How the famous game "The Witcher" was created and why it is so important not to depend on anyone. The Witcher: Tips and Tactics The Last Wish. Summary

The Witcher features a large selection of girls to seduce. For each successful rendezvous, an erotic card is issued depicting a naked girl with whom Geralt had a casual intimate relationship. Thanks to the sterilization that occurred as a result of the mutation, they can afford to have several partners at the same time without any consequences, which the main character willingly uses. There are 24 erotic cards in total. The number of girls ready for fleeting romance is 22, some of them will go to bed twice. It is impossible to seduce everyone at once, since in the course of the plot a difficult choice will have to be made between potential partners - for example,. Cards with naked girls are added to the character pages in the diary, and are available for viewing after clicking on the heart icon.

Girls from the prologue in The Witcher:

• Triss Merigold(cs_sex_triss1.bik) - after applying the elixir just before leaving the .

Girls from the first chapter (Vizima Outskirts) in The Witcher:

• peasant woman(cs_sex_village1.bik) - give tulips, which can be taken from a corpse lying near the southern place of Power, or exchanged for flowers (daisies or white roses) from a resident of the town from the first house on the side of the bridge leading to the Maribor Gates. White roses are in a closet on the second floor, and daisies are sold by Declan Leuvaarden and the herbalist from Vizima, both hanging around or inside the village tavern. You can meet a peasant woman in the first large village near the southern road, in the middle of the way from the inn to the house of the Reverend. If she doesn't appear right away, enter and exit any house. There are usually several peasant women, only one agrees to the conversation.
• (cs_sex_rita1.bik) - do not be rude at the first meeting in the village tavern, complete the task "Not an early bird", and come to the mill by 19.00 the next day with wine; will be waiting at the door.
• Abigail(cs_sex_abigail1.bik) - will agree to the proximity right in the cave at the end of the first chapter, before the attack of the Reverend, if you choose the right answers in the dialogue.

Girls from the second chapter (Temple Quarter) in The Witcher:

• Gossip(cs_sex_citi1.bik) - donate a diamond, won from Zoltan Khivai, or gloves, sold by a hawker in the market, lying in a closet in Shani's house or in a laundry basket in St. Swan's hospital. The dialogue about the appearance of a witcher in the city should be continued until phrases about gifts appear. You can find a gossip girl near the hospital of St. Swan, walking around the city.
• Courtesan, Prostitute, port whore, Whore(cs_sex_hooker1.bik) - they will agree to sex for decent money, jewelry or all sorts of trinkets, as well as for a bouquet of flowers, but for this you need to complete the task of Carmen from Hot Thighs and refuse to pay, solving problems with the bandits.
• half-elf(cs_sex_elf1.bik) - free in a haunted house and get a reward at her house, opposite the Vivaldi bank. The release task is issued by a thug in the house opposite the warehouse, where at the very beginning of the chapter the head of the guard Vincent Mace sent. To bring the matter to bed, we select the phrases in the dialogue with the half-elf: “You are Feainnwedd. Child of the Sun.”, “You come from…”, “You are right…”.
• Dryad Morenn(cs_sex_driada1.bik) - bring a wolf skin to the Druid grove in the swamps, after asking about the missing boy from the village of brickmakers, the search task is given by Vaska. In the dialogue, to find out where the little dryads come from, we use the following phrases: "Copulation can be useful ...", "Sex relieves stress ...".
• Shani(cs_sex_shani1.bik) - give red roses, arranged in honor of .

Girls from the third chapter (Merchant's Quarter) in The Witcher:

• Courtesans, Blue-eyed girl(cs_sex_hooker2.bik) - agree to provide services for 500 orens or any jewel. A discount on services can be obtained using a ring with the seal of the House of Night from Erkin von Blunt, met at a reception at New Narakort. The blue-eyed girl is in the "House of the Queen of the Night" at the gate to the Temple Quarter.
• aristocrat(cs_sex_citi2.bik) - give a kikimora claw. Kikimoras live in the forest in the swamps or appear at night in front of the entrance to the "New Narakort", to extract the claw, you need the "Amazing World of Insectoids". The aristocrat can be met during the day in front of Triss's house in the Merchants' Quarter.
• (cs_sex_citi3.bik) - come to the girl for Dandelion's lute and teach the last lesson.
• Princess Adda(cs_sex_adda1.bik) - Prepare a catoblepas dish when you meet in New Narakorth. To do this, you should talk with Velerad over a glass of any vodka. Then with Thaler, having taken out a note from the chest in the next room, we do not pay attention to the merchant. Next, we turn to Triss for help, return to Adda and pass on the catoblepas. In the dialogues, we choose phrases with romantic overtones, and in the last conversation, in the princess's chambers, we obey her order.
• clerk(cs_sex_citi4.bik) - give a jewel, for example, a diamond. The girl works on the second floor of the city hall. The conversation should begin with the words "I have to impress you ...". The diamond is sold by a merchant from stalls along the city wall.
• (cs_sex_vamp1.bik) - Agree to support the vampires in the "Blue Eyed Girl" task, although you can change your choice later when the card has already been received.
• Triss Merigold(cs_sex_triss2.bik) or Shani(cs_sex_shani2.bik) - one of the girls, have a few educational conversations with the child (the tone depends on who they gave it to) and present a silver ring with a ruby ​​or amber. A trusting relationship with one of the girls will be lost in any case.

Girls from the fourth chapter (Darkwater) in The Witcher:

• elf(cs_sex_elf2.bik) - a cave on the shore of the lake, complete the task of Toruviel and share food with the hungry elf from the cave: bread, bun or cheese.
• Selina(cs_sex_celina1.bik) - give a ring. The ring can be taken on the shore of the lake in the chest where the naiad lives, or in the crypt at the end of the path with Berengar. Selina lives in the countryside.
• peasant woman(cs_sex_village2.bik) - start a conversation with one of the peasant women in the village and bring the dialogue to a gift;
• Lady of the Lake(cs_sex_lady1.bik) - talk to her about the knights and the Grail, then run to the hermit on the fields and talk to him about the same topic. As a result, it will become clear how lonely the Lady is; return to her on the shallows in a fisherman's boat and splash around in the waters of the lake together.

Girls from the fifth chapter (Old Vizima) in The Witcher:

• Nurses from Stara Vizima and Lebeda Hospital(cs_sex_nurse1.bik) - meet near the wall at the beginning of the fifth chapter. Escort the girls to the field hospital. In the case of the Scoia "taels and the Order, they will agree to sex after Shani leaves for medicine with the druids in the swamps (if any).
• Toruviel(cs_sex_toruv1.bik) - win the respect of the skoi "taels" by joining them.
• White Raila(cs_sex_rayla1.bik) - Earn the respect of the Order of the Flaming Rose by joining them.

For those who burn with curiosity, there is a special remedy. All love scenes are stored in the \Atari\Witcher Enhanced Edition\Data folder, and the names of the necessary files look like cs_sex_girl_name.bik. To view files, use any video player that supports the .bik format or a program

Despite the fact that in all parts of the series there are samples of very different weapons, you can only use swords. It is impossible to explain the witchers' addiction to this type of deadly weapon, but such are the realities - no matter how impressive in appearance you find an ax, it is useless for the character. However, despite the fact that the main weapon in the game The Witcher is a sword, it has different purposes. Silver specimens are responsible for the destruction of various evil spirits, and steel ones are designed to kill animals and people.

So the steel was tempered

Let's start with the first part of the famous game. The main weapon that the witcher uses is swords made of steel. Although the player is a monster slayer, battles with a variety of bandits will also take up a considerable amount of time. It is for them that the weapons for murder described below will be required.

The next set of swords is not designed for serious combat and it will not be difficult to get it. Products have mediocre characteristics and will not cause serious damage.

• Rusty sword.
• Temerian steel sword.
• Sword of the Order of the Flaming Rose.
• Temerian iron sword.

Next on the list are useless and ineffective, due to insignificant damage, weapons. Although they have additional characteristics, their use is not recommended due to the low base modifier. In The Witcher, the swords that the player finds are not always better than that, which he uses, so that such garbage can only be picked up for sale.

• Rune sword from Dol Blathanna.
• Ceremonial sword from Deitwen.
• from the Blue Mountains.
• Sacred Sword of the Order.
• Forbidden sword. It comes closest to the concept of "efficiency". You can get it in the 3rd chapter, taking it from a killed assassin.

The most reliable comrade in the game "The Witcher" will be a sword made with your own hands. Meteor Swords are crafted from three pieces of the appropriate material and differ in stats depending on the color of the ore used.

relics

Separately, it is worth mentioning the unique weapons from the game "The Witcher" - swords, found in a single copy and having their own names.

