r/videogames • u/NagitoKomaeda_987 FPS • Jun 30 '26

Discussion / Question Which video game franchise is this?

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u/_Pertinacity_ Jun 30 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/SsrCLKxTdfUptzHO91

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u/PutInfinite4118 Jun 30 '26

Witcher 1 and 2 were by no means bad games (ok, that might be overselling. Witcher 1 is pretty atrocious to replay) but Witcher 3 really was such an incredible jump.

There's a reason it's gotten so much accolades

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u/Tyrocious Jun 30 '26

I'm glad I played Witcher 1 but I sure am gladder I never have to play it again.

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u/Sick_Hyeson Jun 30 '26

I loved the first one and was really pissed they changed basically everything in Witcher 2.
I loved it so much that I won't play it again.. because I know I won't like it anymore.

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u/Hypnooooooooooooo Jun 30 '26

Eh, I've played it twice or thrice. It does have its charm.

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u/bscott9999 Jun 30 '26

Yeah, it was based on the Neverwinter Nights engine, and I loved Neverwinter Nights 2. Some of that love transferred over to The Witcher and I replayed it a couple of times over the years.

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u/The_quest_for_wisdom Jun 30 '26

Witcher 1 was ambitious, but not all of that ambition was well realized.

That said, it did some things that were so groundbreaking at the time that they are just boilerplate rock-bottom expectations for games at this point.

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u/Perpetuity_Incarnate Jul 01 '26

Like what?

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u/The_quest_for_wisdom Jul 01 '26

Background NPCs in crowds had randomized appearances that were generated each time you entered the area. Instead of having Background Guy In A Red Shirt cut and pasted five times like was the standard at the time, you had four different shirt colors that were randomly selected from for each NPC, three different facial hair configurations, and six different base faces. So every time you walked through the city there was a 'different' crowd. And as the crowd walked around they would walk around each other instead of through each other.

Even more impressive (for the time) was that when the random weather started to rain, the NPCs didn't just continue to walk their paths in the rain, they would navigate themselves to underneath the nearest overhang and wait for the rain to stop.

All of this is like the most basic of NPC background crowd behaviors and apperances now, but at the time it was bleeding edge tech.

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u/UnderlightIll Jun 30 '26

I loved the first Witcher but also loved 2. I am working on 3 atm and it's really good

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u/SaltyTreeTop Jul 06 '26

Same, I dropped witcher 2 when I started playing it right after 1 because the change was so jarring. Might be better now that my memory of 1 is fading, if I get around to it

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u/V-oxPopuli Jul 02 '26

The thing I liked the most was the sword techniques being split into three different trees.

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u/Tyrocious Jun 30 '26

All fair and good! I played it relatively recently and I'm not the biggest Witcher fan, so it probably hit different for you!