The Witcher 2: Dungeon Crawl or not?

[luc0s]

The Witcher 2: Dungeon Crawl or not?

I was having a fairly pointless discussion with a friend of mine about The Witcher 2 and we couldn't resolve it, so I decided to simply ask it here on the forum.


At first, I argued that Skyrim has crappy dungeons, which is not so good for a RPG that mostly revolves around dungeon-crawling gameplay.

Then my friend, who knows I'm a Witcher fan, argued that The Witcher 2's dungeons are even worse. They are shorter, simpeler and more linear than Skyrim's dungeons.

I argues that it doesn't matter, because The Witcher 2 is not a dungeon-crawl type of game, unlike Skyrim. The dungeons are not a huge part of the game and thus not a huge deal. The dungeons we find in The Witcher 2 are merely set pieces, locations, decorations for the story to take place. No dungeon-crawl gameplay is involved. Unlike Skyrim, where typical dungeon-crawling takes up a huge amount of time in the game.

He begged to differ and said that The Witcher 2 revolves more around dungeon-crawling than Skyrim does.


So I was curious, what do you guys have to say about this? Do you consider The Witcher 2 to be a dungeon-crawl RPG? Please also explain why you think The Witcher 2 is or isn't a dungeon-crawl RPG.


For those who are unfamiliar with the term "dungeon crawl", read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_crawl

 

[Adonai-]

No. Anyone with familiarity with the Witcher games or books would understand that if Geralt goes into a dungeon or cave, it's for a specific purpose - to slay a monster, rescue someone or retrieve an object to break a curse. He's not going in to retrieve epic loot or to grind for XP.

It's the difference between a game based around a story, and a story built around existing gameplay. I prefer the first, which is why for me, TW2 > Skyrim. If you do something, it tends to have a greater purpose. Geralt will only go into a dungeon if the story demands it, rather than "the player needs to do something in this part of the map, oh hey, haven't had a dungeon for a little while, put one here".

(Not knocking dungeon crawlers here - I've broken a few mice playing Diablo 1/2. I just believe your friend is wrong on this count )

 

[Garrison72]

Skyrim has more dungeon crawling and truth be told I like that. In fact I wish there were more dungeons in TW2 given how beautifully they're rendered. But really, when I think dungeon crawler, games like Diablo come to mind. Skyrim certainly shares similarities in the loot and level up gameplay aspect, but it's also more story oriented and more in depth regarding player freedom.

 

[bcheero]

I'm not seeing the dungeon crawler element in the Witcher games. It was never designed like that in the first place.

TW2 doesn't do it and if it did, I hope it's oriented towards slaying specific monsters for contracts.

 

[dragonbird]

There's a couple of dungeon crawls in Chapter 2, on both paths, but no, I definitely wouldn't describe it as a dungeon crawl game. I with Slimgrin on this - I wish it had a few more.

 

[KnightofPhoenix]

With all due respect to your friend, he's wrong and quite silly about it.

All quests in TW2, barring monster contracts, have a story behind them. The best example is the insane asylum.
Loot and exp is secondary, even nonexistent most of the time when it comes to the former (which is something I'd like rectified).

 

[Kinley]

As Adonai said, in The Witcher a cave is there for a purpose, it has story behind it. Whereas in Skyrim dungeons and caves are all over the place, some have a story to it but in the end they get bland very quickly, you do them that you might find some shiny piece of loot at the end. I just hope CDPR avoids dungeon crawling like the plague, put a couple, but don't overdo it. In my opinion The Witcher games did it right with these certain areas.

EDIT
haha, KoP posted before me, now I seem like a copycat. Good to see a lot of us share the same view though.

 

[Garrison72]

With all due respect to your friend, he's wrong and quite silly about it.

All quests in TW2, barring monster contracts, have a story behind them. The best example is the insane asylum.
Loot and exp is secondary, even nonexistent most of the time when it comes to the former (which is something I'd like rectified).

I would kill for an elaborate monster contract with more story, one involving a person stricken with lycanthropy, or a vampire for instance.

 

[luc0s]

With all due respect to your friend, he's wrong and quite silly about it.

All quests in TW2, barring monster contracts, have a story behind them. The best example is the insane asylum.
Loot and exp is secondary, even nonexistent most of the time when it comes to the former (which is something I'd like rectified).

Well, to explain his position ever further: My "friend" claims that Skyrim's way of telling a story is better than The Witcher's way of telling a story.

He says that cutscenes, which takes away the freedom from the player, are inferior to in-game dialogue where players keep full control over their character.

He also argues that Skyrim's dungeons have more story than The Witcher's dungeons, as each Skyrim dungeon tells a specific story. This actually made me laugh, because I can't remember Skyrim telling me any convincing stories at any given point or time in the game (well, except for the Thieves Guild questline maybe).

He does agree that The Witcher 2 has a superior story, but he does not approve of cutscenes nor does he approve of the dungeons in The Witcher 2.


In fact, our entire discussion can be found on the BioWare Social Network, but it's not really worthy to read, as it's quite long and repetitive (I had to repeat myself over and over again and he still wouldn't listen to my points).

 

[Kinley]

Well apparently he just likes dungeons. For me, the lack of dungeons in a game is not an important factor.

 

[KnightofPhoenix]

I would kill for an elaborate monster contract with more story, one involving a person stricken with lycanthropy, or a vampire for instance.

Agreed. I'd like them to revive the trophy monsters thing, but with story.

@ Lucos
Ah, so he's the "cutscenes are evil" type. Eh well, to each their own.

 

[Adonai-]

He says that cutscenes, which takes away the freedom from the player, are inferior to in-game dialogue where players keep full control over their character.

