The Witcher

Dessin conceptuel du logo de The Witcher

The Witcher est un jeu vidéo d'aventure/rôle développé par CD Projekt sorti en Novembre 2007. Basé sur l'univers médiéval-fantastique d'Andrzej Sapkowski, le joueur incarne Géralt de Riv, un Sorceleur (Witcher en anglais), un chasseur de monstres à l'époque médiévale. Le moteur du jeu est l'Aurora Engine de BioWare.

The Witcher raconte l'histoire de Geralt, un homme qui est devenu un "Sorceleur" — un chasseur de monstres errants dotés de pouvoirs surnaturels. L'action se situe dans un monde médieval que le jeu met en valeur par de nombreux détails visuels. La lumière naturelle varie selon le cycle de la journée en temps réel, et ces transitions (jour/nuit) enrichissent l'ambiance du jeu. Le temps peut dynamiquement changer et ainsi passer d'une bruine légère à un déluge s'accompagnant d'un orage sombre et ténébreux.

L'Histoire

Le jeu est centré autour du Sorceleur Geralt, qui souffre d'amnésie au début du jeu. Il apprendra au fure et à mesure qu'il était un Sorceleur de renom, et retrouve des amis et des ennemis que se rappèlent de lui, mais lui ne s'en rappelle pas. Il redifnira son rapport et choisira le chemin dans l'intrigue politique qui l'entoure.

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Peinture conceptuelle : extérieur de Kaer Morhen

Prologue (Kaer Morhen)

Geralt débute son aventure dans la forteresse de Kaer Morhen où il fait face à l'attaque de bandits menée par deux personnages ombrageux, Le Professeur et un mage mystérieux. Le joueur apprendra par la suite qu'ils font partis d'une organisation criminelle appellée la Salamandre, et sont venus dérober des potions spéciales qui ont été développés pour modifier génétiquement les soreceleurs servant à leur donner du pouvoir. Mais leurs intentions à ce sujet ne sont pas claires.

Le Prologue se termine par la fuite du Professeur et du mage hors de Kaer Morhen, avec ces breuvages, grâce à la téléportation. Les Sorceleurs restants décident de se séparer afin de rechercher et stopper la Salamandre. Ils seront aidés par certains personnages tout au long de l'aventure.

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Peinture conceptuelle : la porte de Vizima

Chapitre I (Faubourgs de Wyzima)

Ce premier chapitre est l'exploration de Geralt des Faubourg de Wyzima où une Bête terrasse les paysans. Là, il y rencontrera Shani, qui sera présente dans les chapitre suivants.

Notez que dans ce chapitre, Geralt n'a plus accès à Kaer Morhen, mais qu'il gagne l'accès aux Faubourg de Wizima.

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Quartier du Temple

Chapitre II (Quartier du Temple)

Dans ce chapitre, Geralt a accès au Quartier du Temple, where he will have to solve a mystery. Who is involved with the Salamandra? Several influential people in the city are suspects, and Geralt has the help of the flic to help him sort the clues and follow up on them.

dans ce chapitre, Geralt n'a plus accès au Faubourg de Wyzima, but he gains access to the Quartier du Temple, une partie des égouts, la Digue, le cimetière et les marais.

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Quartier de marchands

Chapitre III (Quartier des marchands)

During Chapter 3, Geralt will have to follow new leads on the Salamandra, while investigating the mysterious powers of the child Alvin who he rescued in Chapter 1. The Scoia'tael also start being more bold in their attempts.

Important: The choice of whether to bring Alvin to Triss or Shani may alter the events in the remaining chapters. The following description was based on bringing Alvin to Triss.

Note that Geralt still has access to the areas he had access to in the second chapter, and he additionally gains access to the Quartier des marchands as well as new areas of the Les égouts de la ville.

Chapitre IV (Rive du Lac)

Geralt now finds himself in a totally new area of Temeria, far from Wyzima and cut off from most of the people he knew. Jaskier and Alvin are with him though, and there are new intrigues around him. The chapter ends with a showdown between the Ordre de la Rose-Ardente and the Scoia'tael, where Geralt must choose his side (though one choice is to remain neutral, accepting the consequences of that choice).