• Runic sigil from Macaham. You can get it after completing the quest "It won't hurt".
• Garwal. It can only be found in the second chapter near the mage's tower in the swamps.
• Gvikhir. Bought from the blacksmith's son. But it is available only in the fourth chapter.
• D "yaebl. When you finish the task with the striga and remove the curse, you can get it from Velerad.

Silver

The best remedy against a wide variety of evil spirits, which the witcher owns, is swords made of silver. In the first part of the game there are not as many of them as we would like, but they fully cope with the task:

• Basic Witcher's Silver Sword.
• Arondite. You can get it only in the 4th chapter, after completing the "Kill Dagon" quest.
• The Moonblade is the best example of a witcher's weapon. After killing 10 special monsters, you can get it from the Chief Royal Stalker.

The Witcher 2

Starting from this part, the developers took up the task of filling the game with content. However, most of the swords that you will meet in the game The Witcher 2 are either completely useless or are "passing", and you will change them in just five minutes.

• In the "Prologue" the player is unlikely to find anything worthwhile. The only thing to mention is that if the gamer imports saves from the first part, then depending on the final equipment, you can get a number of good blades.
• The first chapter is rich in good weapons, which are acquired through crafting. Carefully inspect the list of goods in Flotsam. There you can get one of the most interesting drawings. Berthold can help create the best sword in the series.
• In the second part of the story, you can find three wonderful steel swords. All of them are at the passage of the "Jovert path". You will receive the unique personalized blade "Gwihir" upon completion of the "Nightmare of Baltimore" quest. The "Poisoned Zerrikan Saber" hangs over the fireplace in Philippa's room after the siege is over. The Kaedweni Black Sword can be knocked out of the hands of one of the officers on the way to the mines.
• If you were able to get Gwihir, then you will not need a replacement soon. You will find many good blades on store shelves. In the fourth chapter there are three nominal swords, which are worth dwelling on separately. "Garval" is sold by a merchant in the camp of the Knights of the Burning Rose. You will find the “Forgotten Sword of the Vrans” by going through the “Roche Path”: select the option to release Anias, and you will find the blade you are looking for in the Detmold safe. "Kerm" can be obtained by crafting, and in order to find the blueprint, you will have to defeat the gargoyles and decipher the manuscript.

silver glitter

The Witcher 2 is also rich in silver weapons. And unlike steel counterparts, it makes sense to change them more often, since they are rich in various bonuses that need to be selected for a specific playing style.

• In the Prologue, you will receive Arondite and Moonblade when importing saves from the first part, if you had them in your inventory.
• The first chapter is very poor in a variety of weapons against evil spirits, and most of the items found will be useless, especially if you have the Moonblade left. You should pay attention only to the "Excellent Silver Witcher's Sword" - you will receive its drawing when completing various contracts and are unlikely to miss it.
• But in the second chapter, the player will already have plenty to choose from. "Parliamentor" is available when passing both paths. You can remove it from the corpse of the killer of kings or get it after the quest "The Eternal Battle". Further, the player will encounter several blades with high damage, but with less effective bonuses, so the replacement is not recommended. At the end of the chapter, you can get the "Blood Sword". You need to look for him in the catacombs near Vergen.
• In the third chapter, even the worst blade will be better than anything you've seen before. But in order to make it, you need to buy a drawing from the merchant Bras in Ban Ard. You can also purchase a drawing of the Zerrikanen sword from him - this is the best weapon throughout the game.

The Witcher 3: Beginning

In the third part of the Witcher game, steel swords are trash that you can safely sell. You can find such weapons everywhere: in killed monsters and bandits, chests, treasures and merchants. The same applies to silver weapons. Complete quests, carefully search locations and study the world map, then you will certainly be able to find equipment that suits your level.

Many players, however, highlight individual blades that differ in damage and effectiveness from the rest. These are the so-called set items. At the beginning of the game, in the White Garden location, you can find a pair of swords that are marked "Snake Schools". You are unlikely to be able to forge a silver sword, since at this stage it is quite impossible to find.

To get the blueprints, head to the north of the "White Garden" in the cemetery. There you will have to fight a level 7 ghost, after which he will flee to the crypt. Hack the door with the Aard symbol and continue the fight. After the final victory, carefully search the dungeon. Here you will find the remains of an unlucky witcher and a drawing of a silver sword of the Snake school. In addition, a mark on the location of the steel sword of the same school will appear on your map. There you will have to defeat the bandit camp, and in the chest you will find the desired drawing. In The Witcher 3, swords belonging to sets are never just in a chest, so you also have to get the materials needed to make them.

Cat School

This is a couple of interesting blades that belong to the light armor set. You can find drawings for them on the map of Novigrad. The drawing of the silver sword is in the ruins of the temple in the southeast of the city. To get it, you will have to use the Aard sign to break open the locked door.

The steel sword mark will appear on the map immediately after receiving the blueprint. There you will again have to use the sign to get into the basement. On the spot, you will find a diagram of the blade and a new note with the coordinates of the drawing of the crossbow.

This way you can get the best low-level equipment in the game. The "Bear" and "Gryphon" sets can be considered its analogues, but it is not necessary to look for them, since it is a little more difficult to get them.

Griffin School

Items of this set specialize in strengthening signs. You can start searching for them already from the seventh level, but it will be quite problematic for a character without good equipment and pumping. In The Witcher 3, swords will not only help you in hand-to-hand combat, but also improve your sign skills.

• The initial version of the kit is located in Velen. First, go to the ruins of Hendhold to the north of the Hanged Man tree. Harpies will attack you there. After killing them, go up to the nest and stand in front of it. There will be a secret door to your left. With the help of the witcher's instincts, you will find a drawing on the body of one of the soldiers. The silver sword is hidden on the lone rock lighthouse. To get the item, you will have to kill a level 14 wyvern. However, the battle can be avoided if you wait until the monster flies away.
• Item upgrade charts are much easier to find. The blueprint for the improved steel sword is located in the bandit camp west of Undergrowth. Scheme of the silver blade - in a cave west of the Nilfgaard camp.
• A great set weapon requires a character to be level 21. In the port of Urial, on a hill, you can find a drawing of a steel sword. The silver sword is hidden in a cave on the southern cape of the main island of Skellige.
• A blueprint for a master steel sword can be found in the ruined village of Boxholm. You will find his "brother" in an abandoned fortress on Skellige.

Bear School

Another set from the game "The Witcher". The best swords, according to most players, belong to him. They are also divided into several grades, but as a bonus they give a good increase in critical damage.

• The first swords can be started as early as level 15 or even higher. You will find a drawing of a steel sword on Skellige in a burnt village. There, in the tavern, level 20 sirens and the corresponding reward will be waiting for you. You will find the silver sword at a hint, but first prepare for a tough fight - gargoyles and a level 30 ice elemental will guard the treasured item.
• The blueprint for the improved steel sword is located in Fort Caer Almhuld, west of the main island. The silver blade upgrade is stored in an abandoned fortress in the northeast of the main island. Both modifications are hidden in Crooked-ear Marsh.
• With master swords, everything is much easier. You will find one of them in the bear cave during the story mission, the second one is located on a small island near the road to

Who believes in Mohammed, who in Allah, who in Jesus
Who does not believe in anything, even in hell to spite everyone
Hindus invented a good religion -
That we, having given up the ends, do not die for good.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear readers! I apologize in advance for the possible subjectivity and emotionality of the article.

Reincarnation, the second entrance to the same river, risen from... In a word, "Introduction"

Your soul aspires upward
Born again with a dream

"The Witcher" - the saga of the Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski - is one of my favorite books. In general, and not just in fantasy style. Therefore, I could not help but ask myself to write a review on the game of the same name, released at the end of October. The wonderful story of Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri was completed in 1998, and the author, despite its huge popularity in several countries, followed good rule"leaving - go away", and was not going to return.

Meanwhile, a mini-series based on the book was filmed, which failed miserably, despite the invitation of the favorite of all Poland and, in general, a good actor Michal Zhebrovsky. Zhebrovsky, who by that time had played both in Jerzy Hoffmann (With Fire and Sword) and Waida in Pan Tadeusz, did not disappoint, but nothing could save the terrible, shredding text of the film.