Ah, that's probably the real crux. This is an entirely subjective point that gets argued over again and again. Half-Life 2 doesn't have cutscenes. Metal Gear Solid has hours of them. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're the product of lazy or poor writing. What's worse, a well written & directed cutscene, or in-game dialogue that looks like it was written using Google Translate?

I found Skryim's dialogue to be very poor, amateurishly written and bore absolutely no consequences from earlier events and interactions. The Uncharted series relies heavily on cutscenes, but the writing and acting conveys the drama, characterisations and emotions that you wouldn't get from pure interactivity. Portal 2 lets you move around during exposition, but you don't have any way to change what happens so they're effectively a cutscene, even though Valve doesn't really use them. All are good games, and to say one element is a better way of telling a story is naïve. It depends entirely on execution.

Slightly offtopic there I just sometimes get frustrated by the binary thinking that gamers often have - something is either great or terrible, with nothing in-between.

 

[Garrison72]

Games like ME1 and TW2 use cutscenes almost perfectly. They tell story, are interactive, and they can be skipped or relished at the player's whim. Skyrim would do well to incorporate a bit of this.

 

[luc0s]

Personally I'm under the impression that cutscenes are the future of video-games. The way Skyrim handles things will get old eventually and it's not the best way to get a story acros.

What I hope to see in the future, is more interactive cutscenes, the same way Heavy Rain handles their cutscenes. Who is familiar with Heavy Rain, will know what I mean.

 

[volsung]

As you said it was a pointless discussion to begin with. Your friend obviously does NOT know what a dungeon crawler is. Makes me think Skyrim is one of the few games with role-playing elements he has played, and probably thinks of Oblivion as a "classic RPG".

Let's expand. Dungeon crawlers are games that don't have much of a story, and that revolve primarily around a *dungeon*. Notable examples would be Rogue (and Rogue-clones), Dungeon Master, and recently Legend of Grimrock. These games focus mostly on killing monsters, but they actually include role-playing elements, such as multiple, open solutions to obstacles or puzzles.

On the other hand, some games with role-playing elements focus mostly on (sometimes automatic) character advancement, becoming powerful, and, again, combat. These games that I'm talking about use a very simplistic combat system, where you just HACK and SLASH your enemies without much regard for any kind of tactical planning or strategy. It should be clear that examples of this are Diablo and Elder Scrolls games.

Now Elder Scrolls include more elements than Diablo. They actually have some narrative and minimal substories. But still, as everyone knows, decision making and choice-and-consequence is virtually nonexistant in all Elder Scrolls games save for the absurd choice of whether to do or not to do a quest. So in my opinion, TES games rely primarily on exploration, long dungeon crawls and hack n' slash combat. You friend dissing TW2's cutscenes is hilarious, considering the terrible one-line dialogues in TES and, especially, the control you have on your character. And last time I checked, TW2 ended with a long, wordy and rich dialogue between Geralt and Letho.

Games like The Witcher 2 focus on completely different things. As we all know, what makes TW2 so strong is its mix of setting, writing, story-telling, characters and palpable choice-and-consequence. It comes with combat because that is what witchers do for a living, but both TW1 and TW2 require more than quick button mashing. Even if they have some short dungeon crawls as a contextual/gameplay element, it is not something that describes them. We might as well call it a shooter because we shoot a couple of ballistas, or a puzzle game because we solve lots of puzzles!

There is no single computer "RPG" that is an actual role-playing game in the sense that the world reacts to *any* thing you do, because, of course, things have to be programmed, scripted, animated, etc., unlike in pen and paper role-playing. But as far as computer RPG's go, The Witcher series draw more from classic computer RPG's than pretty much any other game out there. And for the same reason, they are far from hacking, slashing and "dungeon crawling".

 

[227]

Well, to explain his position ever further: My "friend" claims that Skyrim's way of telling a story is better than The Witcher's way of telling a story.

Skyrim doesn't have a story. "Evil dragons come back, only you can stop them, then you do" isn't a story. Just a flimsy excuse to force players to play through the endless padding of copy/pasted dungeons. Witcher 2 has a legitimately compelling and interesting story that unfolds naturally through dialogue and the events around you rather than spoon-feeding itself to the player in patronizingly manageable bites like Skyrim and many other modern games do. Some people may find that a better form of storytelling, but it's the stupidpocalypse for those of us who actually enjoy the story above all else.

Anyway, I like Heavy Rain, but would be incredibly surprised if that was the future. At a certain point we'll probably be so sick of cutscenes that we'll opt for games similar to Half Life 2 and Portal that allow us to experience everything firsthand. Cutscenes in general may be fine now, but they're starting to wear incredibly thin as more and more developers come to over-rely on them.

 

[luc0s]

To further add to this: This "friend" of mine is also under the impression that voiced protagonists are a step backwards. He argues that if the protagonist is voiced, it gimps his ability to roleplay. He argues that the voice of a voiced protagonist often does not sound the way he wants him/her to sound, resulting in less connection to "his" character and resulting in less freedom in roleplaying.

He therefor argues, that The Witcher 2 and other games with a voiced protagonist, are worse RPGs than other RPGs with a silent protagonist.

 

[Sirnaq]

There are 8 small dungeons in the game, you spend 10-20 min in each and most are optional so yeah 1-2 hours in 30 hours gameplay. TW2 is rpg while skyrim is bandit killing simulator.

also comparison morrowind to skyrim, as you can see skyrim dungeons are linear:

 

[Garrison72]

Skyrim doesn't have a story. "Evil dragons come back, only you can stop them, then you do" isn't a story.

Lol, this made me laugh. It's true. But as I brought up on BSN, Bethesda excels in side quests, or at least they did in Oblivion and Fallout 3. Many of the caves in Oblivion had their own tale and that sucked me right in.

 

[Kinley]

skyrim is bandit killing simulator.

More like tourism simulator.