Note that Geralt no longer has access to the areas he had access to in Chapter 3. He can now explore the areas of le lac, le village, les champs et l'ile de l’Hirondelle Noire.

Chapitre V (La Vieille Wyzima)

Le choix de l'Ordre

...

Neutral path

Geralt escaped the conflict between the Ordre de la Rose-Ardente and the Scoia'tael à Eaux Troubles. But Wyzima now burns, the conflict taking more and more casualties. Geralt meets Shani once again, and must help her get out of la vieille ville to the relative safety du cimetière des marais. At the same time, King Foltest returns and his daughter Adda seems to be having a relapse of the Strige curse. Geralt must do what he can for the princess, and in return, Foltest will divulge what he knows about la salamandre hideout, and as a result, Azar Javed's location.

Le choix de la Scoia'tael

...

Note that Geralt no longer has access to the areas he had access to in Chapter 4. He can now explore the areas of la vieille ville, le cimetière des marais and the le vieux château area.

Epilogue

Le choix de l'Ordre

...

Le choix neutre

With Princess Adda cured of the Striga once more, Foltest and King Radovid of Redania forge an alliance. Foltest agrees to give his daughter's hand in marriage to Radovid in exchange for Radovid's army, to help in resolving the Ordre de la Rose-Ardente/Scoia'tael conflict. It has also been revealed that the Order was behind the Salamandra all along, with Jacques d'Aldersberg, Grand Master of the Order, using Azar Javed and his organization to build an army of mutants able to overthrow Foltest to take the throne. With Javed dead, the Grand Master will be expecting Geralt's visit...

In the end, the Grand Master reveals that he did everything to try and save humainty from the Great White Cataclysm (can't remember the real name). He had visions of what the future of humanity would look like if no one tried to do something, and his solution was to create mutant Grands frères to help believers in his cause in an exodus to the south, hoping to escape the long winter which would come. Geralt rightly remarks that every despot always talks of a higher cause. With the help of the friends he made during the entire story, he makes it through the Grand Master's vision and ends his plans, at the same time freeing himself from his destiny of leaving only destruction behind him by denying the roi de la Chasse Sauvage the right to take the Grand Master for himself.

Scoia'tael path

...

Note that Geralt no longer has access to the areas he had access to in Chapter 5. He is back in the Quartier du Temple, and will be teleported to the les Plaines de Glace near the end.

Les détails terminent ici.

Story Motivations

The developers have often said that their main goal with the game's storyline was to give choices to the player where there was no clear good or evil, and where the player would have to choose the lesser of two (or more) evils.

Also, the story was designed so that the consequences of the player's choices are often not immediately visible, and may only become apparent a few chapters later. This was done to prevent the "save, choose, reload" type of gameplay that is often used in similar computer role-playing games.

Gameplay

There are three camera styles available when playing The Witcher. The game can be played from one of two top-down perspectives, in which case the mouse is used to control everything, or it can be played from an over-the-shoulder view, which brings the player closer to the ingame combat, but limits visibility. In all the views the keyboard and mouse controls can be changed to be primarily mouse focused or a combined keyboard and mouse approach.

The combat system in The Witcher represents a departure from most RPGs. Players choose one of three fighting styles. The quick style allows for faster, less-damaging attacks with a greater chance of hitting faster enemies; the heavy style deals more damage in exchange for a slow attack speed, and a lower chance to hit faster enemies; and the group style, which features sweeping attacks best used if the player is surrounded. The player can switch between the styles at any point.

Each of these stances has its own unique combat style. Both of Geralt's main swords - the steel and silver ones - have distinctively different combat styles from the rest of weaponry, and serve very distinct purposes: where the steel blade is used to find humans and other flesh-and-blood beings, the silver one is more effective against supernatural monsters and beasts (against some of which steel may have no effect whatsoever).