Nevertheless, it was clear that the fertile field would continue to be plowed, and the release of the game looked like a logical continuation of the story. At first, the idea of ​​the Polish (what else :)) company CD Projekt looked quite normal. Place and time of action - the kingdoms of the North, several years after the battle of Brenna. If you are reading this review without having read the book first (preferably twice) - know that "the power of Nilfgaard ordered to live long in the dust and ashes on the Brennen fields, and the final cross was laid on the movement of the empire to the north." Of course, after a bloody war, the lands of the northern rulers who paid a heavy price for victory are teeming with evil spirits, which means that a novice witcher will always find a job. There were several types of characters, their development from scratch, and a completely new story.

Unfortunately, due to lack of money, whether for marketing reasons, the concept has changed. No, you have to wander through the same Temeria with Kaedwens, but the choice of the main characters has narrowed. Strongly. Up to one. named Geralt. He is the White Wolf, Master of the Four-Corner, Master Giraldus and Gerant. Well, I guess that many people like this turn of events - you can steer the White Wolf himself, the master of the sword and the idol of sorceresses. Many, but not me. The story was told, the curtain was lowered, and the audience dispersed. I'd love a cameo by Geralt, but the lead role... Well, I'm biased and I'm judging strictly. Well, let's take a closer look at our hero and his upcoming adventure.

Who is there?

Let them look askance at you - get used to reproach
It's annoying - well, you'll be born again - much more caustically
And if you saw the death of the enemy during this life,
In another, you will be granted a faithful keen eye

The intro video shows Geralt in all his glory. Actually, we are shown the events of a memorable night spent by the witcher in the palace with the crown princess of Temeria. Even when she was a ghoul. ;)

And rightly so - why invent something, if you can just follow the example of a writer, no one will give an introduction better than him anyway. However, forgive my irony, the cartoon is not bad, and it creates the right mood. Members of the "fan base" like me - enjoy watching a good adaptation of one of the best moments of the book, and newcomers get a pretty clear idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe work ahead - and environment at the same time.

In this very environment we are immediately dipped. No painstaking generation, poker with dice and the like sacred rites. The game starts right off the bat - for brief description In the current realities of the North, we see a somewhat hectic flight of Geralt from the doctor ... sorry, fellow craftsmen (why - I won’t tell you, don’t ask), falling - in the truest sense of the word - and being transported to the notorious Caer Morhen.

There it turns out that the hero is stricken with retrograde amnesia. M-yes, fresh, do not say anything. In one of our reviews, our witcher was wittily named "The Named One" - an allusion to the hero of "Planescape: Torment", who, as you probably don't remember, was called "The Nameless One". The operation to restore the memory begins immediately - Kaer Morhen is attacked for the second time in his "witch" story. Well, even a novice witcher with a rusty sword picked up in a hurry is a thunderstorm of the enemy. A sharp eye and a steady hand are present, which the enemy will immediately feel on himself.

During the battle, it's time to look at the interface and the combat system. The game uses the famous Aurora engine, which we are proud to announce.

Hence, there are three more or less standard camera modes - near and far isometric, as well as a third-person view. CD Projekt has spent quite a bit of time on modifications, in particular the "Motion Capture" technology. This allows you to create a rather attractive picture - the movements of the characters, especially during battles, are quite believable. And, of course, these graphical achievements make witchers witchers.

Geralt and his colleagues are not just superbly trained warriors. Candidates are selected at an early age, subjected to grueling training. The diet includes nutritional supplements and stimulants, without which students are likely to fail even the basic program. And the crowning achievement of the "young fighter course" is the so-called Herbal Trial - a terrible multi-stage mutation caused by special elixirs, fatal to most teenagers. Survivors transform into fighting machines far superior to most of the strongest warriors in the world. From now on, their task is to fight monsters: evil spirits, undead, monsters. This is all that they know how and how they can feed themselves - fortunately, the demand is great, especially after the war that devastated the entire North. I note, however, that not a single even the most terrible beast can be compared with human malice ...

Sapkowski made quite a lot of effort to "color" the descriptions of the martial art of the witchers with all the colors. Perhaps, to a professional, all the "volts, quarts, dexters and pirouettes" that abound in the pages of the novel seem ridiculous, but personally I have a fairly clear picture of a dance consisting of movements thought out to the smallest detail. And here the game fully lives up to expectations. The hero can carry two swords, a regular (usually for humans) and a silver (usually for monsters), a heavy weapon (axe, club) and a light hatchet or a small dagger. Daggers and axes can be useful in a number of situations, there are even spectacular finishing blows for them, but the maximum pleasure for fans will only come from swordsmanship.

Only with a sword in hand can special combat styles be used - power, fast and group. They are effective against different opponents and, of course, differ visually. They have one thing in common - combinations. Single hits are sufficient at the beginning of the game, to defeat serious opponents you need to work in series. In this case, the base damage increases significantly, and the likelihood of stunning the opponent, hitting a painful point and other nice bonuses increases. But these are all technical details, for real aesthetes, I’m sure, just the sight of Geralt chopping adversaries with slices is enough. :) However, you still have to learn more materiel - each subsequent blow in the combination must be delivered almost instantly, otherwise everything will have to start all over again. So in order to successfully complete the link, you need to adapt to the signals - the sound of the air cut by the blade, the windmill that completes the blows. On the easy difficulty level, the cursor even lights up at the right moments. But, in my opinion, it is quite easy to get used to without such a hint.

A great addition to the styles - pirouettes, bounces and turns. Double click the cursor next to the enemy and you gracefully slip past him. It helps a lot in the battle against several strong opponents. Double click next to the avatar - jump in the direction of the cursor. It helps, for example, if the combination is lost, and a fraction of a second is needed to start it again. Finally, pressing the "F" key will cause a 180 degree turn.

Well, beauty, of course, will once again save the world, but without progress it is powerless. The generation of the hero was taken away from us, but not its development. Geralt, of course, will gain experience, grow in level - and receive talents for this (this is what points are called here). Talents, as expected, are bronze, silver and gold. The higher the new level, the more of them, and the higher their quality. As usual, completing quests and using special decoctions (more on that below) will bring several bonus talents.

It is not worth burying them in the ground, otherwise they will bury the witcher himself. The investment field is extensive. First of all, it makes sense to develop the main parameters:

Strength. Determines the damage inflicted on adversaries (with a sword and a fist :)), the resistance of the hero, the speed of recovery of health. Required to develop a power style.

Agility. Fast fighting style, defense and strike accuracy depend on this parameter.

Endurance. Needed to increase resistance to pain, poisons (including toxic elixirs), fire, fatigue. Affects the rate of energy recovery; Lovers of Signs, attention. ;) Finally, it is required for the development of a group style. And what, while you poke ten goblins, you will still get tired! :)

Intelligence. Yes, it is also needed, and not only for Signs. ;) High intelligence allows the witcher to gain new knowledge faster - information about monsters, ways to make elixirs, and so on.

Developing fighting styles also requires talent. Talents. The bigger, the better. Three styles multiplied by two swords multiplied by five levels... That's how much it will be... A lot! :) Advice - do not neglect the silver sword, it will come in handy.

But do not rush to develop strength and swordsmanship to the maximum. You run the risk of being left without dessert - the famous Witcher Signs. There are five of them in the game.

Aard- the most famous witcher sign, kinetic strike. It is he who is used by Geralt in the fight against the ghoul princess.

Igni- local fireball. Especially good against evil flora.

Aksy- a telepathic wave that can cause opponents to panic, and sometimes even make them fight on our side.

irden- a magic trap that has various effects - stunning, pain, etc.

Quen- protects the witcher for a certain time. The action ends if Geralt attacks himself.

We will get the opportunity to use them as the plot develops, in specially designated places. Memory loss - remember? ;) So don't pass by the strange looking rocks.

Further, with the help of all the same talents, it will be possible to increase power and give signs additional effects.

And the last item of expenditure - various peaceful or, rather, "non-combat" (we can only dream of peace) skills. They are usually related to the game world - you can learn to recognize useful plants, get information about the monsters with which you have to face off. In principle, this information can also be obtained from books, but scientific tomes at that time were not cheap. And without special knowledge, it is often impossible to complete important quests, so such an investment of talent usually pays off.

Of course, even after reaching the maximum level 50 (very difficult), it will not be possible to develop all the skills and get all the skills. However, development options, by and large, are not so many. You can hardly defeat everyone with signs alone, but you can’t do without them at all. At the same time, the witcher's main trump card is the sword, not magic... "You're not a magician, you can see it," (c) Yennefer.

Here, by the way, good conference thread dedicated to talent and development.

To distribute talents, you need to enter meditation mode.

