For the five or so hours I was able to play of The Witcher, I absolutely loved it. In fact, it was on its way to being the best PC RPG I’ve played since Baldur’s Gate II. Then it happened. Around five hours in I went to enter a dungeon and the game permanently crashed on me. Every time I’ve tried to play since, it crashes on the same loading screen and I can’t progress any further. I’ve tried reinstalling it, updating drivers, installing all the patches, but nothing has fixed it. It’s agonizing because it’s such a fantastic game and yet I can’t play it for some unknown reason.
Countless games have been ruined by bugs and lack of polish, it’s become almost commonplace nowadays, sadly enough. But what’s rare is a developer actually admitting they under-delivered and then listening to their fan base to go back and make things right. CD Projekt is one of these developers and they are making up for the unpolished The Witcher they first launched with a special Enhanced Edition, announced early this year and demoed for the first time at E3 as you can see in the video below:
The developer walkthrough only shows the improved dialogue and character differentiation system, but strangely fails to touch on many other far more important upgrades, such as load times promising to be 80% faster, an overhauled inventory system, and overall improved game stability. The Enhanced Edition will also come with the D’jinni Adventure Editor and two add-on adventures, and if purchased at retail it’ll come in a sweet box set containing the official soundtrack CD, a bonus CD of music inspired by The Witcher, an official game guide, The Witcher short story penned by Andrzej Sapkowski, a Making-of DVD, and a map of the game world. But best of all, if you don’t want to purchase the game all over again for all the extra pack-in goodies, anyone who bought and registered the original version will be able to download the Enhanced Edition completely free of charge!
Watch out for The Witcher: Enhanced Edition in September.
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition E3 2008: Developer Walkthrough HD [GameTrailers.com]