The Witcher: Enhance Edition

[morlac]

First half of September, apparently.

On a related note, I read The Last Wish and found it surprisingly good, especially given that it was a translation.

Until I see it on a shelf I will just act like it doesn't exist.  I have been waiting months to play it

[CeeKay]

woohoo!!  a better inventory layout amongst everything else!:

Aside from more load time improvements and other technical improvements, one of the best improved features will undoubtedly be the inventory system. Player inventory has been reconfigured to be split into two categories: alchemical items and everything else. There's also now a button to auto sort your items by further category so that all like items (scrolls or potions or books) will move next to each other and any duplicate items will automatically stack. There will also be buttons that can be used in the alchemical items section that can be pushed to highlight substances with specific ingredients so that you don't have to click through them all. This system should definitely make the stash inventory much more manageable. Combined with a small improvement to the alchemy system that will allow players to see which of the ingredients needed to create a specific potion isn't in their inventory should make the extensive potion gameplay features much more fun to use.

[IkeVandergraaf]

According to the front page, it's out.  But I can't find a link to the download.  Someone helps me!!

[Lee]

According to the front page, it's out.  But I can't find a link to the download.  Someone helps me!!

Game is out in stores (in the US, Europe release date is the19th) but the download patch is not out until Friday. You must be registered with your game manual's code in order to download it. Then it can be found in the "extras" section on Friday.

[Sarkus]

According to the front page, it's out.  But I can't find a link to the download.  Someone helps me!!

Game is out in stores (in the US, Europe release date is the19th) but the download patch is not out until Friday. You must be registered with your game manual's code in order to download it. Then it can be found in the "extras" section on Friday.

Am I the only one who thinks that making the buyers of last years version wait a few days is a bit of a crappy deal?  And you just know that their servers will be slammed when they do put it up, meaning likely problems/delays.

The cool thing would have been to offer the download a few days before the new version showed up in stores.

 

[CeeKay]

According to the front page, it's out.  But I can't find a link to the download.  Someone helps me!!

Game is out in stores (in the US, Europe release date is the19th) but the download patch is not out until Friday. You must be registered with your game manual's code in order to download it. Then it can be found in the "extras" section on Friday.

Am I the only one who thinks that making the buyers of last years version wait a few days is a bit of a crappy deal?  And you just know that their servers will be slammed when they do put it up, meaning likely problems/delays.

The cool thing would have been to offer the download a few days before the new version showed up in stores.

 

hell, they way they seem to work I wouldn't be surprised if the patch isn't up on time.

[Kevin Grey]

Am I the only one who thinks that making the buyers of last years version wait a few days is a bit of a crappy deal?  And you just know that their servers will be slammed when they do put it up, meaning likely problems/delays.

The cool thing would have been to offer the download a few days before the new version showed up in stores.

 

From what I recall from a comment the PR made at QT3, retail stores wouldn't accept it. 

Personally, I don't think it's a big deal at all- frankly most companies would have charged for these improvements to begin with. I believe that not only are they offering up all of the code improvements/additons to existing owners, but the making of documentary, CD soundtrack, alternate language files, PDFs of all of the new strat guide, map, etc.  The *only* thing that existing owners miss out on is the Witcher short story because they didn't have the rights to publish that online. 

[Turtle]

I suspect those cards were censored (aka painted over) for the US release, the bottom one bears signs of an obviously painted on skirt flap, either that or the artist didn't even bother finishing the shading on it.    It's a weird artist thing when I liked a lot of the other cards I saw not for their cheesecake value, but because they were all rather well painted.

[Autistic Angel]

I played through the prologue to the start of Chapter 1 last night, and I'm very happy to report that the translation is *vastly* improved from the original.  I had to stop playing the original version around Chapter 3 because the plot had lost all meaning, but the dialogue in this version is already clearer and more complete.

It's been a long time since I set The Witcher aside so I may not remember correctly, but this version seems to have a more complete explanation of Geralt's backstory, Vesemir's history as a witcher, and more detail on the importance of Caer Mohren.  The conversations flow much better now, as well -- for starters, Vesemir now refers to Triss as "child" rather than "babe."

In combat, Geralt used to occasionally get stuck if he was ordered to attack something outside his immediate range.  This was particularly noticable if he used Force Push the Aard sign to knock a foe away and then attempt a coup de grace kill, but in the new version, he'll step right up and deliver the killing blow.  There's a known bug in the game that has accidentally removed all the blood, but the development team is allegedly aware of the issue and is already working on a fix.