To do this, you need a roof over your head (a tavern, the houses of friends and employers are fine) or, in extreme cases, a fire and flint for making fire. In fact, the kingdoms of the North are at the feudal stage of development, but some traces of the primitive communal system remain. :) Let's take a closer look at all this.

War and Peace

So who is who, so who was who - we never know
Geneticists are crazy about genes and chromosomes

Most of the action takes place around the capital of Temeria, Vizima. The Nilfgaardian wars left a noticeable mark. The country is devastated, roads and even city streets are unsafe and teeming with both rogues of all stripes and various monsters, a bizarre game of nature.

The search for the organizers of the attack on Kaer Morhen - the main storyline - will confront us with many opponents and allies. Many of them are familiar to readers of the book - Triss Merigold, Zoltan Chivay, other witchers. But there will be many new characters, often very colorful.

In general, the spirit of the game and its history are quite close to my book impressions. There is no black and white, the choice between lesser and greater evil is a common thing. Not choosing at all, as usual, will not work, and decisions made in relatively small and seemingly innocent episodes often have far-reaching consequences.

There are quite a lot of dialogs, and they are excellently implemented - the tried branches do not disappear, but are marked with a different color. Very comfortably. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about the quality of the text. So, after a greeting, Geralt often asks permission to ask a question, to which he receives the answer: "What?", after which new branches appear. If you speak with the same character again, he will start the conversation with the same "What?". And laughter, and sin. Perhaps this is a lack of translation and voice acting. Even the voices of the main characters do not shine with expressiveness, what can we say about extras ... However, I admit that this is only the problem of the Russian version. The same soundtrack in the game is excellent, it was not for nothing that it was released as a separate disc. Maybe in the native Polish language and the speech turned out much better, I don’t know. But here the text is often just awful. I read that Sapkowski helped the writers develop the plot and dialogue. It does not appear, however, that he made a general check. So, in the bandit quarter of Vizima, local gopniks wander despondently from corner to corner, muttering "something itches eggs", "your mother sucks at a dwarf", "I want a woman." It's boring for the second time... And they won't shut up. And all this is terribly intrusive - somehow, after a particularly long gaming session, I found myself muttering these very phrases under my breath. That is, my wife caught me, from whom I immediately got hit in the ear. :)

Factual errors exacerbate the situation. The first of them spoiled my mood before the start of the actual game. The introductory video tells us about the "broken armies of elves and dwarves".

What gnomes?! Broken by whom? The gnomes did not fight at all; according to Schuttenbach, "religion does not allow them." Further, almost immediately we see Triss Merigold in a dress with a luxurious neckline:

I will quote Sapkowski, "Blood of the Elves", the words of Triss: "But I will never wear a low-cut dress, Geralt. Never." Perhaps I am being overly biased, but such details I think will kill the pleasure of many fans of the book. The rest will get it too; from the new one - entering the tavern "Under the shaggy bear", we see the head of a bull:

Some kind of horned one... If only they could add curls... :)

There is also the curse of many games - barrels with all sorts of contents placed in every corner. What's on the street, what's in the houses. At the same time, the inhabitants do not react in any way to robbery in broad daylight. Late at night, however, they don't care either. In my opinion, this is one of the most destructive things for the atmosphere. And why not do it?!

Of course, it was not without the use of canonical texts. :) There are many books in the game that tell about the history of the world - both ancient and modern. Wandering minstrels sing songs invented by Pan Andrzej. What can I say - their voices are certainly far from the performance of master Dandelion, especially in terms of exciting lyrics. Yes, and in obscene beastliness, too, are lagging behind. :)

But there are also real finds. Yes, there is SEX in the game! Yes, just like in the book. For those who are not familiar with the beautiful, I inform you that Geralt is not only a master of swinging a sword, he is a guy anywhere: some beautiful sorceresses are ready to give him even "on a bare stone", even "on a hedgehog". And for the fans who grumble about trampling on the holy love for some little black girl, I once again remind you of the loss of memory. So, in principle, nothing will stop us from saying "yes" to beauties who are craving a witcher's body. There are quite a few of them, the Polish voluptuaries from CD Project have obviously devoted more than one day, or even a night or two to this part of the game. :) The crown of their genius is the cards that you get after successfully conquering women's hearts.

So do not be lazy to complete the corresponding quests, heh heh, it's worth it. ;) For those who are especially curious announce the complete list.

The journal is well implemented, almost all useful information. The entries are excellently structured both in time and type. Since information about opponents - human and non-human - is often necessary for the development of the plot, new data is highlighted with an exclamation point. Descriptions of alchemical ingredients are also very important, but more on that later.

Interaction with the outside world is not limited to chatter and fight. There is a trade where, for greater realism, merchants are specialized, and their funds are limited. In taverns you can drink, spend the night and leave things for storage to the owner. Due to my laziness, I did not use this opportunity and, probably, in vain - I threw out or sold many potentially valuable things for next to nothing. There are also blacksmiths, as without them. We set out on a campaign with an ordinary rusty sword ("you can just as well fight with spades"), soon enough we get a standard witcher's blade, but this is only the beginning. Also during the game you can find, buy and take away several multi-colored pieces of meteoric iron. Any three can be reforged into a sword with one or another additional properties. Iron types:

Red- Increases damage dealt by 10%.

Yellow- Increases damage by 20%, increases the chance of painful, stunning and accurate strikes by 30%.

Blue- Increases the chance of inflicting a painful blow by 10%.

The silver sword can also be improved. But meteorites from precious metals are rare, so we will sculpt various runes on the already existing one:

Earth Rune- increases damage by 10%, increases the chance of knockdown (very useful, although somewhat contrived) by 25%.

Rune of the Sun-Adds 25% to the chances of blinding and incinerating the enemy.

Rune of the Moon- Increases the enemy's sensitivity to silver by 10%.

In addition, if a weapon is made from several of the same pieces or enhanced with two or more of the same runes, it will receive additional beneficial features. As you can see, there is a certain scope for imagination. If you have the money and time to run around, you can make a few swords, store them in the tavern safes, and change them as needed.

Attention - runes are easy to confuse with runestones. The latter only temporarily increase the quality of the weapon, while the runes improve it permanently. Diamond dust and various whetstones also give only a temporary effect. There are a lot of whetstones in the game, they are inexpensive, so if the day is going to be hot, it makes sense to start it with minimal care for swords.

Here's more detailed description weapons components and discussion of possible "configurations": Witcher.com forum thread And section on Gamebanshee.com

Mini-games can be safely attributed to unconditional finds. The idea is not new, but the ideas chosen by the guys from CD Project correspond to the atmosphere of the game one hundred percent. Get drunk, leave the bones (cards are too smart, this is for dwarves) and give the opponent in the snout - these are leisure options.

Drunkenness turning into alcoholism - there will be enough restaurants on your way. And some characters are always happy to have a drink at home, at their workplace... In general, where you offer them a glass. In general, it is useful to carry a certain amount of alcohol with you - cases are different. ;) So, a certain bent old woman with pleasure blows out a bottle of "the strongest pepper" with words like "wow and zaboristo". Many hard-looking nuts crack open and tell all the secrets of the universe if you manage to drink them too much. In general, spending one bronze talent on the ability to drink means investing in a gold mine. :) But fighting after you smear yourself with alcohol from the inside is not recommended:

Dice Poker.

The rules are simple - in two throws you need to throw out a combination better than the one your opponent has. The first time all the dice are thrown, the second time only the ones you choose. You can raise your bet between rolls. Combinations - deuce, two deuces, three of a kind, big and small straight and so on. The first roll is always yours. This could be a problem if the computer could play. Unfortunately, artificial intelligence cannot boast of this even at the highest level of complexity. You can not play with everyone, but there are not so few amateurs - and professionals. In order to fight real masters, you must first defeat the players of a lower rank. There is even a special task in the journal that reflects your progress.

Fist fight. If luck is not on your side, you can give in the face. True, only to fist fighters specially designed for this. Usually lovers to crush each other's sides gather in taverns.

In such duels, you cannot use Signs and weapons, and there are no pirouettes. In general, instead of a graceful dance - a rough scuffle, entertainment for an amateur. If you are one of those, I recommend not to spare talents for the corresponding skills. Most potential opponents are just fighting for money, but some are also on some kind of ranking list of the local World Boxing Association. By defeating such prize fighters, you increase your own rank, which is meticulously reflected in the journal. At the end, a ring monster will be waiting for you with Holyfield's head (after Tyson treated his ears), Klitschko's legs and the body of a girl with round signs... Just kidding, just kidding, no punk, not even cyber. :)

Another obligatory component of the gaming environment, alchemy, was also successful. With all the incomparable skill and physical data of the witcher, monsters usually have more. Here the famous decoctions stored for such cases in treasured chests come to the rescue. Geralt often took a liking to them, readers probably remember. :)

The secrets of brewing elixirs are known only to the witchers themselves, so you have to do everything yourself. To prepare doping, you must enter the meditation mode and mix the components. The base is always strong alcohol, so don't drink all the vodka you have... What? Did you sell it ALL?! Remember, alcohol is one of the main weapons of a soldier! And the better it (alcohol) is, the more powerful the elixir can be made.

