I disable depth of field in every game on pc because it destroys your framerate and i never notice the effect anyways, disabling it gives you more room to turn up things that actually matter like ambient occlusion and effects.
This game deserves more attention imo. While its masterpiece successor is worthy of all the praise it gets, Witcher 2 had an excellent story to experience and beautiful environments to explore.
doesn't take a wizard to make good graphics that holds up a decade after release. what takes a wizard is making it not run like crap even on decent systems.
@ don't see how that contradicts my point which is that making a game look pretty is easy, making it look pretty AND run well isn't. calling cd projekt wizards for managing to accomplish the former but not the latter is what i was objecting to.
@@Broformist It's actually not more impressive. Crysis 1 textures are lower rez, has zero reflections of any kind (except on water), ambient occlusion is really low quality and it has no concept of global illumination/indirect illumination/radiosity
It still looks very nice, even today. I remember when this game just came out, I couldn't believe my eyes to what I saw on a screen. It even had a cloud shadows, whenever it was passing the sun, I never saw anything like that in the games before at that time.
Okay actually crysis 1 even had volumetric clouds but yeah this game looked insanely good and the fantasy esq theme was spot on. Just compare it to a very Similar themed Skyrim. That one looks like diarrhea compared to this.
This is still one of my favorite games. I remember this game totally ruining Skyrim for me as well. Every time I tried playing Skyrim I would think to myself, why isn't this as good as The Witcher 2.
Jonny B pronouncing words how they are supposed to be pronounced when you KNOW how it’s pronounced isn’t pretentious. Purposely pronouncing words wrong is something a stupid pretentious American would do
@@daniebello It's cringey and sounds like shit. He literally had to pause to say it. If he wants to jerk off to his own cringe he should just do a german voice-over of the video.
True Story. Two decades of my PC torture amidst periodic specs upgrade. 2000: Ran Deus Ex and my PC cried 2001: Ran Max Payne and my PC cried 2002: Ran The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, my PC cried and went to coma when I ran Splinter Cell next. 2003: Ran Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, my PC cried and went to coma when I ran Prince of Persia Sand of Time next. 2004: Ran Far Cry and my PC cried, went to coma when I ran Doom 3 next and just gave up when I ran Half Life 2 after. 2005: My PC just wouldn't co-operate properly when I had F.E.A.R and Condemned Criminal Origins at the same time. 2006: Ran Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, my PC cried and went to coma when I ran Need for Speed Carbon next. 2007: Ran Gears of War and Call of Duty 4 MW, my PC broke down and running Crysis just after, basically nuked my PC. 2008: Ran Crysis Warhead, my PC underwent PTSD and GTA IV just made it worse. 2009: Ran Resident Evil 5 and my PC cried. 2010: My PC just wouldn't co-operate properly when I had Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Metro 2033 at the same time. 2011: Ran Battlefield 3 and my PC got nuked and just hung when I had L.A.Noire and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at the same time. 2012: Ran Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and PC got nuked again. 2013: Ran Crysis 3, my PC cried and went to coma when I ran Battlefield 4 next and just gave up when I ran Assassins Creed 4 after 2014: Tried Watch Dogs and Assassins Creed Unity and my PC ran away from me. 2015: Ran GTA V, my PC cried, got nuked when I tried Witcher 3 and again ran away when I ran Batman Arkham Knight. 2016: Ran Rise of the Tomb Raider, my PC cried and refused to co-operate when I had both Battlefield 1 and Gears 4 at same time 2017: Ran Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, my PC cried and went to coma when I ran Assassins Creed Origins 2018: Ran Kingdom Come: Deliverance, my PC cried and got nuked when i ran Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Assassins Creed Odyssey made it worse. 2019: Ran , Metro Exodus my PC got nuked, got nuked by Gears 5 and got nuked by Control and just got obliterated by Red Dead Redemption 2. .... and 2020: PC is in a shattered state. Cyberpunk 2077 is gonna nuke it again. Don't know how well it'll fair against Death Stranding and Watch Dogs Legion.
So, 2023 here. Been playing these for the first time. Launched it yesterday on my 4090 with all settings to max at 4K. Because when you buy a 4090 that's what you do. And I was like WTF why is it sitting at 50 - 60% usage ~225 - 250 watts at locked 60 fps (from MSI Afterburner) with my CPU (13700F) at like 4%? As Witcher Enhanced maxed was like 90 watts at 60 FPS 4K (Again MSI Afterburner super low CPU/GPU usage). Ubersampling and Depth of field explains it. Good news is, it was stable at 60 fps. I think my lows were like 58 throughout the opening of the game. As that is as far as I have gotten thus far. So, even in 2023 on the beastly 4090 this game can still put out some serious hurt. Anywhere from 70 - 127 frames unlocked. With 99% GPU usage and about 9% CPU. For those interested.
I feel so spoiled now with an i7-13700K and RTX 4080..."WTF? How dare my FPS drops below 100??" I had to come back here to remind myself that I finished this game on low settings getting barely 25-30 FPS...and it was glorious
@@kuruptzZz lol right?! Sometimes it is nice to put perspective back on things. It's a pleasure to have extremely nice toys and I thank God for it everyday. But when a company makes a masterpiece it doesn't matter what it looks like or how many frames you get. As the impact still comes across. But higher frames and better fidelity do make it a bit more enjoyable.
juju mgroo love people like you who think just bc you do or don’t like something that it makes your opinion an objective truth, the games are not superior, the games are fan fiction that take place after the book series, they are still incredible, but the show is just following the books which take place years before the games, why do you act like you have to like one or the other? the release of the show has skyrocketed tw3 to an all time high in players and the same with book readers, it’s all symbiotic, the more Witcher content the better it is for all of us, the popularity of the show creates more insensitive for cd projekt to keep making games in the Witcher universe. If you haven’t read the books you should try to and then you might enjoy the show more, they messed up somethings but overall it’s pretty faithful to the source and is in my opinion the best live action Witcher we’ve seen, ever watched the hexer lmao? If you did you might have a different tone.
