Cyberpunk 2077 | daemin wrote: | To add to that (since I'm somewhat of an expert on this), | the engine for Cyberpunk 2077 was completely rewritten from | scratch, and only small bits were either ported from W3 or | inspired by what was done in W3. | bashmelek wrote: | I remember Neverwinter Nights 2. Decently fun game, but | extremely buggy. It had some strange local lag where it | wasn't that unusual to command a character to move only to | have them freeze in place then teleport back where they | were 10 seconds before. | FieryTransition wrote: | As far as I remember, the first Witcher engine was a weird | mash of the engine from neverwinter nights 2 and their own | modifications, and they introduced their own engine with the | Witcher 2. | smoldesu wrote: | It's also a really good time to get into the remake business, | tech-wise. We have a bunch of fresh new consoles optimized for | the latest game engines, and tons of ML-based upscaling tech to | play with. If you make a well-designed remake of your game | optimized for solid-state storage, you should have a version | that lasts a couple decades into the future. | ianbutler wrote: | Witcher 1 wound up being an unexpected hit for me. But I have a | thing for the game play style of that game, being a WoW player | for a long time. I totally get how it doesn't appeal to a lot of | people and I hope this increases the reach of a game with a good | story with otherwise dated gameplay. | karaterobot wrote: | > With the game being rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5, Fool's Theory | will also have plenty of opportunity to revisit the somewhat | clunky combat mechanics of the first game | | Hopefully they will revisit them just long enough to throw them | in the trash and implement an entirely different combat system | than the bad ones they had in Witcher 1. | hassanahmad wrote: | Now this is a remake I can actually see as being worth it. This | is a great news for the Witcher game fans and these fans numbers | are in millions. | bergenty wrote: | It needs to be exactly the same with better graphics and sound | design. I'm going to be very mad if they start covering up boobs, | introduce some hamfisted woman protagonist or something along | those lines. | bitwize wrote: | I get the feeling that a lot of these game remakes are sort of IP | normalization moves. Get all the studio's IP onto standard modern | tools so that new game devs won't be surprised by custom engines | to make maintenance and rerelease easier, especially as the | studio transitions from a small boutique studio to a bog-standard | AAA sweatshop. | | I also think this is the reason for Naughty Dog rereleasing The | Last of Us on PS5. Though the engine itself was written in C++, | it used a lot of Scheme code to generate game data and components | and I think they want to move off that because it's baffling to | the new devs they want to onboard. | | I'm waiting for Id Software to throw in the towel and rerelease | Unreal versions of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal. | sylens wrote: | Remakes are also used to train development teams on new tools. | It takes the pressure of a team learning to grapple with a new | engine if all of the content is already completed - there's a | better scaffolding to build off of. | jason-phillips wrote: | As someone playing through Witcher 3 on a Steam Deck for the | first time, to say that I'm wildly excited about this is not an | understatement. Witcher 2 currently appears to be a no-go on the | Deck and I'd love to play the rest of the games in the series. | zeagle wrote: | Do you mind if I ask what settings you run it on and how happy | you are with the performance? I'm precontemplatively | considering a steam deck but haven't really looked into it. | patrickk wrote: | Not OP but ProtonDB has you covered: | https://www.protondb.com/app/20920 | | Fantastic site. | jason-phillips wrote: | Sure. I left it on default settings and the video/graphics | performance along with the playability has been truly | remarkable. The stereo surround is also quite good. I suppose | some criticisms might be that the battery goes pretty quickly | (~1 hour) and it does get very warm, but I find these | tradeoffs easy to live with. I've only had my deck for about | a month and this is my first game to play through on it. | | I'm a software engineer with a ton of Linux experience so | hacking the Deck doesn't scare me at all; I've read quite a | bit about it. But I figured I'd give it a go first with the | out-of-the-box configuration and so far have been thoroughly | impressed. | zeagle wrote: | Thats great. Thanks! | Aethella wrote: | Witcher 2 also runs perfectly fine on the Deck. You just need | to switch to Proton-GE rather than default version. | COGlory wrote: | There's also a native version, right? | cheshire_cat wrote: | The "native" linux version of Witcher 2 does emulations. | Since it's bundled it's very out of date and technology has | advanced since then. Witcher 2 had really bad graphics bugs | on my Linux playthrough, none of which appeared on Windows. | tester756 wrote: | Can't wait, Witcher 3 was unparalleled | shmerl wrote: | I'd like to see a native Linux version this time, since UE5 | supports it. | | That said, original game with customized Aurora engine is very | good. No big need for a remake, but if they'll make it fully open | world it might be adding something interesting, besides simply | improved graphics. | Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: | This is a smart move imo: they can gain xp and build tooling for | unreal 5. Part of what killed their last game is their engine. | Now they can learn how to use a real game engine with a lower | stakes game and prepare for witcher 4 or whatever comes next. | ok_dad wrote: | I am so glad that there are so many avenues for