Various ingredients are added to alcohol - plants and herbs, essences and, to put it mildly, pieces of dead creatures. This review can be read by children, so I will give an example of a pen of a cockatrice. ;) All these smelly components contain various alchemical elements. Some of them are basic - without them, the manufacture of the desired mixture is impossible. Others give different side effects. They can be bought or requisitioned from local flora and fauna (from the latter - usually with a fight). Not every drowner will agree to voluntarily give you his brain for experiments. About what to pluck from plants and cut off from animals, you usually learn from books or from local residents. It's amazing how many secrets a simple butcher or even a gardener can know! There is also a special skill: "How to become Cuvier and Linnaeus in one day." All information is neatly recorded on a special page in your journal:

As you can see, the dogs here just don't give up, you have to destroy them twice. However, there is an option not to touch them at all. ;)

Cocktails can either be made from a recipe or empirically. Recipes come across quite often as you progress through the game, but it's also useful to experiment - or just read pharmaceutical textbooks created by the world's leading alchemists and posted on the Internet. If there is a mixture recipe, then just select it and click on the appropriate button. Attention - in such an automatic mode, not the most optimal ingredients are often selected. Depending on what you need the elixir for, you need to choose different herbs and other components with the desired additional action.

But be careful. The stronger the elixir, the shorter its duration and, most importantly, the more toxic it is. And, if a simple binge will only lead to a temporary disconnection of the hero, then the abuse of elixirs can be fatal. Therefore, keep an eye on the green bar that reflects the levels of intoxication and the redness of the screen. A lot of red dots mean that the witcher's eyes are ready to pop...

I recommend that you always have "White Honey" with you, it neutralizes the effect of other decoctions. In addition to drinks, Geralt can make lubricants for weapons and bombs (you don’t have to blow up the king). The grenade-throwing witcher didn’t seem like the best idea to me, so I didn’t indulge in it, but I found weapon oils to be very useful. They can improve the overall qualities of weapons and make them deadly to various classes of creatures - undead, spirits, etc. All this is made in the same way as elixirs, only gunpowder serves as the basis for bombs, and animal fat is used for lubricants. Greenpeace, shut up! ;)

Last wish. Summary

It's time to take stock. In principle, the game deserves at least a solid four. Good single-player campaigns are generally rare these days, but here everything is done at a good level, both conceptually and technically. The same plot is not bad at all, at least for its originality. Nevertheless, I think that a demon lurking in the details spoiled the very good ideas and quite worthy implementation of the main part of the story. Of course, in the case of the Russian-language version, the translation and the voices of the actors played a role. But the developers - obviously did not have time to "comb" the game. Looking forward to the Silver Edition...

And all the troubles began, in my opinion, with Geralt's invitation to leading role. Again, I can well imagine what caused it. Probably, CD Projekt received its dividends. At the same time, I think that this decision greatly limited the flight of imagination of the plot developers - there were too many book tails to take into account. This is especially true, in my opinion, reflected in the game characters. Everyone who has already met Geralt - and a good half of the main ones - are required to respond accordingly, which greatly narrows the variability.

The story of the White Wolf has already been told and is the past. I don’t know about other fans of Sapkowski’s novels, but for the whole game I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I see a ghost in front of me. And the real Geralt remained in the boat forever. On the lake. Then on the river. On a fast flowing river. In the fog... The Witcher deserves rest, and I would like peace to be granted to him. This, and nothing else, is my desire!

Ratings

Graphics: 85%
Sound: 90%
Game process: 80%

General impression: 90%

I was going to write this text a couple of months ago, right after the GDC, but as usual I dragged it out, and then I went on vacation to Italy (almost like your Toussaint). For the Witcher, during this time, the second big addition managed to come out, which you should definitely take in a physical box with cards for Gwent. It's funny to remember, but initially the Wild Hunt could have passed me by at all, if not for the recommendation of a friend - I always considered it bad manners to enter the series from the license plate without going through the original. It's good that he followed his advice. As a result, the triquel simply riveted to itself, and a hundred hours flew by without noticing Geralt's adventures, no less. Naturally, having found several reports from the guys from CD Projekt in the GDC 16 schedule, I simply could not deny myself the pleasure of visiting them.

Marcin Iwinski during a speech

Value your fan

Marcin Ivinsky, CEO of the company, captivates the listener with his directness and openness. His approach, his attitude towards the players is surprising for the present time, when publishers usually see gamers not as a loyal audience, but as dumb cash cows. Marchin, on the other hand, tries to distance himself as much as possible from the practices of offices like EA and Ubisoft, and for this alone you want to shake his hand. Why does he do this? Probably, the background is affecting: in his youth, Ivinsky traded in computer games and played a lot that passed through his hands. At first I was fond of the Spectrum and Amiga, then the IBM PC. Actually, based on a couple with a friend, CD Projekt was originally engaged in the distribution of discs, hence the name so strange for the studio. Working with gamers and being a former gamer, he understands the fans of the series and their expectations very well. To prevent the army of fans from turning into an army of haters, Marchin at the GDC gave three simple advice novice (and not only) developers.

Marchin (on the left in a blue shirt) in the 90s

First you need to make a good, exciting and technically well-tailored game. Yes, it’s a bit obvious in the spirit of the captain, but it’s true: if a developer sees problems in his product and is not sure of its quality, then buyers will also notice this, which will ultimately affect revenue. Suppose everything is in order with the quality, then the only thing left is to simply and clearly explain the game to the players, “sell”. Very often this is a stone in the garden of my marketing colleagues, who are not able to convey a simple idea “what is this game about and why is it better than others of the same kind”. The problem is especially acute for newcomers who have never heard of the Witcher universe. Well done CD Projekt, resorted to understandable analogies - they described the Witcher as Skyrim with Game of Thrones sauce, emphasizing that the local open world is larger than in the creation of Bethesda, and the intrigues are often worse than the novels of George Martin. It sounds, you see, tempting.

The third tip I liked the most: don't try to fuck your fan. Don't lie to him. Don't be an idiot. Make two editions per platform, a regular edition and a collector's edition, ditching extra steelbooks, digital deluxes, and more. Release the collector’s edition in a very small edition so that it quickly sells out on pre-orders: there is nothing worse than collectibles lying around on sales. Have you noticed that in the box even the standard edition of the same PS4 put as many things as no other game has? There, the box doors barely close. In addition to a full-fledged paper manual, there is a high-quality map, stickers, a small brochure with a brief description of the universe, a soundtrack CD and a flyer with thanks from the developers. How many teams even put a piece of paper with the word "thank you" instead of the words "buy a season pass"?

You better not say

By the way, about downloadable content. Here, Marcin doesn't miss a chance to give a hearty kick to the greedy EA, whose Battlefront has less content than some free-to-play shooters. It's no secret that the trouble with the current DLC is the disproportion between price and content - they take 25 bucks for a season pass, but give a couple of amateur mods. Or they try to heat up their hands on banal skins and blaster-blowers, cutting or blocking files already written to disk (remember Goro in MK X). The creators of The Witcher do not follow destructive trends and understand all sorts of pleasant small bonuses as DLC - additional maps, quests, weapons, armor, costumes - which should be given to players for free. In our case, there are as many as sixteen such bonuses. The matter is not limited to DLC alone: ​​in the first six months, the game received 10 technical patches. There are notable performance improvements across all platforms, and Xbox One owners get the long-awaited 1080p support. At the request of the players, an alternative control scheme was also added.

In addition to small add-ons (what an ancient word!) There are two major add-ons - "Hearts of Stone" and "Blood and Wine". This is AAA content that is as similar as possible to the main game, only on a smaller scale, and now it’s no longer a shame to take money for it. However, "smaller" on the Marchin scale means 10-20 hours per adventure - some games have a shorter main campaign.