Witcher 3 gets all the praise, and rightfully so it IS a masterpiece. Witcher 2 however is extremely and equally amazing IMO, it's just not open world.
I still think that the Witcher 2 is way much better the Witcher 3. Gameplay, complicated main story was way much better. And i like that the first two games were cut on chapters with small open worlds.
@@s0m3onesomewhere I can understand that, I personally just don't like the amnesia aspect of the first two games. Makes it feel to separated from the books, if that makes any sense.
@@s0m3onesomewhere The Witcher 2 is one of my all time favorite games. That being said, I've always felt that its story was the weakest overall in the trilogy (even if it's still better than most games). The story relied far too heavily on expository dialogue, and that's a big no-no in writing. This, plus turning Triss into a damsel in distress (not believing she was in danger for a second given her importance) really brought the overall narrative down for me. Don't get me wrong, there's still a number of amazing moments and characters (Saskia!), but I was relieved to see CDPR return to the more character driven storytelling they excelled at in TW1.
Far Cry 2 was pretty good for me but..yeah. Amazing character models, extremely crisp textures that still hold up when playing in 4k today...it's so goooood. Its Directx 10 implementation was hit or miss, though..just like with most games of the era.
I'm actually realy happy to see that a channel like yours gets the recognition it deserves. Of course more is always better but for a pure tech channel that mostly doesn't concern with regular consumer questions I think that's pretty good.
I simply do not know enough to understand what I am seeing frame by frame or overall. The way you break things down is appreciated and needed if I am any example at all. Mid 2000s I started dabbling in PC and what would grow into a passionate hobby. I find myself rewatching your breakdowns to try and get these nuances to the recognizable state but You go so deep that I can't help just being grateful you end another thesis on a single setting with - I would/wouldn't use yet finishes. Thank You. Both for the content and for the obvious passion that led you here. PS. Can't wait for one of these on the Witcher 3 given all the increased interest maybe it can sway a buddy of mine to play it.
I've put it 300+ hours into the Witcher 2 and beat it in permadeath mode. In terms of the storyline, the intricacy of the plot, and politics, it probably edges out the Witcher 3. Also, there was more life Flotsam than in the entirety of Skyrim. Just make sure to install the Flora mod to reduce grass pop-in.
I've had the 2nd game for 360 since it was released. To this day I still haven't beat it, not because I dont like it, because I worship that game and always championed it. No, it's because I have 3 grandkids that live with me and just dont have the time to run around guessing where untracked contracts and quest are. It kills me cause I think about the game all the time. Wish there was a quest tracker line mod or something.
@@azforu29 Ah, yeah there's nothing in TW2 that direct. But, it will show you the approximate location of quests both on the main map as well as the mini map, pointing the general direction you need to go. It's a little rough around the edges, however.
@@nonplusultra18 in many ways that's a matter of preference, but honestly in terms of pure storytelling TW2 has a lot of issues compared to either TW1 or TW3. TW2 easily has the most complex backstory out of all three games, no question, but that complexity comes at a cost: lots and lots of exposition, which means the game regularly breaks one of the cardinal rules of storytelling; show, don't tell.
PSA: make sure you clean out your saves when playing The Witcher 2. The game doesn't overwrite quicksaves (or autosaves, to my recollection), so after hours of playing the amount of saves you'll accrue will be huge, and make the game take much, much longer to load. Have fun!
I remember having a decent mid-range computer a couple years ago and booting this game up thinking it'd work like a charm. Still kicked my computer's ass even back then. I was shocked.
I remember playing Witcher 2 on a new GTX 570 with great visuals. Later with GTX 680 4GB SLI I was running the game with ubersapling and the game did run like a dream. One of the best PC gaming experience I have ever had. Also, triple monitor setup made this an insane experience. I do miss the days when you could push gaming to another level with dual GPUs.
this game never gets the attention it deserves it was the foundation for the witcher 3 and sometimes the storytelling is better and the difficulty is way superior, thanks for analizing this beauty
Playing the game back in 2011 gave me a lot of hype and curiosity over the Wild Hunt phenomenon, the instant need for sequel is unreal. Fast forward to 2014, the Witcher 3 announcement is beyond amazing. Almost cream my pants. Getting your save file loaded and affecting the game is simply the cherry on top. I hope I can experienced both game all over again with zero memories
Ahh, Witcher 2, my favorite out of the trilogy. Such fun combat and the more linear structure with that midway choice that'll change the other half of the game entirely, so good.
@@MegaOZX Much better than W3 where you have to buy i-frames to your dodge but the lingering hitboxes are so bad it still doesn't matter lmao. Not to mention all the uncontrollable pirouettes Geralt likes to do randomly in W3 that'll lead to slower attacks that the enemies can frame advantage you on with quicker pokes you wish Geralt would do everytime you hit the attack button.
I also enjoyed Witcher 2 more than 3, couldnt tell you exactly why. Something to do with the atmosphere and possibly the linearity. Sometimes games being too open stresses me out like being at a grocery store, I could waste too much time trying to pick what I want.
I actually played a bit of Witcher 2 beginning last year with some reShade magic and an inventory-limit remover. The game holds up better than expected! I hope we can see some more videos about "old" games in the future!
Yeah the games run poorly from GFWL/Vista port jobs and look sienna tone or overly bright and vaseline smeared. 7th gen is rough. Obviously there are some standouts like every gen but a lot games either looked oblivion or modern warfare. You go further back and games definitely have prehistoric visuals, but basic assets and textures can look incredibly clean and high resolutions. Better yet the further back you go with pc games the better optimized they are to work at high framerates due to the popularity of CRT monitors during those golden 90s.
I love this game. I've played it on my potato pc back in the day, then on xbox360, then my new pc I build last year. Now: I'm playing it again on the xbox one x with enhancements! I bought the collectors edition for pc day one. Great video.
