RandomNPC – Video Game RPG Reviews, Editorials, and Features

When I dropped by the Atari booth, Tom Ohle gave me a little walkthrough of some of the improvements they made for The Witcher Enhanced edition. He said that they had listened to the feedback from fans and media and really wanted to fix the problems people had.

First and foremost, 5000 new lines of English dialog were recorded. For instance, fans said they did not like the way Leo was portrayed as a bit of of a girlyman, so in the Enhanced version, he’s manlier. CDProjekt also rerecorded the German voice track from scratch, and now gamers will have access to all the available languages for both spoken dialog and subtitles.

The next major improvement comes by way of the Gesture system. NPCs will no longer be as static as they were before, and movements will be more natural. To do this, 200 new motion captures were recorded to improve things. To further improve characters, they will look different every time they load. Clothing for NPCs is randomized, so every visit to a town will be different. The randomization also applies to monsters of the same type, which should help reduce a bit of the monotony of grinding.

Aside from the language fixes, the most sought-after improvement was for the inventory screen. Now, it’s split between items and alchemy ingredients. Items will sort and stack automatically, and potion recipes will let you know if you’re missing a certain ingredient. Tom joked that while the changes looked simple, there were over twenty forum topics just for these changes, so they were very necessary.

The last new change comes in looting. Previously, looting was done through a menu, but holding the control button while moving over a corpse will auto-loot it. This speeds up battle and prevents unnecessary menus popping up.

Not only that, the Enhanced edition features a short story written by the author whose work the game is based around. The box will also include a soundtrack CD and a CD of music inspired by the soundtrack.

The final bit of news was that the Enhanced edition will basically replace the regular version at retail. It will not be more expensive when it hits shelves, and the good news for fans that already own the game is that the upgrades will be a free download.