Alchemy ingredients are now automatically filed into their own inventory section and can be filtered by type to make it much easier to find what you need.  Obviously I'm still too early in the game to have done much with the alchemy system, but my early impression is that it'll be a lot more intuitive for people to experiment with.

The only real drawback I see with the Enhanced Edition so far is the decision to forego a printed manual in favor of a strategy guide / walkthrough book.  The Witcher has a thorough set of tutorials that tell you pretty much everything you need to know about combat, alchemy, and the world around you, but as someone who flatly refuses to use strategy guides for games like this, I still think a regular game manual would have been the better choice here.

Overall, big thumbs up so far!

-Autistic Angel

[CeeKay]

The only real drawback I see with the Enhanced Edition so far is the decision to forego a printed manual in favor of a strategy guide / walkthrough book.  The Witcher has a thorough set of tutorials that tell you pretty much everything you need to know about combat, alchemy, and the world around you, but as someone who flatly refuses to use strategy guides for games like this, I still think a regular game manual would have been the better choice here.

if you're looking for a version of the manual you might want to check the disc or the game directory to see if it's there in pdf format.  luckily the game really doesn't need a manual- I downloaded the European version and never really felt at a loss due to not having a hard copy of the actual manual.

[Lee]

According to a mod on the official forums, there is a "rumor" that he can't confirm that the patch will be released between 8-10AM Warsaw time (GMT +1). 2-4AM EST.

[Dante Rising]

The only real drawback I see with the Enhanced Edition so far is the decision to forego a printed manual in favor of a strategy guide / walkthrough book.  The Witcher has a thorough set of tutorials that tell you pretty much everything you need to know about combat, alchemy, and the world around you, but as someone who flatly refuses to use strategy guides for games like this, I still think a regular game manual would have been the better choice here.

if you're looking for a version of the manual you might want to check the disc or the game directory to see if it's there in pdf format.  luckily the game really doesn't need a manual- I downloaded the European version and never really felt at a loss due to not having a hard copy of the actual manual.

For the US version they were forced to put the manual on the discs via PDF. If you import the European version, you get the actual manual. Apparently American retailer's didn't like the size of the original box and they were forced to reduce it slightly, thus one less book for the US market.

[Misguided]

What's funny is that the box isn't all that big.

[Lockdown]

Is there a difference between the European Version and U.S. Version of the new enhanced edition of the game besides the manual being included in paper form?

[Beer Goggles]

The upgrade to EE patch has been released.

[MonkeyFinger]

Damn, they need to mirror this thing. Downloads are not happening right now. 

[CeeKay]

Damn, they need to mirror this thing. Downloads are not happening right now. 

considering I'm still playing Clear Sky I'm going to wait for the lines to die down.  if in a week there is still a long wait I may just break down and suport them again by buying a retail copy.

[Octavious230]

I kind of figured it would be near impossible to get it today. Not that I won't try when I get home anyway. 

[MonkeyFinger]

The EE patch and English Language pack are mirrored on FileShack now. 

[IkeVandergraaf]

I wonder if our Gaming Trend overlords could mirror the patch here....

[Octavious230]

The EE patch and English Language pack are mirrored on FileShack now. 

Sweet thx for the heads up. I wonder what the chances are of me being able to walk my wife through downloading it for me. 

[Octavious230]

The EE patch and English Language pack are mirrored on FileShack now. 

Sweet thx for the heads up. I wonder what the chances are of me being able to walk my wife through downloading it for me. 

Cool she was able to figure it out. It should be done by the time I get home I think. 

[IkeVandergraaf]

Also, it appears that Fileshack is running a deal of a month or premium service for a dollar.  That's how I went.

[MonkeyFinger]

I decided to just wait in line... took about 15 minutes to get to the front of the queue and then not all that long to do the dirty deed.  Installing now. 

[Octavious230]

I used to have a membership but I didn't use it enough to justify paying for it. Really good service though aside from it being a bit hard to cancel.

[IkeVandergraaf]

Modifying game files.  This may take up to two hours.  Manually interrupting this process will necessitate re-installation of the game.

Emphasis mine.

Yikes!

[Octavious230]

Hmm maybe I should walk my wife through installing the patch too. I might be pushing my luck at that point. 

[MonkeyFinger]

Took maybe 10 minutes or so to install for me... am "working from home" today so just let it do its thing. 