Dang, I'm surprised there was no mention of that post process antialiasing option that adds an insanely awful amount of sharpening (unless I missed it haha).
Just today I started a second playthrough of The Witcher 2. And then I see this video! Oh, the irony! I remember its brilliance even after all these years. What a marvelous game!
@@deadlyydude5522 OK, thank you. I'll temper my expectations, since I am interested in the story. I heard there is a mod aimed at improving the combat, but I don't know how much it improves the situation.
You guys lately are hitting home run again in again with these interesting videos. Stellar work. PLEASE take a look at Soldier of Fortune series :) Either tech retrospective or straight DF Retro.
Oh man. I bought a physical edition of this game a few months before it was even out (the CD Projekt team had an event of some sort in my country and they sold the physical edition of the game with autographs which was cool) and I had a really crap PC at the time, had to run most games at low settings. But man I was so excited to see Geralt again, even in such pixelated crap graphics. Beautiful memories! The Witcher was my favorite game series of all time before TW3 even came out. I absolutely loved the story of TW and TW2. The Witcher 3 was just an icing on the cake,a beautiful conclusion to an incredible story. Thank you CD Projekt Red.
witcher 2 is amazing, played it twice because i beat the game the first time not realizing that i did not import my witcher 1 saves, finished re-playing 2 days ago and now having a blast with witcher 3, the game is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen
I played the Wicher 2 on a beast PC for 2011 standards. i7 920@3.8ghz, 6GB 1600mhz triple channel DDR3 and most importantly a HD5870 1GB GDDR5 graphics card. My monitor was still a 1280x1024 19” 2ms Samsung 940bf and on Ultra without Uber Sampling I got very good frame rate and played through twice that amazing game.
I remember i finished a school with good marks, mom gave me money for new PC and i've built it with GTX560ti. It was this moment i was finally able to play this game xd
Love the video. I’m currently playing the Witcher 2 right now with a 2080ti and find it insane that there are still settings that toast my gpu lol. But such a fantastic game really for me on par with the Witcher 3 in terms of story but the game still looks amazing today.
@@megapro125 From what I experienced DSR isn't quite as useful as an in-game resolution scaler because it alters the HUD and mouse sensitivity as well and sometimes softens the image too much.
Ahhh I remember the switch from console to PC back then and being clueless about graphic settings, fps etc. Slapped a GTX 550 Ti in a prebuilt, loaded this game up and naturally selecting the best possible settings which ran at like 30 fps or lower so I didn't notice a difference in performance haha, but the visuals! Good lord, the graphics blew my mind and I was officially converted to PC
I started witcher 1 last year, the fact that you can import your save file with some inventory items and decisions is alone worth the attempt. Currently playing witcher 3, love the coherency.
"Lod transitions are way to aggresive for 2020 standards " Looks at 50%+ of open world games where you can almost outrun the level bulding itself in front of you.
Yeah. Far Cry 5 looks amazing, but the world disintegrates like 10 ft in front of you even with everything on max. It's super apparent with tesselation especially, since you can see the bumps in dirt building up so close. Not sure why they made it kick in so close to you in a FIRST PERSON game, lol. All games should let me scale LODs as far as I want period.
@@josh223 indeed i went into the ini files in the witcher 3 u can literally eliminate pop in and with a mod no texture pop in at a distance with the lod being increased on them what is holding back pc again, as usual, is consoles, also the increase in grass density is amazing on the witcher 3 I have it set to 4000 up from the ultra setting which i think is 1600
Great video! I am playing this again in 2021, at 1440p with an RTX 3080, and with the settings maxed out it still puts my system to the test, on average I get just over 100 FPS, but sometimes the framerate is all over the place, averaging around 70 when walking around densely populated areas. I personally can't see much of a difference in-game with ubersampling, so I just leave it off.
Just finished The Witcher 2 again yesterday! Once you get yourself accustomed to the combat again the visuals itself hold up so well. Damn I love this series
The witcher 2 felt really atmospheric and in my opinion still looks really good. The forest near Flotsam was my favorite part and felt especially atmospheric. I think this was the case because the lightning was just so good.
Thx for the explaining Übersampling! I played the game about half a year back and was wondering why it was "only" running at around 60FPS on my 2080 @1440p... Now it all makes sense :D
This are two entirely different games in many aspects... Really, every part in Trilogy is unique on it's own. W1 has many things done much better than in W2. Same with W2 vs W3. But every part is definitely worth playing though.
So Ubersampling at 1080p looks better than downsampling with DSR from 4k to 1080p? I remember that DSR at 4.00x performed way batter than enabling Ubersampling.
Honestly, i'm surprised they never released "The Witcher 2" onto PlayStation 4 and Xbox One before or after "The Witcher 3" release cause they had it available for last Gen but it ran poorly on it.
I re-installed witcher 2 from steam to take a look at it again. I was shocked at how GOOD it looked NOW on my R4 ALIENWARE machine. CD Projekt red did a hell of a job on this game.
Wouldn't it be nice if they released Witcher 1 and 2 on the current engine? I want to experience the whole story, but Witcher 1's technology limitations make it almost impenetrably boring.
@@duxnihilo Witcher 1 was great when it came out. Still a crap engine (thanks Bioware) but a great game. It definitely hasn't aged. I'd love to see remake in the current engine for sure.
And seriously. I don't need games that look better than this. Especially RPGs. X360-era games running at 60fps/1080p/Ultra still look super clean to me.
But then they would have to put in effort to actually make a game better/working without relying on the instant wow factor. Tart it up and ship it out as it is. An inch of make up drives most guys crazy same with spotty geeks. Haha
i did try and play this game on a HD 3870, i didnt get past the first level, the lagg was insane. fast forward a year and i uppgrade to a new PC with a 7970, now able to rock n roll and even giving ubersampling a try, i remember being like holy crap this is the new future benchmark for grapichs cards!