Listening to the CEO's speech, I caught myself thinking that I had not seen such high-quality PR and communication for a long time, although there was no need to invent anything. It is enough to communicate directly with the audience, avoiding PR agencies, to speak with it in an understandable and plain language and ask for forgiveness if you suddenly screwed up. Fuck-ups inevitably happen, and fans are not stupid - they will understand if they honestly explain the reasons for certain actions. Ivinsky did this during the downgrade scandal: at some point, the game stopped looking like a demo from E3, the draw distance and landscape detail deteriorated. I had to tell you that when assembling the demo in the build, there are still no dozens of NPCs, no open world, no dynamic weather, and a bunch of everything else that loads the hardware. Therefore, the closer the project is to the final stage, the more it differs from the demo from exhibitions, and not in better side. And I must say, almost all the fans accepted the message. The negative was minimal.

Pay attention to Igromir in the list of events

By the way, the studio did the same with the dissatisfied PS3 owners, who at one time did not receive the second part, unlike the owners of the Xbox 360. Then Marchin said that his team did not have time to make a fast and high-quality port due to the architecture of the Japanese console. As a result, he decided not to waste resources and focus on the Wild Hunt. That is, the company could make a PS3 version, but this would mean a shift in the timeline in the development of the continuation, which the management was not ready to go for. By the way, it’s also a completely right thing to do, although as a sleepyboy I should now be screaming and throwing lightning.

Dialogue system

Let the people from CD Projekt know how to communicate, they wouldn't have succeeded if the Witcher wasn't such a cool game. What makes it a great game is the storyline. And since The Witcher is entirely built around the plot, where you and I make important choices from time to time, dialogues become the key tool of the storyline. The level of emotional attachment to the characters depends on the staging of conversations, and therefore they are delivered simply amazingly.

Our regards to good director and producer Todd Howard

The mechanics behind the dialogue system surprised even seasoned developers. Behind me sat a delegation from Wargaming, and their only words were the regular “fuck!”. Since the days of the Assassins of Kings, the system has been polished so that Fallout directors can collectively go and kill themselves against the wall. Some scenes are so cinematic that they seem to be rendered cutscenes in which the control is completely given to the player. The director was Peter Tomsinsky, who shared his know-how with the audience.

The main principle that the team adhered to was less text, more emotions in the frame. Believe in emotions. This is how it turns out that in the Boston Wasteland, bobbleheads communicate with each other, and in Geralt and Triss they seem to be living people. There is only one problem with this approach: there are over 35 hours of chatter in the game, and even an army of animators is not enough to render them all at the proper level. It will also not work to use motion capture for such purposes, because the cutscenes created in this way are expensive, and even completely devoid of interactivity. Therefore, Peter refused cutscenes - for 1463 dialogues there are only 248 screensavers (2.5 hours instead of 35). Instead, an elegant solution was devised.

The step-by-step process of creating each dialog looks like this

Any dialogue, as expected, begins with a script. When the text is ready, the scriptwriter determines a specific place for it in the quest or world. Then the dialogue designers are connected to the case, who assemble the scene in a special editor.

It looks like this. Imagine a set of Lego bricks. With the same set of cubes, you can collect completely different things, and if there are really a lot of elements, then the pure options that can be collected grow in progression. Having set themselves the goal of making cutscenes indistinguishable from cutscenes, the team began to think about how to achieve this with one package of standard animations. To begin with, there should be a huge number of these animations - in total, 2400 blanks turned out. The editor allows you to control individual parts of the body, set the line of sight and change the pose of any NPC in every possible way, choosing them from a bunch of presets. But then the interesting begins.

All the events of each conversation - movements, changing positions, choosing an answer, and everything else - are tied to replicas. Until the conditional Yen finishes her phrase, the camera does not change its angle, Geralt does not hug her, and the third interlocutor does not approach the heroes. Some triggers work more cunningly and twitch at the moment when the character speaks, say, a third of the phrase. This is how localization problems are solved: when translated into French, the replicas will turn out to be a little longer, and the whole scene must be rebuilt taking into account this feature. By the way, about the actors - at this stage there is no studio voice acting yet, so the designer himself reads the script into the microphone or drives the text into the speech synthesizer. After all the characters are voiced by the actors, the new files are loaded and the dialogue with all the markers is automatically updated. In the editor, the process is presented in the form of layers, each of which contains its own type of events and pulls the next ones. Visually, it resembles programs for working with sound and video.

Editor

At the end, the so-called polishing takes place: effects are added, lighting is calculated taking into account different weather and time of day. So that the NPCs do not accidentally get stuck between Geralt and other heroes, they are surrounded by an invisible wall. As you can see, the process is quite laborious, especially if you repeat it one and a half thousand times. Therefore, CD Projekt came up with another solution, quite unusual - they created a dialogue generator! Yes, the vast majority of conversations in the game are generated using a generator. It sounds scary, but in practice, the tool is a set of universal templates. Having chosen one, the designer just needs to change a couple of animations, set the light / camera, load the replicas, and you're done! Due to the customization of the elements, the player will not even notice that over and over again the communication of the White Wolf with the surrounding people is built according to the same scheme. Peter demonstrated the system in action, creating a completely new dialogue in just 2 minutes. Modular design - a single block whose interchangeable elements mimic diversity - is often used in game development. Similarly, level designers in Fallout 4 made destroyed houses and dungeons: locations consist of the same "cubes", but replaceable walls/floor/ceiling help visually give out dozens of different rooms. Only 15 variants of holes in the walls were drawn.

Mass production gives way to painstaking manual labor when you need to build a really cool stage, for example, dancing with Shani in "Hearts of Stone". At these moments, the developers mixed both approaches: part of the scene was filmed using traditional motion capture, and the other (interactive) was done in the dialogue editor, so that the player still had the opportunity to choose answers. But since this path is very labor-intensive, they did not abuse it. According to Tomsinsky, the time frame did not allow the implementation of many interesting features anyway. At the moment he is working on Cyberpunk 2077, and something tells me that everything will be fine with the production there too.

Following the trail of the wolf, I will go into blizzards

The Witcher is doing well with sound. The game has one of the most powerful and original soundtracks of recent years, and the point is not only that its authors turn to folk Slavic motifs. As a general rule, games don't risk vocals unless they're talking about the title theme or credits song. The actions of Marcin Przybylovic, the sound engineer and composer of CD Projekt, look all the more bold. The main idea was to make the fights and journeys of the hero epic. And I must say, the result exceeded all expectations - chopping enemies to the tunes of Percival soloists, you feel a surge of incredible steepness. It is no coincidence that this work was nominated for a BAFTA award, and more than 50 covers of songs (and especially The Wolven Storm) have already been made, including the amazing option from the famous Maluki. The sound in The Witcher 3 is so monumental that it had to be freelanced by yet another composer, Mikolay Stroinsky, to create it. Together with Marchin, they filled Geralt's world with sounds.

Pshybylovich (left) and Stroinsky (right)

The role of the main performer went to the group Percival, known for their love of medieval music. According to Marcin, who received a professional musical education, it was not easy to work with self-taught musicians. The first few days in the studio turned out to be a waste of time - the guys spoke different languages, and it was difficult for the composers to explain what exactly they wanted to get out of it. They wanted to give traditional Eastern European motifs a modern sound, but something came out wrong. Pshybylovich fell into despair: the direct task of the sound director is to brief the musicians, and just at this moment he completely skidded. As a result, he decided to hold several sessions in a free format: the group played what they wanted, and the director directed their efforts in the right direction, setting the tone - now we have a fierce battle with the griffin, and now the hopelessness and anxiety of the Velensky swamps. The focus was deliberately shifted from the orchestra to the solos of individual members, and as a result, leitmotifs became the basis of the soundtrack. Having got a taste, Percival produced so much material that it was more than enough for themes and tunes for taverns, and there was still more left over. The specificity of recording during such improvisation sessions lies precisely in not being killed by the amount of content produced, because both studio rental and subsequent mastering cost a lot of money. By the way, the team did the mastering in the USA.

Fun fact - when performing Slavic music, neither Percival nor the other involved musicians used Slavic instruments! The Persian bağlama comes from Turkey, the kemancha has Arabic and Greek roots, the predecessor of the violin renaissance fiddle sounded in the halls of Western Europe, and its mixture with zombies called haychak is common in Iran and Pakistan. Robert Jaworski, the leader of another Polish band Żywiołak and who has already worked with CD Projekt on the second part, plays a custom hurdy-gurdy - a favorite of minstrels in England, France and Italy of the 13th century. Even the bowed gusli, which Robert also handles well, have nothing to do with the harp we are used to.

