Don't worry, The Witcher 2 is worse than the first. (It does look lovely though)
I'd recommend using some mods for the first though, like being able to meditate and use your storage anywhere.

Of course he hasn't seen much of it in Chapter 2, they keep making you run back and forth in the city and swamp. xD

I gave up on it after I encountered what is either a game breaking bug or piss-poor game design. What happened was this:

I was trying to get into a city which was closed off. I spoke to a priest who gave me a medallion and told me to speak to the merchant on the outskirts of the village. If I showed him the medallion, he would help me get into the city, he said.

So I went and spoke to the merchant. It went well, right up to the moment I showed him the medallion, at which point he clammed up like an oyster and refused to speak to me anymore.

Back to the priest I went. He told me to speak to the merchant on the outskirts of the village. If I showed him the medallion, he would help me get into the city, he said.

*sigh* Back to the merchant, then. He still refused to speak to me.

So I shut down the game and uninstalled it.

You should wait at a campfire for a while and then you can speak with him again.

A bit late, but you know. Chapter 2 does drag a bit, but I thought the game really picked up around chapter 3 and I felt like the second "half" of the game went by a lot quicker than the first. If you get stuck the Witcher wiki ought to be helpful/

Edit: Upon closer inspection the thread is even older than I originally thought.

After this thread I stopped playing the witcher because of a bug, once its fixed ill probably get back into it :)

Don't forget to explore fully the swamps. In chapter 3, they change drastically and that aside, some quests cannot be completed in later chapters. 2 is a rather large chapter, but 3 is the biggest of them all. In 3 you have a larger area, swamps again, new area town plus old one and of course, the beautiful cemetery. 2 is a large chapter. Take your time. Explore the romance, too, in it, there are many encounters!

Alrighty. Good to know, I'm quite adept at pestering you know :P

So, piss-poor game design it is, then.

Like that makes any sense. "Oh, he repeatedly refuses to talk to me, even though I was explicitly told that he would. Maybe if I go wait a while at a camp fire, he'll change his mind". What the hell kind of logic is that?

Ah, that bites. Oh well, I wish you good luck, and have fun with it.

It's not specifically about using the camp fire, characters can get pissed at you and it just takes time until they are willing to talk to you again. I instantly understood that logic the first time I played the game and even thought that it's a nice realistic touch. And that rule is true for a whole bunch of dialogue options with various characters throughout the game, it's not some obscure gamey logic in one specific situation.

Also I'm not sure you even need to talk to him to proceed, at the very least there should have been various other paths you could pursue in the meantime. The Witcher generally isn't structured like your average RPG where progress is all about checking stuff off a list, it's quite organic design, you will inevitably block some paths and ruin relationships and in my experience the game ALWAYS offers you an alternate option. I've been in some serious cluster fuck situations in the game which I would have assumed were game breaking bugs in almost any other RPG but the designers had anticipated and prepared for here. There may still be some bugs in the game but none of the remaining ones are game breaking in my experience.
"Once it's fixed"? That game is almost ten years old, nobody's fixing anything there anymore.

Game logic


Thanks


https://www.gog.com/forum/general/witcher_1_bug

Weird. Why was GLSL support disabled? At least it appears to work now.

Chapter 2 does drag on a bit, but the game does pick up speed afterwards. Have fun and good luck.

Well, I tried speaking to absolutely everyone, and the only one who had anything worthwhile to say was the priest, although "worthwhile" is a relative term in this case, given that what he said turned out not to be true.

Also, given that the progress apparently relies on a mechanic not found in any other RPG, and not found at any earlier point in the game, and there is no mention of it at any point leading up to that, I'm afraid I'll have to stick to my "piss-poor game design" assessment.

Kudos for "instantly understanding that logic", but to me, when an NPC keeps repeating the same line over and over, that is the universal signal for "you're not getting anything more out of him". If you make a game where an NPC can repeat himself over and over, and then suddenly change his mind, you need to make damned sure you inform the player of this, because it is not intuitive.

Are you in Chapter 1 still? If you are at the part I think you are at. The priest gives you a ring. Then you need to help 3 of his buddies with a quest. You must equip the ring. Then when you talk to that guard , who's name is Mikul I think, he asks you if the reverend gave you anything to show as proof or something and there is an option during dialog to show him the ring. Otto and Harem I believe are the other two guys names.