Running everything on high at 1440 with a 3700x and a 2070 Super and getting around 144fps most of the time. Haven’t seen it dip once. Such a beautiful game.
Who else wants CD Project Red to give us a remaster of The Witcher and The Witcher 2 for PlayStation 5 Plus A remastered of The Witcher for Xbox Series X
If you read some of the Witcher 3 bulletin boards in Velen, there is also mention of a drunk soldier messing about with womenfolk and livestock. "Heere, boyyyyyy!!"
The drunken adventures of Odrin must be many. During one of the quests someone reports hearing folks shouting for Odrin while in Tousaint. There is a notice at the Cockatrice Inn as well.
2011 is 9 years ago...
*has an existential Crisis that runs at 10 fps*
I had 2 Radeon 5870 at this time for The Witcher 2. :D
With an Phenom II X4 955 and 8GB RAM.
I'm getting old. :(
*Crysis
an a lot of New GPUs coming this year in 2020
Lmao golden comment. Gg, take my like
@@FantasyNero Waiting for something amd
Cinematic DOF is a fitting name for what it does to the frame rates.
Do you mean death of frames ?
@@tanmaypanadi1414 No I think he's referring to the fact it'll make the game run at about 24fps... like most movies xD
MaddAddaM you and all of the people who liked your comment missed the joke.
I disable depth of field in every game on pc because it destroys your framerate and i never notice the effect anyways, disabling it gives you more room to turn up things that actually matter like ambient occlusion and effects.
@@phantom7489 cinematic like a 24 fps movie
6:00 I love the dwarf that's just standing there, pretending not to notice the other dwarf totally missing the sword with his hammer over and over.
Not even the dwarf trying to hit the sword doesnt look at it
"Puts you in a certain mood..."
*shows Geralt in bath*
Oh Alex ;)
It time to oil up baby
12:27 Great looking asses
This game deserves more attention imo. While its masterpiece successor is worthy of all the praise it gets, Witcher 2 had an excellent story to experience and beautiful environments to explore.
This game blew my mind when I first booted it up.
Every first time you see that main menu screen, gives chills. with the witcher 3 i felt like a kid again on christmas days
Your mind and my GPU :D
Homework Radio and ur pc too
chronical I never skipped the opening cinematic even after watching it a hundred times
Same here dude!
Now whenever some1 says "16 times" I expect him to follow it with "the detail".
underrated comment :D
Shut up, Todd.
Todd spoiled us all
"the witcher 2 pushed out a-head of its contemporaries..." ----> shows up a severed head close up.
too well timed to be coincidental lol
Was just about to comment on it. Nicely done.
We need more videos like this.
CD project RED is a wizards! The game still looks awesome in 2020
doesn't take a wizard to make good graphics that holds up a decade after release. what takes a wizard is making it not run like crap even on decent systems.
@@Davethebeaver2
I am playing Mass effect 2 right now. The graphics holds pretty good.
The storyline wow
@ your point being? that optimization wasn't a thing prior to dx10/11/12?
it is running on a 2020 pc...........
@ don't see how that contradicts my point which is that making a game look pretty is easy, making it look pretty AND run well isn't. calling cd projekt wizards for managing to accomplish the former but not the latter is what i was objecting to.
This might be the best looking DX9 game I’ve ever seen..
Crysis 2 is really high up there as well. Afterwards, it would be: Metro Last Light, Tomb Raider 2013 and probably Batman Arkham City.
Crysis 1 is more impressive. But this looks good too, even better if you disable shitty Bloom.
@@Broformist Why more impressiv?
@@Broformist It's actually not more impressive. Crysis 1 textures are lower rez, has zero reflections of any kind (except on water), ambient occlusion is really low quality and it has no concept of global illumination/indirect illumination/radiosity
That and Gears of War
It still looks very nice, even today. I remember when this game just came out, I couldn't believe my eyes to what I saw on a screen. It even had a cloud shadows, whenever it was passing the sun, I never saw anything like that in the games before at that time.
Okay actually crysis 1 even had volumetric clouds but yeah this game looked insanely good and the fantasy esq theme was spot on. Just compare it to a very Similar themed Skyrim. That one looks like diarrhea compared to this.
This is still one of my favorite games. I remember this game totally ruining Skyrim for me as well. Every time I tried playing Skyrim I would think to myself, why isn't this as good as The Witcher 2.
Behind the scenes: "We have to talk about übersampling. Let the German do the video!"
He's a Yank.
@Anip 94 Both are American, according to John.
That would be eine Überraschung.
Jonny B pronouncing words how they are supposed to be pronounced when you KNOW how it’s pronounced isn’t pretentious. Purposely pronouncing words wrong is something a stupid pretentious American would do
@@daniebello It's cringey and sounds like shit. He literally had to pause to say it. If he wants to jerk off to his own cringe he should just do a german voice-over of the video.
I remember thinking that Ubersampling was never gonna be attainable. My 460 sli setup was way over it's head at the time.
Unlimited POWER
Bruhhh
It's just like SSAA, pretty effective at 1080p, pretty useless at 4K.
@@EarthIsFlat456 If you play on a big screen SSAA can still be very useful at 4k.
@@perschistence2651 maybe if you have the power to run it lol.
17:50
I see what you did there.
17:51 : “A head” indeed :D
You caught that pun too ...
True Story. Two decades of my PC torture amidst periodic specs upgrade.
2000: Ran Deus Ex and my PC cried
2001: Ran Max Payne and my PC cried
2002: Ran The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, my PC cried and went to coma when I ran Splinter Cell next.
2003: Ran Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, my PC cried and went to coma when I ran Prince of Persia Sand of Time next.
2004: Ran Far Cry and my PC cried, went to coma when I ran Doom 3 next and just gave up when I ran Half Life 2 after.
2005: My PC just wouldn't co-operate properly when I had F.E.A.R and Condemned Criminal Origins at the same time.