independent game | devs now, because large-ish studios seem to have dug a nice | little rut in their old IP. | haolez wrote: | I've played Witcher I a lot and it's really fun, but I gave up on | finishing it after I got stuck in a quest where I was in a cave | fighting an infinite horde of enemies (with infinite respawn) and | nothing happened no matter how many of them I killed. | | I hope they fix these kinds of glitches as well. | plsbenice34 wrote: | I already played it, so I'm unexcited. Remakes these days | generally seem like lazier ways to try to make money compared to | making new art from scratch. I thought Cyberpunk was abysmal | (though i loved the witcher games) so I wouldn't expect much from | them anymore in any case. | wmichelin wrote: | What about Cyberpunk was abysmal to you? I really enjoyed the | atmosphere and the gun-play. NPC animations left some to be | desired, but overall I thought the graphics were super engaging | and Night City was super fun to run around in. | badpun wrote: | I watched some footage of cyberpunk and the characters in it | seemed so offputting that I never bought the game. Everyone | in the game seemed to be some sort off money-grubbing | primitive sociopath or a selfish asshole otherwise. I never | bought GTA4/GTA5 for the same reason - I don't want to spend | many hours in a game where I interact with characters I | detest. | bergenty wrote: | Everything with a woman protagonist that tries to ape male | roles is probably going to be pretty bad. | gardenhedge wrote: | When Cyberpunk launched it had game breaking bugs. A lot of | people got their refund and forgot about the game (and | rightly so). | snuxoll wrote: | Not OP, I wouldn't call CP2077 "abysmal" but even looking | outside the bugs the game just wasn't anywhere near the | quality I expect from CDPR. The gunplay was actually pretty | mediocre, "better than Fallout" is not high praise and that's | the best I could give it; the environment was pretty but | lacked depth; I, personally, do not care fo | | * The gunplay was mediocre, in my opinion. "Better than | Fallout" is the rating I'd give it, and that's a "you did | better coloring inside the lines than the kid with a motor | disability" on my scale. | | * While I'm talking about gameplay, driving ranks as "Better | than GTA4", and see above for where that falls on my scale. | | * The environment was pretty as all hell, but it felt shallow | and unlived in due to a lack of unique characters that | weren't copy-paste NPCs populating the world, a few fleshed | out characters relating to the main story, and some | uninspired side mission fillers. Witcher 3 may not be _as_ | shiny, or as dense, but the world feels more _alive_ due to | the detail put into it. | | * This is a personal gripe, but I really did not care for the | story and ludonarrative dissonance it creates. I'm also not a | fan of being given an illusion of choice, when all the | endings ultimately play out the same way with a different | skin (see: Mass Effect 3). | | There's more, but those are my biggest issues with the game, | even discounting the AWFUL state the game was in for a long | time. | pipeline_peak wrote: | More and more it's looking like the future of game development is | Unreal / Unity mods. | | I think we're at the point where it's virtually impossible to | make a modern looking game from scratch. We're already there with | browsers. | hardware2win wrote: | Cdpr must release something great to recover their stock which is | kinda low now | Tade0 wrote: | > Now we know that it's a ground-up remake of the game that | introduced Geralt of Rivia to Witcher fans outside of Poland. | | I was always of the impression that it was Witcher III that | achieved this. | | I'm Polish so I genuinely don't know. Were the previous two | installments popular outside of Poland? | monocasa wrote: | They were moderately popular games in the US for those that | didn't constrain themselves to the AAA powerhouses (no | judgement either way). I didn't play them at the time, but knew | of their existence and that they were supposed to be good. | avereveard wrote: | witcher 1 spread to all dnd groups I had contact with back in | Italy. not a large sample size, but within our niche it was | well known and well received, jankiness notwithstanding | IceWreck wrote: | > Were the previous two installments popular outside of Poland? | | Witcher 2 was the first time I heard of the franchise. | AdamH12113 wrote: | Heavy gamer here. I heard of the first Witcher but didn't | think to play it until after I tried The Witcher 2: Assassins | of Kings, which is still my favorite game in the series. | HideousKojima wrote: | According to this site (can't vouch for how accurate their | numbers are) The Witcher III sold ~12 million copies on Steam, | The Witcher II sold ~6 million, and the original sold ~3 | million. That's not counting sales on GOG and other stores, | consoles, etc. And I personally got copies of the first and | second game around the time the second game released. | | https://vginsights.com/game/292030 | skocznymroczny wrote: | If it doesn't count sales on GOG then it's not really | reliable. GOG is owned by CD Projekt group, and one of the | big points when releasing Witcher games was that people | bought them on GOG so that all money went to the devs instead | of paying the Steam tax. | hbn wrote: | How many people were aware of that campaign? Maybe in the | Witcher/CDPR superfan groups, but on the scale of 12 | million copies I can't imagine it budges the number that | much. | | I don't know why we're only talking about the PC version | anyway, there's apparently been 40 million copies sold | across all platforms according to a quick Google search, so | most people didn't even play on PC. | HideousKojima wrote: | >I don't know why we're only talking about the PC version | anyway | | Because the post I was replying to was about the | popularity of The Witcher in the west before The Witcher | III, and the first Witcher game was a PC exclusive so | there are no console sales to factor in to the | comparison. | fareesh wrote: | I saw the tech demo for Witcher 1 and got the game subsequently | afterwards. I lived in Canada at the time. | antisthenes wrote: | Witch 2 definitely was. Witcher 1...maybe? I thought it was a | pretty mediocre game, so I doubt it was really that popular | anywhere outside of Poland. | | What's impressive is how much better each sequel was compared | to the previous game. It was a giant leap in both graphics and | gameplay from 1 to 2 and 2 to 3. | wnevets wrote: | > I'm Polish so I genuinely don't know. Were the previous two | installments popular outside of Poland? | | Not as much as the 3rd one but popular enough to get two | sequels. | 015a wrote: | Its not great data, but peak Steam player counts: | | Witcher 1 Enhanced Edition: 12,685 | | Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition: 12,884 | | Witcher 3 Wild Hunt: 103,329 | rowanG077 wrote: | Witcher 1 was pretty niche but I played it as a 15 year old rpg | fan and liked it a lot. It wasn't as well known mainstream as | mass effect but most gamers surely at least heard of it. | giobox wrote: | Witcher 1 not so much, but Witcher 2 had a pretty good 360 port | that a lot of people played in the West, and PC version did | well too - across all platforms 1.7 million copies sold by | 2012, another article I saw suggests 8 million by 2014. | | I think thats getting towards very roughly ~1/4 the success of | Witcher 3, volume wise. Not bad, considering Witcher 3 volume | includes a portable Switch release. | | > https://www.eurogamer.net/the-witcher-2-sales- | top-1-7-millio... | | etc. | Tade0 wrote: | > Not bad, considering Witcher 3 volume includes a portable | Switch release. | | I've seen the Switcher. Wasn't actually half as bad as I | anticipated. All the more surprising that CDPR is abandoning | their own engine in favour of UE5. | wwilim wrote: | I don't think they're abandoning it, they are just going to | hire a new team to remake W1 in Unreal Engine, while the | core team works on new games using proprietary tools | mkl95 wrote: | The Witcher 1 had a relatively large cult following for such an | obscure game. The Witcher 2 took it to the next level. | bravetraveler wrote: | I was a relatively active PC gamer in the US at the time they | all came out... | | I somehow didn't know about Witcher until the third made a big | wave! Granted, I was only playing some of the most obvious/big | RPGs at the time | | At the time I was more into FPS | AdrianB1 wrote: | Yes, they were very popular in some circles. My preferred | Witcher games are, in order, 3 then 1 then 2. I vividly | remember Witcher 1 for one very difficult battle in the first | part and some yellow fields later on. In Witcher 2 the combat | system was not that pleasant for me, so I did not play too much | even if I bought it. For Witcher 3 I waited a couple of years | after I bought it to play it, waiting for a new GPU that was | good enough to play on highest detail level. | Woeps wrote: | The first game was rough but very enjoyable, And I actually | liked the second one a lot as well. (even have the special | edition with the coin/maps/booklets and all that jazz) | | Still haven't finished the main story of the third game | tough... | alasdair_ wrote: | When I first played W1, there was no North American release. I | only found it because metacritic listed it with fantastic | reviews in Europe and I tracked down a place to buy it there. | | It was an amazing game at the time. | dragontamer wrote: | Witcher 2 was popular in my social circle in the USA. A lot of | us went back to Witcher 1 afterwards to get a better idea of | the story. | | So I'd say Witcher 2 was when the series started to get | popular. Witcher 3 was riding on 2's coattails. Now that the | Netflix show is popular, Witcher1 does deserve a remake. | daemin wrote: | From what I saw Witcher 1 had a following in RPG players, back | in the day I remember seeing one guy at multiple lans play the | game. Witcher 3 though was the big breakout where I saw people | get excited for it and play it. | AmalgatedAmoeba wrote: | I can only speak for Czechia and here the Witcher II definitely | made a splash. | t0bia_s wrote: | I would say W1 was successful too. At least for me it has | stronger story telling then W2 which is too political for me. | dkersten wrote: | Popular might be a stretch, but they had their audience. I | played Witcher 1 shortly after it came out and I bought the | collectors edition of Witcher 2 on release. So there were | definitely fans out there. But it definitely wasn't popular in | the way that, say, Mass Effect (which came out around about the | same time) was popular. | yamtaddle wrote: | Witcher 1 made a big splash among fans of PC RPGs and action | RPGs. Didn't hurt that it landed in the middle of a relative | doldrums for those genres--they got much healthier again a bit | after that. | | 2 and 3 switched to a more console-friendly style of play and | had good success there, though, so I expect they did more to | spread the word than 1 did. | importantbrian wrote: | I can only really speak to my experience, but I don't really | remember Witcher 1 being a thing. Witcher 2 was pretty big and | then Witcher 3 was pretty massive. | brunoqc wrote: | > Were the previous two installments popular outside of Poland? | | I would guess so, but the third one was even more popular. | Maybe 3 is a bit like Skyrim. | | I only played the third one. One of my friends was already a | fan of the other 2 back then. | lakomen wrote: | I, for one, am tired of consuming warmed up content I've played | through before. Be it Diablo 