I was torn between The Witcher and Hellgate London as well, they are kinda similar themes. But after playing the Hellgate London closed beta I did get bored of it quite quickly, it does get very repetitive and feels like a single player game most of the time as people don't seem to like grouping much and the whole online game can be soloed.A lot of people seem to be attracted by the directx 10 support, but don't be fooled. There also seems to be a half second lag delay on everything which is nasty for an FPS, so don't expect it to be as smooth (or as stable) as the demo.
Well.. in a way that's true. But you could never do that in the scope of a demo really. A demo should let you know how the game plays, give you a nice taste of the gameplay and story, a few levels under your belt, and leave you wanting more. I think the tutorial does this pretty well, better than any tutorial level I ever played. A game THIS epic can never be done full justice in a demo... imagine a demo of say.. Baldur's Gate II or Planescape: Torment, the games most like The Witcher in the last 10 years, they wouldn't give a full impression of the game either.I remember after playing the tutorial I was like "Wow, this game kicks ass, can't wait to see what's gonna happen next and level up more!" that's what a good epic cRPG demo should do imo.idziak said:
Everyone has different tastes, after the closed beta then demo and on top of that the on-line fees for simple core content I cancelled my HGL pre-order.
waste of bandwidth....good games are hard to come by these days... get both for crying out loud.. what's stopping youIvor said:
their wasn't a big promotional push on behalf of atari,CDP, ok.. maybe a few ads here and there but nothing that would catch the interest of casual pc gamers. if the witcher was made for the 360 i am 100 percent sure their would be a demo out before release, and to say that any future witcher games being released on that system isn't far fetched so get ready for the ports guys because thats usually the path its heading.and btw when releasing promotional videos/tours of the game please get someone who has a clear english accent lmao... the person CDP hired sounds like the hotel employee (cashier) from the movie hostel. after the witchers world release i watched some videos on gamespot and there was 1 which he was talking about the engine revamp that CDP did and he sounded so gay just saying it umm i think it was the "its all here" in a whisper.. kinda sounded like he was presenting a porno or something right? ;Dtaken out of IGN's review 6.5 PresentationIf it wasn't for the inventory, big bugs and load time issues, the presentation would have been great.this is why we need a demo 
I don't care if someone likes HGL and / or TW. Its personal taste. Buy whichever, buy both, but be an informed consumer. Don't buy HGL or any game based purely on hype. Do your research and vote with your dollars. And that means playing the demo if there is one. How many people in this thread (all TW fans) said they tried HGL demo and found it lacking? That's great. Then they didn't waste their money and become haters.So I think it would have been great if CDPR / Atari had been able to do a demo. Its like saying they shouldn't have OTS camera because you like Isometric. Its good to have it even if you don't want it. We could have all played it for a couple days before release so that we'd have something to sate our demand for the game and those who wanted to try it out could. Sure you couldn't represent the whole game with just the tutorial section, but it would do a great job of introducing the key elements and the combat style so people could understand what they are buying. And if a good demo turns some people off then better to not make a sale then have an angry customer telling others how your game sucks. Now I'm worried those who want to "try before they buy" will torrent the thing and then they might just decide to keep that instead of paying for this excellent product.All of that aside, I understand why there is no demo. Its a first time development project. Limited funding, 2nd tier publisher (sorry Atari, but its true) and limited commitment from them in resources. So you focused on making the best game you could. You made the right choice. But if TW sells well and you get a crack at this again, by all means, make a demo.Cheers.
I'd like a demo for only one reason, and in my mind, a good one.I'd just like to know if my comp can run it. I was quite psyched for Gothic 3 but after playing the demo realized it was a slide show even though my comp met the requirements for the game.So I saved myself 50 bucks.The Witcher says you can't use my processor which is an Athlon 2700+, however I've heard that some folks are using even lesser Athlons and getting decent framerates albeit with lower settings. Just from hearing fan reactions to this game, I would definately buy it, but not if I can't play it. And I think a lot of people are in the same boat as me.
I was thinking it too. Hellgate vs Witcher! Hellgate had great trailers, Witcher did too. But after playing Hellgate demo, soory but "yuck"! Then i bought witcher and im happy! But these two games are very different and i dont think that you could really compare them. Every game has its flaws!
it should work fine, except for the loading times. the 1gb of ram is going to slow it down. the load times themselves are not that bad, its the constant autosaving coupled with loading thats the problem.As far as a demo i agree, a demo for this game would be very nice and probably attract alot more people to the game. However, if you tried the HGl demo, im not sure how you could decide on that game , given the horrible quality of the HGL demo.I would expect CD project to be putting out a demo soon, especially since the release hassles are more or less over with.