2006: Ran Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, my PC cried and went to coma when I ran Need for Speed Carbon next.
2007: Ran Gears of War and Call of Duty 4 MW, my PC broke down and running Crysis just after, basically nuked my PC.
2008: Ran Crysis Warhead, my PC underwent PTSD and GTA IV just made it worse.
2009: Ran Resident Evil 5 and my PC cried.
2010: My PC just wouldn't co-operate properly when I had Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Metro 2033 at the same time.
2011: Ran Battlefield 3 and my PC got nuked and just hung when I had L.A.Noire and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at the same time.
2012: Ran Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and PC got nuked again.
2013: Ran Crysis 3, my PC cried and went to coma when I ran Battlefield 4 next and just gave up when I ran Assassins Creed 4 after
2014: Tried Watch Dogs and Assassins Creed Unity and my PC ran away from me.
2015: Ran GTA V, my PC cried, got nuked when I tried Witcher 3 and again ran away when I ran Batman Arkham Knight.
2016: Ran Rise of the Tomb Raider, my PC cried and refused to co-operate when I had both Battlefield 1 and Gears 4 at same time
2017: Ran Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, my PC cried and went to coma when I ran Assassins Creed Origins
2018: Ran Kingdom Come: Deliverance, my PC cried and got nuked when i ran Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Assassins Creed Odyssey made it worse.
2019: Ran , Metro Exodus my PC got nuked, got nuked by Gears 5 and got nuked by Control and just got obliterated by Red Dead Redemption 2.
.... and 2020: PC is in a shattered state. Cyberpunk 2077 is gonna nuke it again. Don't know how well it'll fair against Death Stranding and Watch Dogs Legion.
I got my PC from Wally World, it broke down, and I cried. I've mostly been a console pleb, though..so I've just been eeking by.
At the same pc specs?! for 20 years!! Faak dis shite
To sum that up: 2000 - 2019 your pc was shut down in hibernation mode every night. ( ? ;) Btw who the fuck tries to play two games at the same time??
Don't worry mate, you’re not the only one.
@@tobytoxd *Had two games installed the same time
Place of power, gotta be.
So, 2023 here. Been playing these for the first time. Launched it yesterday on my 4090 with all settings to max at 4K. Because when you buy a 4090 that's what you do. And I was like WTF why is it sitting at 50 - 60% usage ~225 - 250 watts at locked 60 fps (from MSI Afterburner) with my CPU (13700F) at like 4%? As Witcher Enhanced maxed was like 90 watts at 60 FPS 4K (Again MSI Afterburner super low CPU/GPU usage). Ubersampling and Depth of field explains it. Good news is, it was stable at 60 fps. I think my lows were like 58 throughout the opening of the game. As that is as far as I have gotten thus far. So, even in 2023 on the beastly 4090 this game can still put out some serious hurt. Anywhere from 70 - 127 frames unlocked. With 99% GPU usage and about 9% CPU. For those interested.
I feel so spoiled now with an i7-13700K and RTX 4080..."WTF? How dare my FPS drops below 100??" I had to come back here to remind myself that I finished this game on low settings getting barely 25-30 FPS...and it was glorious
@@kuruptzZz lol right?! Sometimes it is nice to put perspective back on things. It's a pleasure to have extremely nice toys and I thank God for it everyday. But when a company makes a masterpiece it doesn't matter what it looks like or how many frames you get. As the impact still comes across. But higher frames and better fidelity do make it a bit more enjoyable.
Toss a coin to CDPR!
Oh valley of penis!
I already gave them premium access to my wallet.
nah i`ll stick to the superior games; that is my canon.
juju mgroo no one cares, The games, show and books can all exist and it’s possible to enjoy all of them.
juju mgroo
love people like you who think just bc you do or don’t like something that it makes your opinion an objective truth, the games are not superior, the games are fan fiction that take place after the book series, they are still incredible, but the show is just following the books which take place years before the games, why do you act like you have to like one or the other? the release of the show has skyrocketed tw3 to an all time high in players and the same with book readers, it’s all symbiotic, the more Witcher content the better it is for all of us, the popularity of the show creates more insensitive for cd projekt to keep making games in the Witcher universe.
If you haven’t read the books you should try to and then you might enjoy the show more, they messed up somethings but overall it’s pretty faithful to the source and is in my opinion the best live action Witcher we’ve seen, ever watched the hexer lmao? If you did you might have a different tone.
I enjoyed W2 much more than Skyrim back in the day. I'm happy The Witcher is popular now.
same here
17:35 - Too late I combined them both and my PC is smelling like something is burning.
6:00 "Sit tight fella, this one's gonna take a wee while..."
DF reading my mind. I literally installed this today 😁
WickedRibbon me too! I’ve had it in my Steam library for ages lol it’s finally time 🤩
Same here!
Witcher 3 gets all the praise, and rightfully so it IS a masterpiece. Witcher 2 however is extremely and equally amazing IMO, it's just not open world.
I still think that the Witcher 2 is way much better the Witcher 3. Gameplay, complicated main story was way much better. And i like that the first two games were cut on chapters with small open worlds.
@@s0m3onesomewhere I can understand that, I personally just don't like the amnesia aspect of the first two games. Makes it feel to separated from the books, if that makes any sense.
@@s0m3onesomewhere The Witcher 2 is one of my all time favorite games. That being said, I've always felt that its story was the weakest overall in the trilogy (even if it's still better than most games). The story relied far too heavily on expository dialogue, and that's a big no-no in writing. This, plus turning Triss into a damsel in distress (not believing she was in danger for a second given her importance) really brought the overall narrative down for me. Don't get me wrong, there's still a number of amazing moments and characters (Saskia!), but I was relieved to see CDPR return to the more character driven storytelling they excelled at in TW1.
I thought Witcher 2 had a better combat!
@@KnotsOfWonders if you prefer rolling to dodging I can see that haha. The only thing I honestly miss from Witcher 2 is the skill tree.