2 Resurrected or Mass Effect or or | or. Create something new, don't refurbish old stuff. Such a | waste. | pavon wrote: | Many other people enjoy long running series, and CD Projekt is | perfectly capable of doing both. CP2077 was a new IP, and they | are planning yet another new IP, code named Project Hadar to | follow Witcher 4 and the next CP. | dkersten wrote: | It's a 15 year old niche game running on an old janky engine. A | lot of people haven't played it before, so personally I think a | remaster is actually warranted in this case, given the | popularity of the later games in the series. | 4pkjai wrote: | I don't know why, this makes me a bit sad. You can sort of feel a | game engine when you're playing a game. The GTA trilogy lost a | lot when they did their remastering project with a different | engine. Although I'm sure it can be done well. | | StarCraft remastered was done really well, but I believe they | built on top of their existing engine. | Night_Thastus wrote: | Wasn't GTA the one where the "re-make" was done using a hot | garbage mobile port of the games? That would be why if so. | throw_m239339 wrote: | Why? the graphics and animation did not age very well, so they | need to be entirely redone, and the combat rethinked. But the | last act will look quite epic on a modern engine if done well. | Unreal use will allow faster development. | | Witcher 1's main quest is the most interesting of the 3 games, | I hope they do not commit the mistake of adding a minimap to | casualize the remake, paying attention to the dialogues, | environmental details and exploring the maps is very much what | made the game interesting to me. It's one of these games where | you can get stuck if you are not paying attention to the story, | or miss certain timed events, which increases its replay value. | It's much more interesting that just spamming witcher senses | all the time to complete quests. | | To those who didn't play the game, this is very much a | "detective" story and most quests are shrouded in mystery, it | can works ONLY if the player has to pay attention to the | dialogues, lore and story. It will not work if the player is | spoon-fed every little detail about who is whom, what potion to | use or the devs resorts to bringing back the "witcher senses". | | Just like Witcher 2, one can "side" with either of 2 camps, | unlike Witcher 2, one can decide not to side with anybody, | although choosing the latter option might not lead to the most | positive outcome... | dkersten wrote: | I was a fan of the game, but the engines limitations did hurt | it in my opinion and the combat was its weakest aspect. The | story, characters, world and quests were its strong points. So | I'm greatly looking forward to this remake, if it provides all | the original content with less jankyness and smoother combat. | wilg wrote: | The GTA remaster issues were hardly due to the engine. People | over-focus on the engine. I wouldn't worry about this. | wiseowise wrote: | The graphics look plastic. Is it not because of an engine? | Serious question. | enragedcacti wrote: | It's hard to know for sure but most people believe they did | a ton of either super rushed manual work and/or AI | upscaling on the textures and models that would explain the | "plastic" look to everything. It doesn't really matter what | engine is backing it if the textures and modeling are bad. | And if they didn't spend the time to sort out material | properties then the engine won't treat skin any differently | than cloth, or cloth differently than metal, etc. | | these are more examples of modelling issues but it shows | how little care and QA went into the remake: | | they rounded out this 6-sided nut : https://old.reddit.com/ | r/GTA/comments/quutz7/definitive_lazy... | | hot dog fingers: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQWw0hHMUoc | moron4hire wrote: | I don't know of any engines that dictate material | properties. There are some where the default settings on | the default materials are questionable _cough_ Unity3D | _cough_. But a big studio game shouldn 't/wouldn't be using | the defaults on just about anything. | | One of the biggest things indie game developers can do to | not look like an indie game is to stop using the default | settings on the default materials. Not necessarily even | using custom materials. Just don't use the default | settings. | exeldapp wrote: | I would say yes and no. Yes, obviously the renderer is | there but at the same time it's only doing what it was told | to do. Taking Unity and Unreal as examples, you can make | something look plastic, cartoony, realistic, a mixture, or | really anything you want. Usually there will be art | director(s) (or a someone with a similar title) that make | sure the art/graphics stick with a certain look and feel so | I would put the blame more on them than the engine. | redox99 wrote: | Of course not. Unreal Engine uses a PBR pipeline as any | modern engine does. If your materials look plastic it's | because that how you authored them, not because of the | engine. | serf wrote: | >don't know why, this makes me a bit sad. You can sort of feel | a game engine when you're playing a game. | | absolutely. whenever a friend is playing anything with specific | shader/specular/lighting styles I always yell "Unity!" while | watching him. I'm generally dead-on accurate with those | guesses. It's definetly not coincidence at this point; there is | some default behavior or lighting gimmick I can generally | always cue in on with regards to Unity. I think it's their | style of specular lighting glow that gets painted onto way too | many things by most creators. | | I don't use the engine myself, so I can't tell you exactly what | it is I hone in on, but I can for most titles. | redox99 wrote: | Default post processing and anti aliasing are usually dead | giveaways. | hbn wrote: | There's always been something about the Source engine that | felt distinctive. The lighting and physics feel weird and | creepy. | TAForObvReasons wrote: | Starcraft Remastered was designed with the explicit goal of | changing as little as possible. The target audience for the | remaster is well-versed in the bugs of the original game and | wanted them reproduced. | | Compare with Warcraft III Reforged. Modding with the original | WC3 was extremely popular: DotA started as a mod for WC3, so | Blizzard should have focused on compatibility. Not doing so led | to the poor reception. | superdisk wrote: | The GTA trilogy remasters actually run on the original game | engine under the hood, the only thing they changed was the | renderer (Unreal Engine instead of RenderWare). | ThatPlayer wrote: | The modern DOOM 1/2 releases on Android/iOS/Switch/Xbox/PS | does something similar: it is using the original renderer but | uses Unity to handle input and output for easier portability. | dj_mc_merlin wrote: | > You can sort of feel a game engine when you're playing a | game. | | This is nice usually, but such a curse for procedural games. | Once you start internalizing the RNG you stop thinking of | yourself as exploring an environment, and more in terms of | rolling dice: "oh, rolled a general shop, no mimic, one | fountain and the Gnomish Caves entrance". At least nethack has | enough crazy shit happening that it gives the levels | personality regardless. | | Same thing with AI enemies in strategy/4X games. Deep down it's | just some form of RNG+rules based on "personality" values and | current situation, but there's no real strategy. Just a | simulation of it. | | Which makes you think, with AlphaStar defeating pro players | since 2019, where's the AI 4X games deserve? While 4X games | might be crazy when good humans play multiplayer, the average | 4X solo player does a limited set of actions and uses much less | strategy than in StarCraft. | dragontamer wrote: | As someone who played a few hours of the 1st Witcher Game... | Good. | | No one seems to care about Witcher 1's engine, because it was | hot garbage. Any engine (even an off-the-shelf one like | Unreal5) will be grossly superior to the trash that the | original game was. | | This remake can have slow, barely workable controls and pretty | bad graphics and still be far better than the original game. | | They really just need the Witcher 1 remade so that people have | an entry point into the story. The actual "gameplay" from the | original will _NOT_ be missed. IMO anyway. | verst wrote: | I played the Witcher 1 when it came out and thought it was a | brilliant game. I haven't tried going back to it ever. It | felt quite polished to me then. I'm curious what people feel | isn't approachable for today's audiences. Is is merely that | we are used to different visuals now? | | What are these engine issues in Witcher 1 you speak of? As a | player I did not notice them back in the day. | yamtaddle wrote: | I loved the game and beat it twice (maybe 3 times? not | sure) but the engine performs like dogshit for the level of | graphical quality it delivers. | entropicdrifter wrote: | Not the person you're replying to, but the original Witcher | felt fine to me too, but I'm a lifelong PC gamer and the | interface/controls reminded me of older PC-only CRPGs like | Summoner or even Neverwinter Nights. I love those games, | but in terms of their control schemes they do feel clunky | compared to the more visceral controller-optimized and | streamlined Action RPG controls of The Witcher 2 and 3. | | In other words, the first Witcher game is in more of a | niche genre with significantly less mainstream appeal in | terms of gameplay and UI. | skocznymroczny wrote: | It was based on the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine, so the | similarities to NWN are expected. Actually, from my | perspective, combat in W1 was a big improvement over the | turn based click and pray combat of NWN. | verst wrote: | I liked Neverwinter Nights 2 -- so no wonder I liked | playing The Witcher 1. I think I played on a very | underpowered laptop back then (as a college student), so | if the engine was sluggish I probably attributed that to | gaming on a laptop :D | AdrianB1 wrote: | It was very good for the time the game was launched, but it | is quite outdated. I loved the game, but it is in the | category of games I would love to play again, I install it, | then the graphics looks so bad it turns me down. Believe | me, I started playing computer games ~ 1986, so I know what | bad graphics is, but Witcher 1 is a lot more recent than | that and the expectations are a lot higher. | dragontamer wrote: | Its not the polish that was bad. | | I've played many 3d action-RPG games. Zelda, Monster | Hunter, Dynasty Warriors, etc. etc. Witcher1's combat is by | far the worst of the series. | | Just... laggy, non-responsive controls. But in a bad way | (ex: Monster Hunter is also laggy/non-responsive, but in a | way that's "obvious" that the slowdown is purposeful and | tactical. You need to be very careful about when you attack | or not attack vs various monsters in that game). | | Witcher 1's combat in contrast, has a lot of repetition and | not a lot of depth IMO. At least, from what I remember. | Witcher2 onwards had much better ideas of "fun combat" | experiences. | | -------- | | I can still go back to old PS2 era Dynasty Warriors, mash | square and have fun. Its not about "dated graphics". I | admit dynasty warriors is a mashy-heavy game with a casual | mindset, but I think Witcher couldn't really decide if it | wanted to be a punishing slow game (like Monster | Hunter/Souls series), or a faster twitch game, and just | weirdly plays in this unfun position between the two | extremes. | | Its fine to have a slow punishing game (Monster Hunter / | Souls / etc. etc.), but you need a huge variety of bosses | to keep interest. Witcher 1 felt pretty stale after a short | time, since there's just not as much variety. | | Somehow, I don't find Dynasty Warriors gameplay stale | (despite being a square-mash simulator). I don't fully | understand why however. I guess DW is more about | positioning of the player-character (the enemy army is | always winning where you are _not_ located, so Dynasty | Warriors feels more like a firefighter simulator, where | you're running around the battlefield trying to fix issues | in the army... rather than really being a combat game?) | kuschku wrote: | > But in a bad way (ex: Monster Hunter is also laggy/non- | responsive, but in a way that's "obvious" that the | slowdown is purposeful and tactical. You need to be very | careful about when you attack or not attack vs various | monsters in that game). | | That's actually why I stopped playing Monster Hunter: I | really hate the non-responsiveness, it feels like wading | through molasses. | somenameforme wrote: | I think a big problem with Witcher 1 is that its vision | for combat was relatively novel and not well presented. | In the lore it's emphasized that fighting is supposed to | be a sort of graceful dance and so the combat tries to | mimic that. The combat is much more like a bemani | (beat/music type game) game than an action RPG, even | though it looks nothing like the former and everything | like the latter. | | Once you 'get' this, everything makes way more sense, the | game flows, and it becomes really quite fun. I played it | when it first came out. I didn't get it, and quit before | beating the first chapter. I later replayed it, got it, | and ended up playing through it multiple times on max | difficulty. | cardanome wrote: | My first attempt didn't go well either but I am glad I gave | it a second chance. Once it starts winning you over, it is | really good. | | The fighting system is pretty old-school but once you get | used to it, it is quite fun. It is very authentic to how | Geralt is fighting in the Witcher books. It is simply more | about rhythm and tactics than one might be used to. | | Just because Witcher 1 is kind of hard to recommend for a | casual gamer in 2022, does not mean it is garbage. It is just | different. It has more of a niche appeal. | | I am absolutely glad I got to play the original and some of | its charm are the things are probably going to be modernized | away in the remake. | User23 wrote: | The Witcher ran on a heavily modified version of the Aurora | engine, which was used for the Bioware Neverwinter Nights. | agilob wrote: | Has CDPR run out of ideas, but still had a bag of promises to | make? They promised CP77 extensions and multiplayer, The Witcher | 3 in 4k, now remaking Witcher 1? I'm kindof disappointed with | this news and not hearing updates about previous "updates". | tester756 wrote: | If you're interested in their strategy check out this | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EJmgTQ0O8k | nomel wrote: | And, it seems like a fantastic way to learn a new engine. | bravetraveler wrote: | While it's surely a constant, I think the entertainment | industries at large have really started to milk the nostalgia | cow hard | | I could say a bunch of soft science things like, go with a sure | thing in an uncertain market, blah blah. I think it's simply | easier | conductr wrote: | The start was about 20 years ago, but I do agree | ska wrote: | It seems the start is always ~20 years ago from when you | talk about, regardless of when you talk about this sort of | thing. | conductr wrote: | It's when it's ready for a reboot! I strongly associate | it with the movie industry running out of new ideas after | the 90s. Episode 1 was 1999 for example, before that most | people thought Star Wars was over. Then the marvel stuff. | | But maybe that's just me being nostalgic since that's | also around the time I began being an adult. It does seem | convenient how it's usually timed out so that parents can | geek out with their kids; so the industry inherits a new | generation of fans. My recent example of that is how | apparently Pokemon is very popular again. I was too old | to care in the 90s but those kids now have kids of | similar age as they were at the time. | | The phenomenon as a whole didn't seem to exist so | strongly prior to that. In the 80s if my dad showed me | something he liked as a kid I just laughed it off as some | old toy that had no relevance to me. My 4 yo loves | Spider-Man and has no clue he's older than me. They made | a new show specifically targeting this age group (Spidey | and his Amazing Friends). | the_duke wrote: | Not at all, they have lots of new games coming. | | Sibling comment has a link. | enragedcacti wrote: | Its a third party studio doing the remake, CDPR probably won't | be diverting many internal resources away from their existing | in-house projects for this. | | also this is just follow-up to a previous announcement where | they announced 5 projects in various stages of development on | top of info about the CP2077 expansion: | https://ftw.usatoday.com/2022/10/cd-projekt-red-witcher-cybe... | agilob wrote: | They couldn't deliver 1 good project CP77, but now committing | to 5 at around the same time? | | You said: | | >Its a third party studio doing the remake, CDPR probably | won't be diverting many internal resources away from their | existing in-house projects for this. | | but the link claims: | | >On Tuesday, CD Projekt Red announced five all-new games | currently in development at the studio | | Their stock price is near 5 year low, how can they afford it? | beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: | Cyberpunk sold 20 million copies. The game was a critical | disaster, to a certain extent, but was financially | successful for the studio in the long run. The Witcher 3 in | 2020 alone sold 30 million copies, so they're hardly | hurting for cash. | | Also "currently in development" does not mean every game is | getting equal resources, or that each game is in the same | stage of development. | tester756 wrote: | >Their stock price is near 5 year low, how can they afford | it? | | It recently went up almost 50%. | | Like 2 months ago their price was around 77-80 | | Now it is around 120~ | | I expect (I bet my money on) it to be around 150 around | december/january | 988747 wrote: | > Their stock price is near 5 year low, how can they afford | it? | | Stock price has nothing to do with how much money CDPR has | in their bank accounts. Stock trading is basically a public | opinion poll on the future of the company, but not a penny | from those trades actually goes to company accounts. | agilob wrote: | and if a company is trading low, their trust is also low, | am I wrong? They would will need to trick people into | giving them money upfront (preorders?) or borrow from 3rd | party to cover a product that will sell and bring cash. | | nevertheless, I didn't mean they can't fund it because of | low stock price, they got lots of free money from Polish | government development fund, but CDPR delivered only 4 | big games and only 2 were big hits, The Witcher and The | Witcher 3. CP77 sold in many copies, I have one too, but | I'm not buying them unless they prove it's worth the | price. They completely lost my trust and employees with | internal knowledge, who were committed to make Witchers a | success story. | | Previously delivering 2 (or 3) good games, having stock | prices high during that time, getting free money from | development fund vs now stock price low, trust in company | and their quality dropped, 5 projects in progress? Aren't | they shooting too high? | airstrike wrote: | "Trust" is a broad term, so not the one I would use. It's | more about expectations of future dividends (and | expectations of other market participants' expectations | of future dividends, and that goes on until some Nth | derivative of the stock's underlying value, also because | "growth" is a derivative of "future dividends") | | Nearly every stock in Tech is down a lot this year. High | growth, low profitability stocks are generally | underwater. You'd have to compare their stock to similar | companies to see if they are down _more_ or _less_ than | those comparable peers. | coredog64 wrote: | Not entirely true. An equity price in the toilet means | you might have to borrow money if you need a big chunk. | It also weakens your ability to use stocks to pay | employees which in turn requires additional cash outlays. | | TL;DR: Companies still depend on equities as a funding | mechanism. | jvanderbot wrote: | >Their stock price is near 5 year low, how can they afford | it? | | It's new to me that the company makes its money selling its | stock, not games. | badpun wrote: | Have you heard of Elon Musk? | viraptor wrote: | I don't have much info any their organisation and teams, | but it may not be a bad idea. Adding people to IT projects | beyond some threshold doesn't really make them faster and | spreading the risk across 5 projects may be better than | going all-in with one. | [deleted] | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | On the other hand Geralt waves his sword above his head like an | idiot in Witcher 1. I hate remakes but if I had to have one | this would be one. | | https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/rkdbnv/started_play... | | But yeah I want new stories more. | sylens wrote: | Yes, this is actually a game that would be well served by a | remake that makes it more accessible. | hbn wrote: | The top comment in that thread you linked explains that sword | movement is something from the books. No one's to say that'll | be removed in a remake. | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | I don't remember him doing that in the books haha. He was a | beautiful swordsman not a goofball. | zepppotemkin wrote: | GAMERS RISE UP! | yieldcrv wrote: | I couldn't get myself to play the first 2 Witcher games due to | the dated mechanics but I watched other people stream their play | throughs at the time. | | > [removed] the playing cards players can earn that depict pinup | art of Geralt's various sexual partners. The system has been | criticized over the years for treating women's bodies as a reward | for player progression. | | This pin-up card collection of your sex partners was edgy in 2007 | and 2011 as well. Its not like it was an especially unenlightened | age of days bygone. The Pin-Up card system is definitely what put | it on the map. Its really funny that CD Project [may] opt to | launder its reputation now to reach a broader audience after only | getting on the map for being absurd and over the top. I'm not | advocating for anything, only observing. | | The lesson broadcasted is that you have to do "degrading" and | shocking things like that to stand out at all. Kind of like how | many individuals get started in many industries to support | themselves. | wilg wrote: | I'm not sure "laundering reputation" is how I would frame "re- | evaluating including potentially objectionable content in a | remake". | yieldcrv wrote: | The reason I would frame it that way is because CD Projekt | has subsequently had a fall from grace and are on thin ice | regarding PR attack vectors | renonn wrote: | yamtaddle wrote: | Meh. Steam's got a billion games now that do that exact thing. | Tons and tons of games did before it, too. The only notable | thing about it was having that kind of thing in a game that was | otherwise good enough and had enough else going on not to be | categorized _primarily_ as a porn game. | | I'll just wait for it to be modded back in. | | [EDIT] Actually