The install is simple enough, as long as everything (patch, language, additional stories) are all in the same folder the patch will install whatever is there automatically. The only part you may have to help her with is the registration check, you'll need to provide your userid and password to the Witcher community so it can check to see if you've registered your copy. Other than that, normal clicks to continue / next and then wait.

[TiLT]

Well, this patch has been a complete disaster for me so far, which sucks since I've been looking forward to the Enhanced Edition ever since it was first announced.

To begin with, I had to wait hours before I could actually download the file due to problems on their server. Once I did, the download occasionally stopped and had to be manually resumed. When it was finally done and I was trying to install it, I was told about 5 minutes into the installation that my install of the game was faulty and couldn't be patched. It's a good thing it was so vague, or I might have had some idea of what to do.

Took me two reinstalls and complete deletion of every hint of The Witcher in both my registry and the HD, plus uninstalling Daemon Tools before I could get it to patch. And then the patching itself lasted for 2 hours. Hooray!

Eventually it finished patching and I could start the game. Well, ATTEMPT to start the game, anyhow. It now gives me a generic windows error message about an unhandled exception almost immediately. I have no idea how to get past this, and the only semi-related issue I could find in their forums (about an EAX bug) didn't help. So here I am, at the start of the weekend, with no Witcher Enhanced Edition to play.

This sucks.

Edit: Forgot to add that when I first attempted to install the patch, I also couldn't get through to their registration servers to confirm that I owned the game, so I was stuck at that step too for a couple of hours. Fun.

[MonkeyFinger]

Anyone know under what circumstances the 'Blood Revival Patch' is required?  I've got the uncensored imported version just patched up to 'enhanced' and I believe I remember reading that the patch that restores blood is only needed for the NA version? 

Ok, found the news item I was thinking of, seems like I won't need it but others might, so:

Unfortunately in our efforts to make The Witcher: Enhanced Edition as awesome as possible, we made a little mistake... the North American version of the game shipped without a little file that enabled some additional blood effects. We've remedied that situation with the Blood Revival patch, which will be posted here tomorrow but is already available for download at the following sites:

Voodoo Extreme
Fileshack
Worthplaying

[IceBear]

The patch hasn't gone so well for me either.  Downloaded the patch and discovered I had never registered my digital copy on their site.  Went through the registration process to discover that the digital copy activation key is invalid for registering the game.  Went to a couple of stores to buy the EE, but no one had it so I bought another copy of the original game only to find it was one of those Canadian manuals missing the CDKey.  sigh.

[MonkeyFinger]

Well, this patch has been a complete disaster for me so far, which sucks since I've been looking forward to the Enhanced Edition ever since it was first announced.

Yikes, that does suck. I gave up on the official site after downloads there crapped out on me five times. I couldn't even download the little 'adventures'. Switched over to the mirrors and didn't have a problem after that.

Perhaps it would be worth redownloading everything from one of the other sites, if you haven't already done so, before you give this another go?  Sounds like you'll need to start over again and that does indeed sucketh.

[Victoria Raverna]

I wonder if our Gaming Trend overlords could mirror the patch here....

Or just make an official GT torrent for it, that'll let people get it faster without using up too much costly bandwidth.

[IkeVandergraaf]

Yeah, after sitting there for a really long time, I interrupted the patch process.  That apparently corrupted my install, as I was warned it would, so I uninstalled, and am reinstalling.

I've really been looking forward to playing this game for a long time.

[Lee]

The install is simple enough, as long as everything (patch, language, additional stories) are all in the same folder the patch will install whatever is there automatically.

Umm, what additional stories? I have the patch and the language thingy, but what else do I need to get?

[TiLT]

The install is simple enough, as long as everything (patch, language, additional stories) are all in the same folder the patch will install whatever is there automatically.

Umm, what additional stories? I have the patch and the language thingy, but what else do I need to get?

You don't NEED to get anything, but there are two additional mini-scenarios available for download. Don't worry, you can install them later without any issues. The only things you need for the initial patch is what you've already got.

[IkeVandergraaf]

I wish there was some sort of progress bar after getting the "This could take 2 hours" message.  I don't know whether it's hung or just thinking.

[Lee]

I wish there was some sort of progress bar after getting the "This could take 2 hours" message.  I don't know whether it's hung or just thinking.

Read somewhere on the official forums that it will say not responding at times. Ignores this. Just forget it's there.

[IkeVandergraaf]

How can I forget it's there?!  It's preventing me from playing the game.  It's like trying to forget that my balls itch.

[Lee]

The upgrade too 25 minutes and the language pack took seconds to install FYI.