TW2 took the API crown as the best looking DX9 game in history.
re5 was pretty good for me but it was released in 2009 and had directx 9&10 support
Far Cry 2 was pretty good for me but..yeah. Amazing character models, extremely crisp textures that still hold up when playing in 4k today...it's so goooood. Its Directx 10 implementation was hit or miss, though..just like with most games of the era.
Crysis 2
@@sharathvasudev Crysis 2 also had a DX11 option.
@@DarkNia64
Well the best dx9 game for me
Fantastic video, Witcher 2 was so ahead of its time and by far the most beautiful game of its era.
I'm actually realy happy to see that a channel like yours gets the recognition it deserves. Of course more is always better but for a pure tech channel that mostly doesn't concern with regular consumer questions I think that's pretty good.
I simply do not know enough to understand what I am seeing frame by frame or overall. The way you break things down is appreciated and needed if I am any example at all. Mid 2000s I started dabbling in PC and what would grow into a passionate hobby. I find myself rewatching your breakdowns to try and get these nuances to the recognizable state but You go so deep that I can't help just being grateful you end another thesis on a single setting with - I would/wouldn't use yet finishes. Thank You. Both for the content and for the obvious passion that led you here. PS. Can't wait for one of these on the Witcher 3 given all the increased interest maybe it can sway a buddy of mine to play it.
I've put it 300+ hours into the Witcher 2 and beat it in permadeath mode.
In terms of the storyline, the intricacy of the plot, and politics, it probably edges out the Witcher 3.
Also, there was more life Flotsam than in the entirety of Skyrim.
Just make sure to install the Flora mod to reduce grass pop-in.
I've had the 2nd game for 360 since it was released. To this day I still haven't beat it, not because I dont like it, because I worship that game and always championed it. No, it's because I have 3 grandkids that live with me and just dont have the time to run around guessing where untracked contracts and quest are. It kills me cause I think about the game all the time. Wish there was a quest tracker line mod or something.
@@azforu29 but... the game does have a quest tracker?
@@matternicuss no no. I mean similar to the third game. A line that paints your directive path, that updates in real time if you take a detour.
@@azforu29 Ah, yeah there's nothing in TW2 that direct. But, it will show you the approximate location of quests both on the main map as well as the mini map, pointing the general direction you need to go. It's a little rough around the edges, however.
Man how did you put 300+ hours in that game, did you played it like 9, 10 times?
Witcher 2 still has the best story. Classic!
I consider Witcher 1 and 3 to have stronger narratives. Witcher 2 still was very good.
@@eapleitez witcher 3 narrative is nowhere near witcher 2 but to each his own.
Actually first Witcher
@@nonplusultra18 in many ways that's a matter of preference, but honestly in terms of pure storytelling TW2 has a lot of issues compared to either TW1 or TW3. TW2 easily has the most complex backstory out of all three games, no question, but that complexity comes at a cost: lots and lots of exposition, which means the game regularly breaks one of the cardinal rules of storytelling; show, don't tell.
First Witcher Has the best story by far
PSA: make sure you clean out your saves when playing The Witcher 2. The game doesn't overwrite quicksaves (or autosaves, to my recollection), so after hours of playing the amount of saves you'll accrue will be huge, and make the game take much, much longer to load. Have fun!
Oh yeah I remember this!! I'd always delete to have just one save all the time
This is a brilliant idea for a new series of videos. Please go back & check out other older games.
the DF retro we've been waiting for.
I remember having a decent mid-range computer a couple years ago and booting this game up thinking it'd work like a charm. Still kicked my computer's ass even back then. I was shocked.
17:00 hhaha imagine a graphics tweak guide for this game.
"Cinematic DOF - Framerate impact = 100fps"
HOOOLY shit turning that off right now xD
Always enjoy watching the videos like this that you make Alex. Great stuff, looking forward to your next project!
What a beautiful torture chamber
I remember playing Witcher 2 on a new GTX 570 with great visuals. Later with GTX 680 4GB SLI I was running the game with ubersapling and the game did run like a dream. One of the best PC gaming experience I have ever had. Also, triple monitor setup made this an insane experience. I do miss the days when you could push gaming to another level with dual GPUs.
this game never gets the attention it deserves it was the foundation for the witcher 3 and sometimes the storytelling is better and the difficulty is way superior, thanks for analizing this beauty
Playing the game back in 2011 gave me a lot of hype and curiosity over the Wild Hunt phenomenon, the instant need for sequel is unreal. Fast forward to 2014, the Witcher 3 announcement is beyond amazing. Almost cream my pants. Getting your save file loaded and affecting the game is simply the cherry on top. I hope I can experienced both game all over again with zero memories
Ahh, Witcher 2, my favorite out of the trilogy. Such fun combat and the more linear structure with that midway choice that'll change the other half of the game entirely, so good.
"fun combat"
LOL, no
@@MegaOZX Much better than W3 where you have to buy i-frames to your dodge but the lingering hitboxes are so bad it still doesn't matter lmao. Not to mention all the uncontrollable pirouettes Geralt likes to do randomly in W3 that'll lead to slower attacks that the enemies can frame advantage you on with quicker pokes you wish Geralt would do everytime you hit the attack button.
The combat in Witcher 2 is pretty bad.
I can't play the game because of it.
Yea, you kinda have to play it thru twice, to see the whole game. So good.
I also enjoyed Witcher 2 more than 3, couldnt tell you exactly why. Something to do with the atmosphere and possibly the linearity. Sometimes games being too open stresses me out like being at a grocery store, I could waste too much time trying to pick what I want.
6:00 “The anvil doesn’t need forging the sword does” - Blacksmith from Fable 3
I actually played a bit of Witcher 2 beginning last year with some reShade magic and an inventory-limit remover. The game holds up better than expected! I hope we can see some more videos about "old" games in the future!
17:50 I see what you did there ;D cooles video Danke für die Nostalgie :D
Don’t particularly miss that pre-PBR, heavy bloom era...