You know, I had exactly the same plan as the OP originally. I had heard a few things about TW, seen a few screens and dismissed it as some sort of action-heavy, rpg-light console port like Oblivion. As I said, I didn't really know anything about the game then, didn't even knwo when it would be released. Rather the same for Hellgate London.Then 2 weeks ago, I played the Hellgate demo, and found it very addicting. I've been a long time fan of Diablo 2, though only single-player since I find most online gamers to be a bunch of immature kids who compensate their lack of contact with real women by acting incredibly annoying towards anyone who isn't "l33t". Still the game looked interesting and promised a single player campaign similar to Diablo, so I was sold.Jump forward to last week thursday, when I was browsing the online catalogue of my local gaming store and some gaming forums to check for Hellgate's release date. I saw TW was already released, and apparently lots of people were starting to compare it to the holy grails of rpgs: Baldur's Gate and Fallout. Now that is advertising no money or professional review can buy. This immediately caught my attention, I came to this site, read more user's oppinions and rushed out to buy the game. And I haven't regretted it for even a second, though it is having a seriously detrimental effect on my thesis ;D
I have very similar thoughts to Nemo. This is quite an interesting thread that asks the importance of demos (or lack of them). Mostly these days I don't play demos. I my youth all I wanted with PC mags was the CD/DVD to play all the demos. Now, I rarely touch the disc and concentrate on the articles and opinions inside and if something takes my fancy then follow it up with reading forums like this.For me I hadn't hyped up TW, I knew about it but hadn't followed it very much. HGL however was going to be my game of the year ... that was until I got a closed-beta invite about 2 weeks before the release. I started playing and couldn't believe how little it was living up to my expectations. The reviews so far (altho I'm sure it'll change with patches etc) seem to agree with my thoughts. I LOVED diablo and diablo 2 but HGL had me hooked for about a day and then I was bored and disappointed and deleted it. It felt flat and drab.I read TW just missed the review date for PC Gamer (UK) so realised it must be released soon so started to investigate online and read up on it and watched some youtube vids. Then I started to realise this looked an excellent game for me and I had no reservations in going out to buy it (especially with the great reviews starting to drip onto the net) ... and I'm so glad I did.So in summary, in this case a "demo" was detrimental for HGL. I would have bought the game (thinking that I could get around the reviewer's bad points for HGL) if there hadn't been a demo/closed beta invite. For TW I think a demo is quite tricky to encapsulate everything going on that makes the game so great. I think reviews do games great justice, especially when considered across a broad range of sites and magazines.Just my thoughts
The Hellgate London demo really was a terrible representation of the game, perfect example of how not to do pre-release demos. I don't see what the big drama is about regarding The Witcher and demo though -- the game is already out people, everyone is loving it, buy it already. It's nice to know CDP care enough for their game to not take time out of finishing it to push out a pre-finished game code demo. The demo whenever it comes out, will probably be a fine representation of the game and a good pointer to how awesome the full game is, and not a hurried piece of shit. Admittedly I haven't read any posts in this thread and is mostly responding to the first few lines of the first post, but your reasoning is retarded--either you can't really afford the game or you're just being a dick. There's plenty of hands-on testimonials from people on this site and on the internet in general, at a glance and in depth, "professional" and from regular civilians -- at least plenty to find out if it's for you or not. A game isn't such a huge investment on its own that you can't just take a chance on it without a demo after all the other information about it you've got on hand. If you can afford a computer able to play this you can surely also SIMPLY BUY THE DAMN GAME.Hehe.By the way, just got e-mail from my retailer last night about Hellgate London having been shipped. Should be here tomorrow! 8)
If the demo is any representation of the Game I was sorely disapointed with Hellgate. I know ppl are seeing the full game is better, but I don´t know, the demo was simply terrible! The whole look and feel of the game was just plain wrong
(...as I said in a previous thread.. some people are socially inapt.varelse said:
)If you go here m8 - System Requirement - it'll tell ya.Also, I agree, some games need demos.. BUT The Witcher, if you "bother" to look for it (here ) you will see enough info and videos showing and explaining gameplay that it doesn't need a demo.
lol, nice!... cos a demo tells you about that doesn't it!?varelse said:
I must say that for me the demo is always very important. I just want to know how the game is running in my machine, especially how my graphic card can handle it. It is important. Demo is not, and it should not be, a "small game", but if game costs 50 €, it is not wrong to want to know if you can play it. System requirements don't tell everything. Sometimes minimum is not nearly enough, and sometimes they are all you need. Maybe you just want to see if you have to update your computer before buying the game. And I always thought this is why demos are released: to test and see how it works. For me it is not important to know about gameplay and stuff like that. Whit PC-games it is always bit difficult: you never know. If you buy a game for your xBox or PlayStation you can be sure it works, but with PC you need to test it first.
I agree that demo is important thing, but - frankly to say - I can not imagine how they could make one for The Witcher.Why?Prologue, which could be natural demo, is good, but not as good as forthcoming parts. Most players were cought up by Chapter 1. And including Chap 1 in demo would be a huge spoiler, besides the size of such demo would simply make it undistributable.Thats why, I think, CDP didnt make demo.
Well, for instance, in the Czech Republic, the game just did not need much promotion or advertising, apart from saying when would it be in the stores. The CE version was mostly sold out even before the launch due to pre-orders.We had adverts in all gaming magazines, previews, teasers, trailers...Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher is on of the most popular fantasy books in my country.I disagree with the need for a demo, moreover I fully agree with the impossibility of a demo to show the complexity of choices and consequences.
here is the huge difference between your country and a country like the U.S... the gaming industry revenue is at billions due to the customers and in a part of the world where the witcher scene is UNKNOWN so if sales don't do well here and assuming sales across the world does not match the recommended amount atari is shooting for, you can bet your ass the witcher will be put to rest as far as the gaming community is concerned lol. so yeah a demo is needed for the U.SWatchdog said: