The Witcher Remake – is it a good idea? (pic: CD Projekt)
A reader thinks remaking the first The Witcher game is a mistake and advises CD Projekt to concentrate on new titles instead.
People have been complaining about a lack of new game announcements for most of this year and yet suddenly some publishers are trying to make up for it all on their own. We’ve had four new Silent Hill games announced, six new Assassin’s Creed titles, and five new projects from CD Projekt.
One of these is a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, while the others are a new IP and three new Witcher games. One of those is the start of a new trilogy, one is some kind of 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 was 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 will never have played the other game and just assume it was similar to The Witcher 3, but it’s really not. In fact, The Witcher 2 isn’t much like the third game either. Neither of the originals were open world and the only console version of either was an Xbox 360 port for The Witcher 2 that nobody ever seems to have played (including me).
Having played the original The Witcher is what made me very cautious of picking up the third game, but the buzz around it was so strong I couldn’t stop myself, and I’m glad because it’s a great game. But the first one… let’s put it this way, if you thought the combat was bad in The Witcher 3 then the first game is going to give you an aneurism.
The whole thing is really shoddily made, I assume on a very small budget, and feels incredibly amateurish – which again makes me surprised the third game turned out so well.
The tone of the game is more like Saints Row (the first one) than The Witcher 3, with a real edgelord feel, where everyone is an amoral monster looking out for themselves. Which may sound cool or something, but it’s not. It’s really tiring and makes the whole thing feel like it’s been written by an angsty teenage. A fault, I noticed, that could also apply to Cyberpunk 2077 at times.
As others have pointed out, it’s also creepily sexist at times, as Geralt tries to bed almost every woman he meets (all of who have gigantic breasts) with the player being rewarded with a laughably coy video clip if they do.
The only good bit are the dialogue options, which are the only part that’s in anyway 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, obviously you could make the argument that this is a remake and all that can be changed but ‘all that’ is basically the whole game. There’s literally nothing worth keeping. I don’t even remember what the story was, which shows how good it must’ve been.
Apart from warning people that they shouldn’t be expecting another The Witcher 3 experience, my other point is that publishers are getting silly with all these games they’re announcing. Even if they’re having some of them made by a third party, which is the case with The Witcher remake, that is far too many projects to keep track of at once.
Just look at the mess CD Projekt got themselves into with just one game, when it came to Cyberpunk 2077. And Konami hasn’t had any experience making or producing new games in a good decade or so. And anyway, do we really need half a dozen games in the same franchise, all at once?
At least one of CD Projekt’s games is a new IP but that’s literally the only one out 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 it.
By reader Cranston
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A reader thinks remaking the first The Witcher game is a mistake and advises CD Projekt to concentrate on new titles instead.