Who needs sharp textures? Just bloom it up, baby!
Yeah the games run poorly from GFWL/Vista port jobs and look sienna tone or overly bright and vaseline smeared. 7th gen is rough. Obviously there are some standouts like every gen but a lot games either looked oblivion or modern warfare. You go further back and games definitely have prehistoric visuals, but basic assets and textures can look incredibly clean and high resolutions. Better yet the further back you go with pc games the better optimized they are to work at high framerates due to the popularity of CRT monitors during those golden 90s.
What is PBR?
@@highcollector physically based rendering
@@highcollector Pabst Blue Ribbon. If you drink enough it offers a superior blurring effect vs bloom.
I love this game. I've played it on my potato pc back in the day, then on xbox360, then my new pc I build last year. Now: I'm playing it again on the xbox one x with enhancements! I bought the collectors edition for pc day one. Great video.
I played it 1080p @60 fps on an i3-7100, RX570 and 8 GB DDR4.
Simple rig for simple Rick.
Literally watched your old witcher 2 vids last week!!! Thank you!!
Dang, I'm surprised there was no mention of that post process antialiasing option that adds an insanely awful amount of sharpening (unless I missed it haha).
Just today I started a second playthrough of The Witcher 2. And then I see this video! Oh, the irony! I remember its brilliance even after all these years. What a marvelous game!
The Witcher 2 still looks great! In some ways even better than Witcher 3.
@Salt Maker no
@Salt Maker no u
@Salt Maker yes her
@Salt Maker ok me
The foreset areas definitely
I love this channel so much... I can't say it enough.
what a coincidence im replaying Witcher 2 right now.
I downloaded yesterday! Hehehehe
Cant replay this game.. already did my third run back in the day.
How is it to play? I just did 3 and all of the DLC's. Will the combat be too hard to adjust to? I heard it's rough to go back to.
@@deadlyydude5522 OK, thank you. I'll temper my expectations, since I am interested in the story. I heard there is a mod aimed at improving the combat, but I don't know how much it improves the situation.
You guys lately are hitting home run again in again with these interesting videos. Stellar work. PLEASE take a look at Soldier of Fortune series :) Either tech retrospective or straight DF Retro.
Oh man. I bought a physical edition of this game a few months before it was even out (the CD Projekt team had an event of some sort in my country and they sold the physical edition of the game with autographs which was cool) and I had a really crap PC at the time, had to run most games at low settings. But man I was so excited to see Geralt again, even in such pixelated crap graphics. Beautiful memories! The Witcher was my favorite game series of all time before TW3 even came out. I absolutely loved the story of TW and TW2. The Witcher 3 was just an icing on the cake,a beautiful conclusion to an incredible story. Thank you CD Projekt Red.
witcher 2 is amazing, played it twice because i beat the game the first time not realizing that i did not import my witcher 1 saves, finished re-playing 2 days ago and now having a blast with witcher 3, the game is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen
Just Bought this game on Steam . What a great time to release this video
I played the Wicher 2 on a beast PC for 2011 standards. i7 920@3.8ghz, 6GB 1600mhz triple channel DDR3 and most importantly a HD5870 1GB GDDR5 graphics card. My monitor was still a 1280x1024 19” 2ms Samsung 940bf and on Ultra without Uber Sampling I got very good frame rate and played through twice that amazing game.
The Witcher 2 is my favorite game of all time!
Thanks to this video, my witcher adventure starts at 2!
I remember i finished a school with good marks, mom gave me money for new PC and i've built it with GTX560ti. It was this moment i was finally able to play this game xd
Ah the reward
Love the video. I’m currently playing the Witcher 2 right now with a 2080ti and find it insane that there are still settings that toast my gpu lol. But such a fantastic game really for me on par with the Witcher 3 in terms of story but the game still looks amazing today.
TW3 really could have gotten a resolution scaler or Ubersampling as well.
The lack of anti-aliasing really hurts the presentation of the game IMO.
Yep witcher 3 looks outdated comapred to witcher 2.especially flotsam makes anything in witcher 3 look bad
Just enable downsampling in the graphics driver.
@@tgdude6379 that's just not true.
@@megapro125 From what I experienced DSR isn't quite as useful as an in-game resolution scaler because it alters the HUD and mouse sensitivity as well and sometimes softens the image too much.
Afaik you can enable ubersampling in W3 altering ini files
Ahhh I remember the switch from console to PC back then and being clueless about graphic settings, fps etc. Slapped a GTX 550 Ti in a prebuilt, loaded this game up and naturally selecting the best possible settings which ran at like 30 fps or lower so I didn't notice a difference in performance haha, but the visuals! Good lord, the graphics blew my mind and I was officially converted to PC
Is it worth starting with Witcher 1?
Woah, a reply
Has clunky combat. But still, is a must play.
The story is great. Keep in mind, the menus are confusing and combat is clunky
Yes it's worth it, the story and atmosphere is great! The gameplay is aged but once you get it it's fun. Downdload a quick run mod, to run faster.
I started witcher 1 last year, the fact that you can import your save file
with some inventory items and decisions is alone worth the attempt. Currently playing witcher 3, love the coherency.
This video is really well structured and well written Alex (just like your other ones), I enjoyed it a lot
"Lod transitions are way to aggresive for 2020 standards "
Looks at 50%+ of open world games where you can almost outrun the level bulding itself in front of you.
Shh, we're hating on old games now. (remembers Dying Light made the "updated" version LOD 50% as the new max.
Yeah. Far Cry 5 looks amazing, but the world disintegrates like 10 ft in front of you even with everything on max. It's super apparent with tesselation especially, since you can see the bumps in dirt building up so close. Not sure why they made it kick in so close to you in a FIRST PERSON game, lol. All games should let me scale LODs as far as I want period.
it's clear that we still do not have the hardware to eliminate this and game developers need to do optimizations.