a few other mainstream non-porn games have done | almost the same thing, since, too. The Saboteur comes to mind. | Some whole series are all about that sort of thing, like DOA. | Beltalowda wrote: | I played the Witcher when it was released back in the day; I | had heard some vaguely good things about it, and it seemed like | something I would enjoy. I had no idea the card thing existed | until I actually received one. I remember laughing at how silly | it was. I felt it kinda fit within the kind of semi-serious | adult theme of the game; "your mother sucks dwarven cock" etc. | From what I recall, the second game was a bit more serious; | never played the third one. | | I think the cards had basically nothing to do with the game | success, and judging from the comments here, it seems the first | game wasn't even all _that_ successful in the first place. | yamtaddle wrote: | They just replaced it with 3D sex scenes in the later ones, | AFAIK. But for some reason that was OK, while fade-to-black | and a pinup wasn't? It's weird. | yieldcrv wrote: | The 3D scenes show a collaboration with women | | The cards show a "notch on your belt", which is something a | lot of people are sensitive to and don't want to | perpetuate, when given the choice | | So that's what people are reacting to, not the mere | presence of sexual encounters and explicitness at all | | Said another way: Of the subset of people that are fine | with explicit depictions in this medium, a broader subset | of them want to depict more women as collaborators as | opposed to prizes and collectibles. They found that | depiction detracted from this particular series. | vexatus wrote: | Remember: no preorders! | [deleted] | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | Sometimes remakes can actually improve accessibility to an older | game with a dated engine/mechanics and make it more enjoyable for | newcomers to experience the earlier entries. See: Yakuza Kiwami | and Yakuza Kiwami 2 (remade using the excellent _Yakuza 0_ engine | /mechanics). | | I do own Witcher 1/Witcher 2 (bought no-doubt during some Steam | sale for like $5-$15, tops), and I vaguely recall playing W1 for | like a half hour, then put it down and never touched it again. | But somehow I then put 90+ hours into Witcher 3. | | So yes, the idea of Witcher 1's story remade into a modern engine | sounds great. Heck, I would've settled for just Witcher 3's | engine. I don't think I'd plop $60 for it--especially considering | I waited until I could grab W3 GOTY Edition for like $20 before | buying--but it's definitely something I'd eventually want to | check out. | rjh29 wrote: | I played W1 when it came out and it was great. But couldn't | imagine playing it after Witcher 3 because W3 is in a different | universe of quality and polish. A remake is fantastic news. | jdaw0 wrote: | I think yours is a pretty common experience considering that | Witcher 3 was a huge mass-market success and Witcher 1 was a | niche product made both by and for insane people. I say this as | a shameless Witcher 1 apologist. | Ntrails wrote: | I really wanted to play the games in order, but I found the | gameplay in 1 un-fun and quit. | | I almost regret how long it put me off 3 | tvb12 wrote: | I started to play, but never finished, both the first and | second Witcher games after also purchasing them on sale at | massive discounts. I gained an appreciation for advances made | in character movement and player input, including UI elements | like menus and pop-ups for quick actions. Old games play very | clunky. | ramosu wrote: | sounds like bad news for their internal engineering team | Tade0 wrote: | Provided there's any of it left after Cyberpunk. | fazfq wrote: | Or they can do like Rockstar and many others and outsource | the port. | impulser_ wrote: | People complaining about this being a remake, but I'm assuming | they made the remake as a way for their developers to get use to | Unreal 5 before making Witcher 4 which is also built using Unreal | 5. | | Easier to build a game you already know in a new game engine than | to create a completely new game. Especially if you don't want the | game to be filled with bugs. | | CD has always used in an house game engine for their games. | [deleted] | nvrspyx wrote: | I don't think that holds if you read the first paragraph of the | article. Fool's Theory, a separate studio, is doing the remake | in UE5; not CDPR. With that said, this will allow Fool's Theory | to help as a support studio for Witcher 4 after the remake | since they'll be using the same toolset. | whack24 wrote: | This reminds me of how Game Freak sent their recent Pokemon | remake out to another studio to work on with different | technology while Game Freak makes new franchise IP. 2 | examples doesn't make a pattern but is this a known business | strategy within game development? | peruvian wrote: | Not only is this common but it's how some companies have | built their reputation and money, see Bluepoint: https://en | .wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluepoint_Games#Games_develope... | daemin wrote: | That's true, although Fool's Theory is full of former CDPR | people that worked on W3 and CP. I'm assuming it will be a | similar situation to that of Spokko where eventually it might | be brought under the CDP umbrella. (That's just speculation | though, I don't have any insider knowledge on this). | [deleted] | mortenjorck wrote: | Exactly; while CDPR and Fool's Theory will be working on | different games, they'll be able to share resources | extensively given the common platform. I wouldn't be | surprised if they divide up work on a lot of the Witcher- | specific extensions to Unreal's scripting, AI, and so on. | philliphaydon wrote: | Ohhhhhh totally gonna play this! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-27 23:00 UTC)