http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_witcher_2_assassins_of_kings/b/pc/archive/2011/05/09/step-into-the-world-of-the-witcher-2.aspx

Its interesting to see some real competition to Skyrim in those fields. CDProjekt is a young studio and yet they seem on the way to stand up right next to the Elder scolls series. What do you think?

the witcher is a linear game. yes, there are 'alternate' paths/endings to a degree but ultimately you will always end up in the same location. so, you cannot compare the 2.

In my opinion it is not the same thing. It is like Dragon age origins, trying to get depth and more, how to say, radiant or variable story telling but in Elder Scrolls, you make the story form the beginning your self. Not just choose from various options.

this one is open world. and the main quest in skyrim is just as linear. as long as there are stuff to do beside the main stroy its comparable. and in the witcher there are TONS of stuff to do beside the main story

@you dont make the story in elderscrolls the main quest is super static you finish quests one afther another

true. but once you finish the 'main quest' the game doesn't end.

and yes i know this version of witcher is an 'open' world. there is really not enough info to say whether it's AI is that sophisticated though. for instance, if a quest related npc dies, how does the witcher handle that or can a quest related npc even die in the witcher? in skyrim we've already been told that the radiant AI will 'assign' the quest related jobs of the npc to another npc if the main one dies.

If Skyrim is anything like Morrowind, or even Oblivion it will probably have a tonne of stuff besides the main story as well. Plus I've noticed that no gaming company has even made open world rpg's nearly as well as Bethesda. I doubt the Witcher 2 will succeed in toppling Skyrim. Will it be a different expeierence? Yes. Will it be as well fleshed out as Skyrim? Probably not, but we'll see when the time comes.

I have never played Witcher 2, but let me just say one thing. How the hell can we know if the story is better? We haven't played Skyrim and we know little about it... You cannot compare these things with such little knowledge. :/

How can you compare two games that haven't even been released yet?

The Witcher 2 looks great, and sounds great, it has some nifty features and better AI. BUT and heres the but BUT, the gameplay and combat of The Witcher 1 was terrible and morbidly boring and it was realy hard.

The movement was stiff and the controlls were awkward. Some animations would take too long to do and you have no defense against higher level enemies who will mow you down in a heart beat.

Slashing your sword a hundred times and doing little or no damage, while the enemies beat you over in just a couple of hits. Plus endlessly long combat with plants that spit poisonous barbs which kill you in seconds.

The other thing I hated abotu it was it forced you to use Alchemy to do anything. So you were endlessly picknig flowers and taking the remains of animals, but too much alchemy would kill you, so it was either a trade off between dieing by the sword or poisoning your self with toxins.

And the game is extremely repedative. because the very highly detailed areas you visit mean theres not many of them, so you will forever back track over the same area over and over again with many different quests all set in the same dungeon/cave.

I've seen those previews of The Witcher 2 and nothing has changed.

Silly OP, Witcher 2 doesn't have Radiant AI. That's something Bethesda created.

Oh and The Witcher also has a gambling dice poker game, in which the AI will cheat its ass off. Which will cause you to reload your game MANY times to beat certain oponents.

No. Plus, Witcher 2 is linear.

The previews of The Witcher 1 said you get to own and run your very own castle of Witchers. Actualy it was as half torn down castle which you did the tutorial in and never saw it again after that.

I liked the combat in the Witcher 1 but anyway they said they changed it for the second one so THIS has changed

For the alchemy well if you have read the novel wich came out waaay before the first game you would understand that its not only an integral part of the witcher life but also integral part of the story itself and the tradeoff thing you said is just a cool way to add gameplay



Radiant AI is just a term to say that the characters go on doing their life they did not CREATE it. they have their own code for it and so do The Witcher 2 watcher the videos i sent before posting

and so is Oblivion if you think about it. what choices there were in Oblivion? if you didnt follow the main quest or guild quest what there was else to do? go out in the forest and kill monsters. you can do the same in the witcher. you are realy one of the worse posters on the forum because you always come on topic and give straight opinions on wich you didnt do any research and dont know [censored] about. all you try to do is get your post count up

Can you find me one quote of this term outside of Oblivion? Radiant AI is a proprietary software of Bethesda. It is nice to know it became a general term though, perceived in minds of gamers.