@@OmegaJazz the hardware exists. Just not in current consoles.
@@josh223 indeed i went into the ini files in the witcher 3 u can literally eliminate pop in and with a mod no texture pop in at a distance with the lod being increased on them what is holding back pc again, as usual, is consoles, also the increase in grass density is amazing on the witcher 3 I have it set to 4000 up from the ultra setting which i think is 1600
Great video! I am playing this again in 2021, at 1440p with an RTX 3080, and with the settings maxed out it still puts my system to the test, on average I get just over 100 FPS, but sometimes the framerate is all over the place, averaging around 70 when walking around densely populated areas. I personally can't see much of a difference in-game with ubersampling, so I just leave it off.
we need Witcher1&2 Remake for next-Gen Consoles
Just finished The Witcher 2 again yesterday! Once you get yourself accustomed to the combat again the visuals itself hold up so well. Damn I love this series
Please do The Witcher 1 !
Really enjoyable video and thanks for teaching me more about videogames after all these years.
I just bought the trilogy to play them for the first time, because i liked the show so much.
Games better than the show, especially no 3
Please go read the books to see the real story that the show butchered to hell.
You have an amazing journey ahead of you! Have fun!
Shows how different forms of media can have a retroactive effect on old game sales
Boi you have made the best decision of your life, especially Witcher 3.
For me the greatest video game ever made
The witcher 2 felt really atmospheric and in my opinion still looks really good. The forest near Flotsam was my favorite part and felt especially atmospheric. I think this was the case because the lightning was just so good.
I'd love to see Witcher 2 remade using the Witcher 3 engine.
Thx for the explaining Übersampling! I played the game about half a year back and was wondering why it was "only" running at around 60FPS on my 2080 @1440p... Now it all makes sense :D
It runs way above 60 at 4K Max everything on 2080ti
TW3 made advancements in so many forms, but am I the only one who feels it's still missing something TW2 had?
This are two entirely different games in many aspects... Really, every part in Trilogy is unique on it's own. W1 has many things done much better than in W2. Same with W2 vs W3. But every part is definitely worth playing though.
i totally agree. Witcher 2 was more impressive for the time.
And Witcher 2 had many things that Witcher 1 didn't have, that Witcher 3 had.
This game, original Crysis and Half Life have showed how games could look like when are designed specifically for PC!
Story from 2 was much better than 3 also music as well
The cinematic depth of field is so cinematic that it makes your a game a 24FPS cinematic experience.
It seems like a game that should be played on a CRT at low internal resolutions with every bell and whistle turned up.
So Ubersampling at 1080p looks better than downsampling with DSR from 4k to 1080p?
I remember that DSR at 4.00x performed way batter than enabling Ubersampling.
Honestly, i'm surprised they never released "The Witcher 2" onto PlayStation 4 and Xbox One before or after "The Witcher 3" release cause they had it available for last Gen but it ran poorly on it.
I re-installed witcher 2 from steam to take a look at it again. I was shocked at how GOOD it looked NOW on my R4 ALIENWARE machine. CD Projekt red did a hell of a job on this game.
When I saw the title "The Witcher 2 in 2020"
I thought Witcher3 2 is coming
"The Witcher 3 2"
Lmao
Wouldn't it be nice if they released Witcher 1 and 2 on the current engine? I want to experience the whole story, but Witcher 1's technology limitations make it almost impenetrably boring.
so did I
@@duxnihilo out of nostalgia I see a certain charm in it. But god was that investigation wuesg right at the beginning tedious
@@duxnihilo Witcher 1 was great when it came out. Still a crap engine (thanks Bioware) but a great game. It definitely hasn't aged. I'd love to see remake in the current engine for sure.
Played and finished this on ultra settings with my pc. Really good-looking world.
And seriously. I don't need games that look better than this. Especially RPGs. X360-era games running at 60fps/1080p/Ultra still look super clean to me.
Not all games even today look this good lol
But then they would have to put in effort to actually make a game better/working without relying on the instant wow factor. Tart it up and ship it out as it is. An inch of make up drives most guys crazy same with spotty geeks. Haha
i did try and play this game on a HD 3870, i didnt get past the first level, the lagg was insane. fast forward a year and i uppgrade to a new PC with a 7970, now able to rock n roll and even giving ubersampling a try, i remember being like holy crap this is the new future benchmark for grapichs cards!
Remember when you couldn't play it with ubersampling on in 2011,yeah.... you still can't in 2020
Running everything on high at 1440 with a 3700x and a 2070 Super and getting around 144fps most of the time. Haven’t seen it dip once. Such a beautiful game.
Who else wants CD Project Red to give us a remaster of The Witcher and The Witcher 2 for PlayStation 5
Plus A remastered of The Witcher for Xbox Series X
Old School Gamer Nah.
We need a video looking back at this ubersampling and DOF max setting in 2023. The 4090 is 8k capable now.
What I remember most from Witcher 2 is everyone shouting, "Odrin!"
If you read some of the Witcher 3 bulletin boards in Velen, there is also mention of a drunk soldier messing about with womenfolk and livestock. "Heere, boyyyyyy!!"
The drunken adventures of Odrin must be many. During one of the quests someone reports hearing folks shouting for Odrin while in Tousaint. There is a notice at the Cockatrice Inn as well.
@@greenfoxes5903 He is in Vanilla Witcher 3, lying drunk at the Novigrad Docks with his friend selling hundreds of empty bottles.
“Plough em all”
On road trip, DF decides to upload video. YES!
Well, it's called UBERsampling for a reason LOL
I remember enabling DOF because I didn't even care it destroyed my GTS 250 and later my 7970, it still looks SOO GOOD.
"This I like!"
~Foltest
What is it with Oblivion and Witcher 2 and making us fall in love with emperors that die in 15 minutes of game?
Because of the Witcher series, I was finally motivated to finish Witcher 1 and finished it, and just finished Witcher 2 yesterday