A reader thinks to recreate the first The Witcher game is a mistake and advises CD Projekt to focus on new titles instead.
People have been complaining about a lack of new game announcements for most of this year and yet some publishers are trying to make up for it all on their own. We have had four new Silent Hill games announced, six new Assassin’s Creed titlesand five new projects from CD Projekt.
One is a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, while the others are a new IP address and three new Witcher games. One is the start of a new trilogy, one is sort of a spin-off from an indie developer I’ve never heard of, and the other was, until this week, a complete unknown.
Then on Wednesday, CD Projekt revealed that the secret game is in fact a remake of the very first The Witcher game from 2007. But this is a terrible idea, because The Witcher 1 is a terrible game.
I’m assuming most people have never played the other game and just assume it was similar to The Witcher 3, but it really isn’t. In fact, The Witcher 2 doesn’t look much like the third game either. Neither of the originals was open world, and the only console version of both was a Xbox 360 port for The Witcher 2 that no one seems to have ever played (including me).
After playing the original The Witcher, I was very cautious about picking up the third game, but the buzz around it was so strong I couldn’t stop myself, and I’m happy because it’s a great game. But the first… let’s put it this way, if you thought the combat was bad in The Witcher 3, the first game will leave you with an aneurysm.
The whole thing is really sloppy, I assume on a really tight budget, and feels incredibly amateurish – which again surprised me that the third game turned out so well.
The tone of the game is more like Saints Row (the first) than The Witcher 3, with a real edgelord feel, where everyone is an amoral monster taking care of themselves. That might sound cool or something, but it isn’t. It’s really exhausting and feels like it was written by an anxious teenager. A bug, I noticed, which can sometimes apply to Cyberpunk 2077 as well.
As others have noted, it’s also eerily sexist at times, as Geralt tries to go to bed with almost every woman he meets (all of whom have gigantic boobs), rewarding the player with a laughably coy music video if they do.
The only good part is the dialogue options, which are the only part that is at least similar to the third game. Although the actual script is terrible and clearly not from the same writers as the later game. Oh, and it was super buggy, I definitely remember that.
Now you could of course make the argument that this is a remake and everything can be changed, but “all that” is really the whole game. There is literally nothing worth keeping. I don’t even remember what the story was, which shows how good it must have been.
Aside from warning people not to expect another The Witcher 3 experience, my other point is that publishers are going crazy with all these games they’re announcing. Even if they have some of them made by a third party, which is the case with The Witcher remake, that’s way too many projects to keep track of at once.
Just look at the mess CD Projekt got into with just one game when it came to Cyberpunk 2077. And Konami hasn’t had any experience creating or producing new games for a decade or so. And besides, do we really need half a dozen games in the same franchise, all at once?
At least one of CD Projekt’s games has a new IP, but that’s literally the only one of all the others I’ve mentioned. With the current craze for remakes, someone had to start scraping the bottom of the barrel and this is it. If I were CD Projekt, I’d just put the lid back on and forget about it.
By reader Cranston
The reader’s position does not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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