The Witcher: The First Wish

How in the goddamn hell is this rated lower than the fucking MLP fanfic?

The source material is, obviously, way more interesting, and I daresay it wasn't even butchered too much. I'm no "Witcherhead" but I read a couple of the books and played the games, and this story was mostly consistent in following the canon (even though it obviously invented the reason for the conjunction of the spheres).

I notice that the author REALLY loves implementing scripting in his games, so it's a shame that, as with most of his other works that I've read so far, the scripting is quite messy here. As the other comments have mentioned, you can get 8/9 powers by choosing to "stop" at the second location once you've got 5, then take the 3 from the next.

Now, you can obviously just not be "a little bitch" and keep 6, but there are bigger problems with the scripting. Namely, I got stuck in an infinite loop in the last world when the counter got to 25, and could not get out of it, other than by pressing back and choosing another route.

Scripting aside, I assume that the lower ratings are due to the whole "have to finish basically the entire game to get an endgame link" or the fact the author pumped out a lot of similar stories in a short amount of time.

I'd recommend to any potential readers to ignore all external information indicating that this game may suck, and play through it. The plot is alright, for the most part, but I did find myself getting bored during some of the "world-exploration"/side-quest stuff.

It more than makes up for it with the ending though, which I will not spoil, but I have to say I think it was quite well written, and if I wasn't a little bitch that took advantage of the scripting bug, I probably wouldn't have gotten the best ending.

*Spoilers begin*

After all who would want to talk to that fucking guy, when there are two seemingly better options, more suited for the combat situation you're going into.

*Spoilers end*

Dear prospective reader, if you have for whatever reason decided to embark on the dark path that is fanfiction, this is among the better ones I have read so far. Though I assume my experience was enhanced by liking the source material.

Definitely read this over the my little pony fanfic. Or the french Harry Potter ones.

6/8, but that's just to even out the rating a little bit. Realistically it's more of a 5, for the scripting bugs and the common grammar errors and typos.

I had several abilites, more than I technically should have, if the 6 abilities limit is actually a thing, to fight with the Bruxa. When the length of this game finally hit me, I ended up clicking the "Go Back" button several times to go to that battle and die. I killed myself to make the game end.

I don't have anything against long games, but I have something against prosaic ones. Maybe it was an issue of investment, I have a lot of trouble getting invested in reading something (particularly something this linear) when I could literally be reading about The Witcher in actual book form. Maybe there would be something to be said for something that provides an interesting interpretation, but there was nothing to interpret here. The story is written almost entirely in generic, technical information. There isn't any sense of immersion, mood, or implied feeling. This is a lot of words that make me feel nothing, and the onus of interpretation, I'm assuming, is on me. Maybe this would work if I were such a fan of The Witcher that I could genuinely imagine him being in all these situations, there were a few parts of the dialogue that felt a little wink-nudgy as if that is the target audience for this story. And maybe that's the case. I probably don't "get it".

We're given no shortage of information on what Witchers are and how the world works, but not any reason to care. No reason to feel like we're there. This game feels cranked out, too milquetoast to create any feeling of the moment, but too blow-by-blow and particular to be a summary. It's in this painful middle ground between something that technically works (even though certain game features sure don't) and something that's good.

I don't think that the author doesn't have any potential to make something good, but the way that this story feels so... Speedily done, without care, detail, or feeling, makes it feel awful to play. There's nothing wrong with something that doesn't have much description or immersion, but those games usually make up for it by their gameplay, their many paths, their humor, or SOMETHING, which this does not have. Something that makes it more than the sum of its parts, something that gives you anything in return for your time and investment. It feels untextured, like a proof of concept that might become a story someday. But right now, it isn't, so I'm unhappy with it.

What we have here is perfectly readable. It’s fairly descriptive and not overly cliché. It’s clear that the writer is practicing quite a lot and really making an effort to write something that will be enjoyable to read. Unfortunately characters are left mostly undeveloped and the story fails to deliver anything really surprising. I had the most fun playing with abilities, trying to see how wide the game is able to go. That seems to be what the writer wanted as the key feature.

The game needed more time and content. When a writer is spitting out games as rapidly as this one, I wonder how much better they might be if they slowed down and focussed on the details. The game feels incomplete and not all the features promised are really delivered on. Powers occasionally give a different path to the same destination so the game is ultimately very linear. Despite my best efforts my multiple playthroughs were ultimately very similar.

