Nullity wrote on Nov 30, 2022, 13:53:
CDPR has a ton of developers who are proficient with their own REDengine, but may not have much knowledge regarding Unreal Engine. My totally unfounded and unverified, but completely logical and plausible theory is that this remake is a way for their army of devs to get familiar with UE5, while building and establishing their tools and techniques, in a way that they can profit from that time spent.

I'm all for it.

You're not entirely inaccurate. Plenty of studios do exactly this. Not certain that's what's going on here, but it would make sense. It is a kind of low risk way to learn the tools, and still make money on that learning, with about as ironclad a design document and template as you could ever hope for, so that you worry solely about technical decisions instead of creative and have a basis for comparison.

CDPR has a ton of developers who are proficient with their own REDengine, but may not have much knowledge regarding Unreal Engine. My totally unfounded and unverified, but completely logical and plausible theory is that this remake is a way for their army of devs to get familiar with UE5, while building and establishing their tools and techniques, in a way that they can profit from that time spent.

I'm all for it.

All of W1 issues were around the control scheme. It was released at a time when PC RPGs were transitioning between isometric and full 3D. CDPR tried to incorporate both views, but ended up making both less than ideal. It's thought it was fine once I got use to it.

The lore, story, and depth, however, were all top-notch. Later games actually become more simplified, less-RPG like, and more aimed at the console crowd.

Hope they let us jump over the little fences and mounds of dirt!

My depleted memory had me recalling that the first one was already open world. Obviously it wasn't. Now I'm thinking how drastic of a change that is. You are essentially entirely remaking the game.

Will they be updating the sex cards for a Witcher remake? If I have to make sweet love to a tree lady again, I want my baseball card.

MattyC wrote on Nov 29, 2022, 09:37:

Dash wrote on Nov 29, 2022, 05:46:
I'm just wondering how those who really enjoyed the game felt how it 'played'. I couldn't deal with it for more'n a hour or so. Felt clunk af.

While it wasn’t a perfect game by any means, the big issue for me was the camera. It was just bad. That and it was far enough into the era of 3d games with good camera mechanics that it really stood out as bad.

IIRC, I loved the zoom/mouse wheel function in W1. You could zoom in and out on Geralt to a great degree. I missed that flexibility and function in W1 when CDPR moved to W2 and beyond. But it's been many years since I last cracked open the game. It might be "bad" compared to much newer games that had a lot more hardware available to push, but at the time of the original release (2007?) It was a unique game that was a lot of fun in its day--and it put CDPR on the map pretty much.

phinn wrote on Nov 29, 2022, 07:28:
With how incredibly expensive and many years it takes to remake a game of this size I really don't see the point of this. Just make The Witcher 4 and move the franchise forward not backward. This doesn't need a remake.

I would rather have a Witcher 4 instead of this remake as well, but I'm sure this was a well calculated decision. 50 million (random guess) to remake Witcher 1, without having to also rewrite/ the game/write a a new game, or spend 200+ million to make a Witcher 4, and they will probably sell relatively similar anyway. Then of course, they could just make Witcher 4 after this remake anyway, and cash in on both.

I bought it new--I still have the DC of the original W1 and the DC for W2 installed, oddly enough. I bought W1 upon it's release (long before the "Enhanced" build and then the DC) and had no idea what to expect--I loved the game for a while! I'd never played anything quite like it at the time. Geralt's fighting styles took me a bit to get used to, but it came fairly easy. The music, atmosphere, all of it was great at the time. But these days, as others have mentioned, it just doesn't quite play...;)

An U5-engine remake will likely be something much different than the original. One trait I've always admired about CDPR is how they constantly keep building value and worth into their previously released software and IP. Several companies have followed suit since CDPR started their "Enhanced" and DC versions--when the rule before W1 was you make a game, you spend six months swatting bugs, and then you abandon it forever and move on. Gaming owes a lot to CDPR. I thought it was interesting, listening to a couple of the actual Witcher-series developers on the W3 Next Gen stream a couple of days ago, that they said getting back into Geralt was something they all pined for...;) Like the one dev said, "Geralt is the foundation of our company" (slightly paraphrased.) None of them were remotely tired of Geralt!

Dash wrote on Nov 29, 2022, 05:46:
I'm just wondering how those who really enjoyed the game felt how it 'played'. I couldn't deal with it for more'n a hour or so. Felt clunk af.

While it wasn’t a perfect game by any means, the big issue for me was the camera. It was just bad. That and it was far enough into the era of 3d games with good camera mechanics that it really stood out as bad.

With how incredibly expensive and many years it takes to remake a game of this size I really don't see the point of this. Just make The Witcher 4 and move the franchise forward not backward. This doesn't need a remake.

...Huh.
While I agree the first one needed a redo, I'm just wondering how those who really enjoyed the game felt how it 'played'. I couldn't deal with it for more'n a hour or so. Felt clunk af.

Works for me.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Nov 28, 2022, 21:18:
Remake?

Cool, I'm hoping for turn based, hex grid, collectable card base game mechanics in an 8 bit, pixelated art style.

Just yanking your chain. I don't give a fuck.

Demake.

Witchrim?

It needs to be remade, screw forced choices. The hell with both of you, not siding with either of you.
Now where the hell you hiding the women, don't make me hurt you!

Remake?

Cool, I'm hoping for turn based, hex grid, collectable card base game mechanics in an 8 bit, pixelated art style.

Just yanking your chain. I don't give a fuck.

Eh, we will have to see how well that all works. sounds good in theory. From what I recall you have the intro at the witcher base, then the village, then the swamps and a couple of other areas. Will they populate the map with content like witcher 3? how will it tie together? I hope they can pull it off.

So this is then a remake and not remaster. If they're changing the actual game completely, we're no longer remaster but remaking it. I'm down with that. I think I played Witcher 1 for 15 minutes after experiencing 3 and said, yeaaaah, nope, not for me nowadays. It may have been great for its time, but I couldn't deal with it. Now if they're remaking it with new mechanics, open world, and basically giving a vision of how they wish they originally wanted, I'm all down for that.

Kind of like George Lucas f'ing with the original Star Wars trilogy in the 90s and pissing people off because he added new scenes/effects since his movies were ahead of their times.