Above - baglama and kemenche, below - gaychak and bow harp

A separate challenge for the team was the adaptive music system - when the melody suddenly changes depending on the player's actions or trigger activation - as well as the translation of Priscilla's song into seven different languages. Personally, I experienced considerable surprise when Tsiranochka sang in Russian during her performance at the tavern, while the verses fell on the notes as if everything was originally written in Pushkin's language. The authors managed to achieve an authentic sound even in Japanese, which goes against the whole style of the game - that's really respect! Those who wish can rate all versions on YouTube. And thanks again for the CD with music even in the standard console edition: the CD just didn't come out of the player in the living room for several days.

It's a bit unfortunate that the team stops working on the series indefinitely. Still, the heroes of this saga are so fond of that they don’t want to leave. But the desires of the developers are also understandable - forces are thrown into a new IP, you need to prove to everyone that you can not only in an RPG in the world of Sapkowski, but also in something else. It is possible that in the future, CD Projekt will return to the story of Geralt, and we will again plunge into intrigue, adventure and romantic, ahem, scenes with beautiful sorceresses. However, I didn’t really dive into the add-ons, as I already started new game + with a pumped-up character - on the first run I had the worst ending due to a couple of things that were not at all obvious, so it’s time to try a different path, this time with a guide. Well, then I'll start with hearts and wine. I just have a bottle of Italian left from my vacation.

Have you ever heard of a computer game becoming a national treasure? And there are precedents. When US President Barack Obama visited Poland in 2011, Prime Minister Donald Tusk gave him the second edition of The Witcher as a gift ( The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings) produced by local studio CD Projekt RED. And if you are not ashamed to present a video game to a visiting president, this is saying something.

Now on the market, CD Projekt RED is valued at $250 million, and more recently, it was barely making ends meet. It was nearly bankrupted by the first publishers, followed by the second and the third trying to do it. But a small Eastern European studio fought giants gaming industry to the last drop of blood, and in the end there was a denouement worthy of Hollywood in its best traditions - the titans themselves became bankrupt, and the small studio became a titan.

How to survive in the global gaming industry? Why in no case can you share the rights to your development? How to lose in court but win in business? About this - on the example of the story of one of the most famous games "The Witcher", which was told by the co-founder of the CD Projekt RED studio Marcin Ivinsky at the EastLabs seminar during his visit to Kyiv.

"Even though we were a 'promising young studio' when we made the first The Witcher, most distributors told us, 'Most likely you won't finish this game - it's very difficult and expensive.' It was difficult for us to find partners because CD project RED didn't have any "biography". And yet, we have sold more than 5 million copies of The Witcher, which is a very strong result. For the first The Witcher, we received over 200 awards from various media - and this is the clothes that you will be greeted in the market.

Now that we are preparing the release of the third and final The Witcher, publishers are ready to offer us Better conditions. We recently signed an agreement with Warner Games to distribute The Witcher 3 in America and Canada, and now we are in the process of negotiating with a distributor in Europe, who, let's say, are very willing to sell our game. How we achieved this and what we went through, you will find out immediately after watching the trailer The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Two Polish schoolchildren and a computer

Even as a schoolboy, I adored computer games. But in the late 80s and early 90s, it was unrealistic to buy a computer in Poland - my father brought it from Germany. True, there was only a kilobyte of memory - not enough to run even the most primitive game. Later, I was given a dream computer, which came with a recording device - I could not only play, but also copy games from other people's cassettes. I became a regular at the computer market, which looked like the most ordinary bazaar, but instead of watermelons, they sold cassettes with computer games.

In the computer market, I made new acquaintances, exchanged games - and, without realizing it, acquired the first business connections and business experience.

I once saw a column in a popular video game magazine in which readers offered to trade their game for someone else's. I had nothing to offer in return and I simply asked one reader and Greece to send me his game. And he sent. No one in all of Poland had such a game - except me. I became a local celebrity and immediately knew what to do. Once a month I sent the Greek two cassettes - one for him and the other for myself - and received games in return. So I became the main supplier of games in the Polish market. And when I had time, I went to school.

It was at school that I met my future business partner Michal Kichinski. He had a small car that looked like a Ukrainian Cossack, our first means of transporting game cassettes for sale. Immediately after graduation, Michal and I decided to open a company. I already had international connections in the gaming community, I took discs with games to Poland - first two copies, then 5, then 10.

Michal was the marketing director. He was engaged in selling games on the market out of the box on Saturday, and on Sunday he came to my house, and we divided the money into three equal parts: this is for me, this is for you, and this is for our future business - in the bank.

In 1994, we decided to register a company - this is how the CD project appeared. We started translating games into Polish language– and it immediately paid off. So the sales of the Polish version of one of the most popular games at that time broke all records: on the first day we sold 18 thousand copies - it was hard to believe! Usually we sold 500-1000 copies… The business started to develop rapidly and bring in a good income.

The Witcher: All or Nothing

Eight years later, we founded a game development studio, a dream come true. It was financed by the income that the CD project brought. We quickly attracted talented programmers to the team - it was enough to hint to them that it would be a role-playing game based on the popular series of novels by Andrzej Sapkowski. I myself read The Witcher at school, and it was a catharsis. We were very lucky that Sapkowski himself was inspired and supported us.

The first development office was very modest - we placed a team of four people in the warehouse of our distribution company.

From the very beginning, we set ourselves one key rule: all rights to our games will belong only to us. For us, it was an expression of our own independence. When working on a game, it often happens that you run out of money, deadlines expire, and mistakes that are essentially inevitable seem fatal. Then the publishers say, "We'll give you more money and time if you give us the rights to the game." And then they start dictating what your game should be, what creative decisions you should make. If you initially develop a game to order, you know that you will have to give it away and do not worry about it. But if the game is entirely yours, it is very painful when people who are far from the concept begin to reshape it.

When we showed the publishers of The Witcher 1, they told us that, according to audience polls, the best RPG character is a female elf.

Links in progress

We had seven years in the gaming business behind us. We knew how to sell games, but we didn't know how to make them. A developer came to our team with his own engine, on the basis of which we built a prototype of The Witcher in a year. With this prototype, we traveled to every European publisher we knew. And as a result, we received only two emails, where they very politely explained to us that we were not yet mature.

Today I understand why we were not taken seriously. We wrote that our team consists of seven professionals, and we plan to increase it to 15 people in order to complete the project. And when we actually finished the project, we had 80 specialists in the team, and not one was superfluous ...

After the failure of the "Big European Tour", we decided to abandon work on our own engine and try to license someone else's already finished one. At that time, there were no options for role-playing projects on the market - and still are not. Fortunately, we knew BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zychuk, who, by the way, have Ukrainian roots. We translated and localized their products for the Polish market. We asked to license their Aurora engine for a small upfront fee and a modest percentage of future sales, and BioWare's production director, who was sympathetic to our youthful ambitions, agreed.

BioWare founding fathers (in 1995) Ray Muzyka and Greg Zichuk left the company in 2012 under pressure from the board of directors.

Do not subscribe to slave conditions!

The retail launch of the first The Witcher was a very important part of the publication. We ourselves covered only the Polish market, where CD Project was already a serious publisher, and the Russian market, where we had friends for a long time. In the rest of the world, we still had to find a publisher, and we spent two years looking.

I have often been asked why you chose Atari as your partner, which has a reputation for being far from the best publisher. I will answer this way: if you do not like what you have, then you need to try to love it. Besides Atari, we had two other offers, and we chose the best option.

I had experience in negotiation, licensing, drafting contracts, but in reverse - I was a publisher and my partners were developers. We negotiated the terms with Atari by talking to them at their head office in France - in my favorite city of Lyon. Soon you will understand why your favorite ... And we agreed that we will give them the rights to distribute the game in America and Europe, retaining all rights to the game, and the company will pay us an advance. Soon we received the first version of the cooperation agreement, in which it was written that Atari, roughly speaking, owns everything, but nothing to us.

And when we asked why there was such a difference between the oral agreement and the terms of the contract, they dismissed us, saying that the lawyers had twisted something of their own legal, let's sign it and start working. This is by far the most common ploy that distributors use in the gaming industry.

Fortunately, I found a good lawyer in America, with whom we rewrote almost every paragraph of the contract - it took half a year to negotiate! But we still missed something. It was a point about Atari's right to the first offer: if we make another game in the Witcher series, we will have to first offer to distribute it to Atari. They may or may not make us an offer - then we are free to go to other publishers. But having collected the best offers on the market, we must again return to Atari, and if they agree to the same conditions, we will be obliged to publish from them. And if they do not agree, we are free.