That concludes the summary of my thoughts. From here I’ll get a little more specific. This game is very front loaded. The intro goes on, hastily plugging names and information. I do not think it was the best course of action for the writer.

As long as this story intends to be a direct sequel to its source material, standing on its own isn’t practical. Pacing is the issue. In the first few pages I have half a dozen characters, several pieces of lore in play, and many character relationships -told- to me. I do not get the opportunity to settle into the world and discover it. The reader is rapidly tube fed information.

But how relevant is that information? To the story I mean? How often does being a witcher specifically ever come up? Couldn’t I be any generic hero type? The relationships we are told about don’t really impact the story. Once the reader gets out of the gate, very little of the front loaded lore ever matters. I’m not sure this benefited from being a fan-fiction. This may be because I am not familiar with the source material, but I felt like this was a pretty typical D&D fantasy. I wonder what the game might have been like in a world of the author’s own creation.

As for what we have, we begin our adventure with an interesting way of gaining perks, but I ran into some...problems. More on this later. I wonder if it would have been better to just select our perks in a character creation segment. The lore we get while picking up perks is inconsequential to the story. Next we arrive at the Rock themed level. Here we must discover who trained a pair of huge wild animals to chase Trolls so we can get to the bottom of who is ultimately responsible for breaking the King Troll’s crystal USB drives. This gets pretty silly.

The third world we visit is by far the best. The time mechanic was really interesting. The unfortunate thing is that we always either had the tools to survive, or didn’t. I would have liked a health mechanic. If there were a way to scrape by and be worn down by the environment, that would have added more weight to decisions. On the subject of mechanics...

There are some clunky link layouts. If I go to the mineral expert, for example, and I use “Empathy” the only link provided is “Talk to the other Trolls in the Kingdom.” I still need to talk to her about the tablet. So I’ll have to navigate back to her page again. This isn’t the only place it happens, but it’s only a minor annoyance. The way powers trigger on certain pages is also odd. Here is an example, on the page “follow the bird” If the player has the powers “Venom Quen” and “Aard Beam,” the same page will trigger for either power. The same page will also trigger if the player selects “Speartip Skewer” even though that power is not mentioned on that page.

It would be nice if pages “noticed” that you were returning to them. Each time you visit the “strange house” you have to have the same conversation with the godling before you can sleep until 7. It would have been cool if it had said, “So you return” or such. I thought I was going to tell the godling that I’d killed the dragon by the lake, but no new options opened.

The funniest death is when you attack a small bird and suddenly get jumped by an entire world of vampires. It’s pretty abrupt. On the subject of death links, pages that read: “Geralt used the wrong strategy on the creature,” with no further explanation are not good.

Ultimately the writing needed more polish before publishing. Too much effort was put in on the author’s part to have a finished product that hasn’t been adequately proofread and cleaned up. In addition to improving dialogue (not the writer’s strongest area) and the general flow of sentences (which were usually pretty good anyway) the author should have double and triple checked everything hinging on variables.

For example, I navigate to the page “Kaer Morhen Castle.” My number of skills is listed as 0. Good, I know what I’m working with here. I talk to Dandelion and go straight to the basement. I am told that I’ve learned a skill. Excellent, 1 down. I return to the page “Kaer Morhen Castle.” Inexplicably My number of skills is listed as 2. What is the second skill! I want to know!

By learning only 2 at one location then leaving, you can actually learn 8 abilities instead of 6. However, the text on “Kaer Morhen Castle” says you’ve only learned 6. Which powers dropped off, if any? Well, none. You can always pick up 8 of the 9 powers and use them throughout the story.

This author is putting out storygames very fast, I would encourage him to slow down and give each project more attention.

It's really a game based on false promises. It's odd that the description makes me more excited than the game itself, which is just a case of very bland writing.

Why should we friggin care about Geralt or Ciri??

Mizal suggested I read this one...I don't know much about the Witcher games but it seems fine as a normal fantasy story. There's a lot of things you have to do to advance to the winning end though which takes away some of the CYOA freedom aspect.

Anyway, nothing stood out too much either good or bad for me but it was a perfectly decent way to spend 20 minutes.