You couldnt cahnge the difficulty of you realised it was too hard. If the game was getting too hard for you and you couldnt continue, the only way to make it easier was to start a new game.

The Witcher was very much like Gothic 3 in many respects. Except The Witcher runs alot better on your system.

Another thing I hated was there was absolutely no sense of exploration. Everything was in between invisible walls and you were stuck to one path. You couldnt just hop over a fense and do a little exploring, you had to go back and forth on the same path. Even when there was no natural barrier there were still lots of invisible walls confining you.

yea they invented the term but still its the same basic idea on a different software. make the AI live like they were actualy in a living world. just like in the videos i linked in OP

@Damuncha
Ok but the witcher is not a game for casual gamers unlike elder scrolls you have to live with your choice even if its the difficulty settings or how you play the game

Yes there was few exploration in the Witcher 1 even if there was a big world to discover and hundreds of hours of content but the Witcher 2 is open world. and this thread is about the Witcher 2 and CDProject being a young studio fastly getting better at making games

look for a moment, put the Radiant AI term out of your mind.

now

NPC's have a schedule, and they "look" like they are doing stuff so everything isnt static like an MMO ala Morrowind without mods

Gothic 3, old game, did this ages ago nothing new same for Fable 1, released HOW long ago?, nothing unique to Oblivion, and Todd in the usual bout of down playing Oblivion like all devs said.

the NPC's didn't do much of anything.


Skyrim me thinks changes that.

I've read plenty about Witcher 2 and I know you cannot go to every area of the game whenever you want. Therefore, it's not truly open world. Therefore, it's a dealbreaker for me.

I'm one of those who will play and hopefully enjoy both. I preordered Witcher and will preorder Skyrim when the collector's edition will come to light.

The Witcher is very promising in the videos, but in a few days we can play and test it for real. The AI in Skyrim could be better, but only of it is greatly improved over Oblivion's. In Witcher 1 the npcs were already doing jobs, running away from rain, commenting on the hero's appearance, and let's not even touch the choices and consequences or the taverns which were back then exactly what people want in 2011 in Skyrim: alive, crowded, noisy, with fire, musicians, fights and gambling. Bashing The Witcher for being story-driven and linear will not make it go away, the large majority of RPGs are that way.

Thats its. This thread is about the Radiant AI and Radiant Story and the witcher 1 already proven that they did a much better job at their own Radiant AI system than Oblivion did and as for Radiant Story i'm not so sure but choices have consequences in the Witcher 1 already and will in the second.

Again, Radiant AI is only used in Bethesda games. Yes, Witcher has its own system, but it's not called Radiant AI.

Okay whats your point of arguing just because of the terms used? what are you trying to do? just argue about the system themselves. the Witcher 1 has done much of a better job doing a Scheduled and Interactive AI than Oblivion did and witcher 2 is planning to do even better. When Radiant AI was presented first Todd Howard lied to the public and we didnt get what was said. If this is dont to the same extent this time it will be again worse than the Witcher 1 and even more than the Witcher 2. Therefore Bethesda will have been pwned by a studio's second RPG


Now stop using this argument. NO ONE cares if its not the same name for The Witcher's system.

What kind of silly question is this? We haven't even seen any of Skyrim's AI. All I've seen of The Witcher 2 is one trailer of the "living breathing" world or whatever, I don't know if that's all there is right now because I'm not really concerned by that game, but it barely looked different from Oblivion.

I don't see why you'd even be considering comparisons of the two when we haven't even seen what Skyrim has to offer in that area.

Nor do I really understand why people feel compelled to compare games in the first place and pit them against each other.