First failure in Lyon

After the successful release of the first The Witcher, we started developing a console version called Rise of the White Wolf. But I would call this part of our biography The Rise and Fall of the White Wolf. Imagine us - young developers who have just released their first game. She is super-successful, we all proved our worth. And then Atari comes to us and says, they say, guys, let's release The Witcher for consoles - the market is waiting! But our Aurora engine was only suitable for PC, and we ourselves would not have mastered the porting. To which the Atari ambassadors responded: “Not a problem, find some third party developer who will port you, we will finance it - here is a list of developers we recommend. And then, when we launch the game, we will share with you a very interesting royalties. Well, how can you resist?

One of the studios they recommended was located in that same Lyon. We did not know then that this studio had just lost its contract and was looking for a job. In principle, we didn’t have any more options - all the other studios with which we talked were either busy or incompetent, or this project did not fit their format ... And we signed an agreement with WideScreen Games about what they would do us porting, and with Atari that they will publish this version. Thus, we found ourselves in the middle between these two companies, taking all the risk for the obligation to bring the console version to the market. And we were sure that we could do it.

I was very proud of the deal with WideScreen Games - they accepted all my conditions. If I wrote in that contract that they all become slaves to us, WideScreen Games would most likely sign the contract anyway, because they didn’t read it at all.

The budget for porting was very high - a couple of hundred thousand euros. But after a few months, representatives of WideScreen Games came to us and said that they had run out of money. We sent ten of our developers to Lyon, among whom was Adam Badowski (today leads the CD Projekt Red development studio). They helped WideScreen Games complete the vertical slice of the game, we pushed them back and gave them more money. The cut was necessary so that Atari could show the console Witcher to their partners at ATARI LIVE, which brought together representatives of the gaming industry from all over the world. Everyone liked the teaser.

A week after the press conference, WideScreen Games came to us with a statement that they again need to push back the deadlines and increase the budget. In fact, they blackmailed us. Either the game that was shown to everyone will not be, or we will give them more time and money. At that time, there were already 15 of our employees in Lyon, but we sent additional specialists there to check what was happening there and say if WideScreen Games could finish this game at all. As a result, one said: “They can, but it will take not five months, as we agreed, but a year.” The second said: "Not a year, but a year and a half." And the third said: "A year and a half, and we will need to send 30 more of our employees to them." We looked at each other and decided to kill the project.

Soon WideScreen Games went bankrupt, and one of their employees told us that when they signed the contract, they had no idea how they could fulfill its conditions. They didn't have any plan or strategy to implement the project.

Better death than selling rights

In 2008 there was a crisis. Our profitable distribution business in Poland yesterday began to suffer losses. And then a notification comes from Atari about the violation of the terms of the contract - since we did not make the console version of The Witcher, they demand compensation from us.

Our core business is losing money, we just shut down the development of the console version, which we spent a lot of money on, and our publisher wants to collect several million euros from us.

We flew to New York, where Atari's office was located, to sort things out. Of course, during the negotiations, they never once or twice talked about transferring the rights to the Witcher API to them, but we fought to the death. After all, if Atari, which was a public company, went bankrupt, it would have to report to shareholders that it wrote off several million euros in losses.

If someone owes you $20, they owe you. But if he owes you $1 million, he is your partner. We were just such a partner, and it was not profitable for Atari to drown us.

In exchange for debt relief, we offered them distribution rights for The Witcher 2. Only on PC. Only in North America. This sacrifice allowed us to retain digital rights. We paid off our debt and losses in full and Atari filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. And now they owe us a quarter of a million dollars, of which we will receive a maximum of 25 thousand - we will write off the rest as losses. This is how the wheel of fortune spins.

All your own and nothing else

At some point, we decided to make our own engine. By that time, we had already reworked Aurora so much that about 10% of the native code and 90% of our own remained there. We ran into a limitation on how much it can be modified. Before developing our engine, we considered everything that is on the market, but nothing came up. Then we started doing two things in parallel: firstly, we continued to develop the second The Witcher on the Author engine, and secondly, our own multiplatform engine so that the game would be released immediately on both PC and consoles.

It was not easy, but, as it turned out, a very profitable decision. We completely got rid of the problems and risks associated with using someone else's technology. Today, we have a separate team to develop the engine, and the creative team is no longer forced to be distracted when something does not work. We are now planning to start licensing our engine to other external teams.

Second failure in Lyon

The distributor of the second The Witcher on the PC platform was Namco Bandai. They, like Atari, had the right to the first offer under the contract. When we brought The Witcher 2 to Namco Bandai for consoles, they didn't make us the best deal. We found another publisher with more interesting conditions - it was THQ, and went with their offer to Namco Bandai, as the contract obligated us. They had ten days to either accept the terms of the deal or refuse and let us work with THQ in peace.

On the last day, Namco Bandai sent us to Los Angeles, where we went to the E3 exhibition, a four-page mini-contract that they had already signed. But they changed one point at the very end. We showed this contract to our American lawyer, and he said that Namco Bandai did not accept the terms, and we are free to work with whoever we want.

Unfortunately, we did not pay attention to the fact that at that moment Namco Bandai changed their lawyer - even then they began to prepare for the lawsuit.

A week after THQ announced that they would distribute the console version of The Witcher 2, Namco Bandai filed a lawsuit against us in the wonderful city of Lyon. This was the place of jurisdiction of our contract with them. We barely had time to find a French lawyer - in the summer the whole of France simply does not work, and we hardly managed to persuade her to cancel her vacation in order to go to work for a few days for 350 euros per hour.

The change in the contract was that Namco Bandai deleted from their version of the contract the clause in which THQ waived the right to the first offer. Deleted because THQ never had that right, so they couldn't waive it. The problem is that the French court is treating this situation as if Namco Bandai didn't strike anything out. We should have immediately turned to a French lawyer, because the Americans have a different interpretation. We won a few small moments, but Namco Bandai completely blocked the release of the console game.

However, this fighting behavior on the part of a small Eastern European company contributed to the fact that we began to be respected in the gaming industry and since then they have been much less likely to try to cheat.

When we told THQ that Namco Bandai had won the process and the console The Witcher 2 was blocked, they, without investing a dime in the promotion of the game at that time, demanded damages from us. And again we were lucky - soon THQ went bankrupt. But after we went to court with Namco Bandai, our relationship returned to normal. And we are very pleased with the way they sold the console version of The Witcher 2. You never know where you will find, where you will lose.

Last trade

Meanwhile, Atari's distribution arm was slowly falling apart. We suggested that they transfer the rights to a third party - they agreed and offered to negotiate with Warner Games. It was in September - this is the end of the third quarter. For Atari, which was still a public company, it was extremely important to close the deal before the end of the month in order to include it in the report, they say, look, we made money!

We flew to America for a week to meet with representatives from Warner Games to work on a deal every day during the last week of the expiring quarter and have time to close it before the end of October. We started by discussing the conditions and realized that things were moving very slowly. For every question we asked, Warner Games replies, “We need to talk to management.” We outlined the terms to them on Monday, until Wednesday they spoke with the authorities, called us on Thursday and said: "Well, let's discuss everything again." We only had one day left to close the deal. On Friday morning we all sat down at a large long table and paragraph by paragraph began to discuss the contract.

I caught a cold and started coughing every 30 seconds, our vice president of business development CD project Red Michal Nowakowski by six in the morning on Saturday, when we were ready to shake hands, just leaned back and snored, and our lawyer a little did not cry and begged to go home, but I forced him to make additional changes.

In the end, we still managed to close this deal and were very pleased with it - Warner Games sold the second Witcher well in America.

The Witcher 3: no more mistakes!

We are currently working on the third Witcher. When we started development, we said to ourselves: if on the first and second we studied and filled all possible bumps, then on the third everything will be as it should be. We decided to make a large-scale announcement - we offered the material to the most famous gaming publication GameInformer with an audience of 8 million people. They agreed, sent their journalists to Warsaw, prepared a lot of material and put The Witcher on the cover.

Cover of GameInformer, February 2013

It was a great moment for us to start distribution. The third cross-platform "The Witcher" was officially announced at the Microsoft E3 conference. It's a great honor when a game is personally presented by the manufacturer of the device on which it will run. There were more people than we were prepared to receive. At E3 we had a closed room for 40 people. There were about 60 people packed into it, and a line of people wishing to get to our presentation lined up outside the doors.

We are very focused on quality. This is the only way to get a high rating on special forums. Metacritic scores are extremely important in the gaming industry. We had more than 180 reviews, most of which exceeded 80 points - this is a good result.

It's not as important what you really do or how good a studio you are as how you score on Metacritic. It is on the basis of this assessment that the decision will be made which studio will release your game.