Single Player

After fighting my way through five-mans in countless PUG's with random kids, waited for 25-40 man raids to start because of slackers needing to do this-and-that, I am finally alone!. Just me and the monsters.
This time the choice fell to indulge in a single player RPG-action game known as the Witcher, a title that has gone me by completely but was awarded best RPG of the year by several sources.
The story is quite a lot more "mature" than what I am used to, dealing with issues as racism and containing some "adult" content.
(You will for instance receive a card for each woman you "seduce")

In-game photage / cut-scene from the Witcher

Since I haven't really been playing any single player games since WoW, at least not any RPG's, the graphics have evolved quite a lot compared to my latest 1p-experience in games like Neverwinter Nights and such ... and it doesn't feel long ago since they were "fake 3d" in games like Baldur's Gate and those good ol' friends.

Well the story here in short is that I am taking the role of Geralt - a Witcher returning home after a battle with amnesia only to find my base being attacked by an evil mage and the hunt is up. Character generation = 0, and fine by me. There is of course a levelling system that will allow quite a lot of customization. Chosing whether to improve in swords or herbalism can be quite an important decision. And lots of the story is driven forward by your character having to learn things in books - he isn't all knowing and will have to read up on wolfes in order to skin them and be able to use reagents from them in the important alchemy-part of the game.

All in all - a great story driven forward by the classic grinding and slashing you'd expect. It is at times a bit too linear despite promises of the opposite. I guess I am a bit spoiled by the freedom of WoW were you are able to practically go everywhere and do anything.
I have just gotten in to chapter two out of five/six and events and actions in the early chapters will have consequences later on in the game so I guess and hope that there is some re-playability as well.

What I appreciate is the choice I have - sure I can go ahead and play it for some three-four hours straight but I can stop/pause whenever I want. Both because it is a single-player and because it isn't t h a t good ;)

And if all else fails, there is still NWN2 to get in to and the recently released addon Mask of the Betrayer.