Alchemy is a major part of gameplay. The player can create potions that increase health or endurance regeneration, allow Geralt to see in the dark, or provide other beneficial effects. The recipes for these potions can be learned through scrolls, or by experimentation. Once the player creates an unknown potion he can choose to drink it, but if the potion is a failure it will poison the character. Each time Geralt drinks potions they increase the toxicity level of his body. This can be reduced by drinking a special potion or by meditating at an inn or fireplace.

In addition to potions, the player can also create oils and bombs, respectively used to augment the damage done by weapons, or as weapons in combat. Neither can be created until talent points have been allocated into the corresponding skills.

Moteur du jeu

The Witcher is powered by a new version of the BioWare Aurora Engine, modified for a single-player experience. A number of changes have been introduced to the original BioWare Aurora Engine, and some of them are described below.

World visualization

One of the most important of which is modification to the world-visualization method. In BioWare's Aurora Engine, the world is designed exactly as it was envisioned rather than utilizing a tile-based system. Because of this, the visuals are claimed to be unique and rich in detail. All the environments are created in 3D Studio Max and then exported into the game engine.

• Light maps

The CD Projekt's version of the engine supports lightmaps, generated in 3D Studio Max. Shadows generated this way are claimed to look more realistic and are better performance-wise.

• Texture paint

This is a special tool that enables to paint the environment using custom textures, with purpose of saving the time and promising more natural look than ordinary mapping.

• Skybox and water effects

New realistic skybox and water effects were added to the engine.

Rendu

All the in game and tool set rendering is done using DirectX9, and the engine now supports many different shaders (water effect, bump mapping, environment mapping, etc). Additionally the whole rendering system has been unified and a new light manager was added.

Autres changements

Other important changes include the following: motion-captured animation, physics effects, new mechanics and combat system. There are also many other modifications, like introduction of portals, additional graphical effects (glows, advanced dynamic shadows, blurs)

Problèmes avec le système TAGES

Le jeu utilise le système de protection TAGES contre les copies, qui s'est révélé incompatible avec les émulateurs de lecteurs d'image disque et réagit de manière similaire avec les drivers SCSI et SATA du système, ce qui a conduit à un nombre important de cas où le système de protection empêche des utilisateurs de faire fonctionner des exemplaires du jeu achetés légalement.

Ces problèmes peuvent généralement être résolus en désinstallant le driver TAGES avec le programme d'installation officiel, puis en démarrant le jeu (qui installera automatiquement la version du driver appropriée).

Localization variations

All the female portrait cards shown after Geralt's "conquests" were retouched to a more modest standard for the US release version. The in-game Dryad was also reskinned so her hair covered more of her body in this release.

Colorful dialogue between characters was cut in the English releases — not merely the US release — especially through shortening of dialogue. Lead Designer Michał Madej has disputed claims by fans that this was due to the sometimes crude language, but that the decision to edit down dialogue occurred because of production-related concerns in game development. Proof reader Martin Pagan noticed this shortened version during his work and writer Sande Chen confirmed that it was not due to censorship. Fans have theorized that it may have been done for voice acting cost savings, especially since much of the vulgar language has been retained. Such cost savings would normally occur during any shortening of dialogue, even in cases where no major crudity was involved.

Information Aditionnelle

• Technical Information
• Bugs
• Easter Eggs
• Spoiler Checklist

External links

• Official Site (Non-Flash version)
• Official forums
• Communauté Francophone
• The Witcher sur Gamebanshee Grande collection d'images
• The Witcher on IGN
• The Witcher on GameSpot
• Third Base!
• Developer interviews:
  • The Witcher Interview, Part 1 at IGN
  • The Witcher Interview, Part 2 at IGN
  • The Witcher Interview, Part 3 at IGN

Cette page utilise du contenu provenant de Wikipédia. L'article d'origine se trouvait à l'adresse The Witcher. La liste des auteurs est accessible dans l'historique de la page. Comme sur Sorceleur Wiki, le texte de Wikipédia est disponible sous la Licence publique générale GNU.