Nope! Like I said, it's the very first short story, and it's discussed in the game too. I definitely recommend reading it first.

There are other short stories that take place before that one, but they're still intended to be read afterwards. If you end up buying The Last Wish, which is the first collection of Witcher short stories, it opens with that story (simply titled "The Witcher") and then goes on to some others that happened earlier, as Geralt recalls his past adventures.

Okay, just asked because it was mentioned this story would be relevant later in the game and I didn't know what exactly would be relevant =)

I'll give it a read when I'll have some time to spare, thank you!

To try and add a little insight here. The game takes place 5 years after the books ended . And yes the developers tend to rely heavily on the books for characters . There are only 2 official translations to English. The Blood of the Elves and The Last Wish . However there is a fan translation of all other remaining books at the link
http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?/topic/20967-our-community-fan-translations/ .
Oh almost forgot it will help in some ways to read your journal entries by pressing the J key on your keyboard . Here you can access characters , quests , potions , ingredients etc. . The game is a little rough on the edges but by digging a little deeper in the journal entries you can see the devotion that the developers put into this game . This is also the 1st game these guys developed as well .

I was impressed by the background that went into the Journal - I'm tempted to get the books off amazon now!

Op, it's understandable if you cannot relate to the character Geralt, but it's pretty asinine to compare Dragon Age and Witcher like you're doing- both games are enjoyable in their own way.

I think the character motivations for Geralt are pretty obvious- you are someone who has lost their memory, so as a self-aware person you want to recover it.

Upon your interaction with the people of your witcher school, you realize that this is where you learned to be a witcher and became the person you once were.

When your school is attacked, and the secrets of the witchers stolen, it is your duty as a member of that school, and as a conscientious witcher, to not let those terrible secrets fall into the wrong hands, which will undoubtedly abuse the powers obtained from them.

You should hunt monsters because that's what witchers do, that's their raison d'etre- they are itinerant monster slayers, and you are role-playing as the witcher Geralt.

The witcher Geralt is a man with a rich past, and if you're interested in finding more about him I suggest reading Sapowski's book, the work on which the games are based. If that is not your cup of tea, then don't play the game. But again, it's pretty asinine to compare games which have their separate strengths and weaknesses.

I think what is happening here is that you are pretty much missing playing Dragon Age, which is a fun game in its own respect, and you can't find any reason to find enjoyment in any other game. It happens every time we finish a story- nothing else measures up to it for awhile. Just give it some time, I guess *shrug*.

I played the first Witcher well before I read any of the books and was completely engrossed with the story from the beginning till end. Indeed, I'd rank it at, or very near, best story of all time in any video game.

The native Polish dialog is a must; the English voice acting is terrible, as has been noted. Look up amnesia. There are many forms, and it's quite common to not lose certain skills or knowledge, even if you have no idea how or why you have that knowledge. Very rarely is amnesia complete.

I'm undergoing a similar consideration, except there are a few more things bugging me:

Valuables that I have acquired are never of interest to merchants that I encounter; I was led to believe that these would fetch money, but apparently all they are good for as of chapter 2 is hogging inventory space.

The interface is clunky and needlessly complex, with umpteen billion different subscreens, some of which easily could have been combined or otherwise streamlined (ex: a quest screen that also contains a map which readily displays the location of different objectives, as opposed to requiring tedious tracking of a quest and switching to the map and back).

The quest screen feels more than a little broken; there are certain quests that the game insists on me keeping on my list, even though I have no interest in playing dice poker (as it is a highly unreliable way to make money), others that omit time sensitive data (ex: when returning something I found in the sewers, I was unable to do so because the person never showed in the morning, and the game gave me no clue what time I should return), others that flat out never get added to the quest screen (when talking to the Huntsman about certain monsters in the outskirts, I assumed that those quests would be made available later since they had not been added to the quest screen; a few quests later, and I had left the area), and others that refuse to provide a location for where the person who posted a contract can be located.

The fact that the game requires me to research monsters via books is annoying beyond belief; I get that Geralt has amnesia, but surely he could have researched monsters by killing them (a process that might have gone faster if doing so was aided by regaining memories in the process), with the possible exception of supplied notes from Berengar for fighting boss monsters. As it stands, doing a basic grind quest requires me to either shell out precious money or talk to every NPC in the vain hopes that I can interact with one of them in a way that results in me getting a free book.

Don't get me wrong, I like the story, especially the way parts of it feel highly reminiscent of a Raymond Chandler novel, but slogging through crap like this is really bogging down the experience.

Finally given up on the Witcher. I was contemplating just how much more fun it would be if I could find a mod that would remove the research nonsense, introduce some kind of random encounters (combat or otherwise) during the day, and fix the broken questing system, when I realized that any time a game requires independent modifications in order to make itself feel fun, then the game is probably not worth playing in the first place. I will probably wind up watching someone's Let's Play purely to get some sense of closure from the story, but as for the actual "game" part of this RPG, I fail to see what so many people seem to like about it; the combat is so disconnected from my actions that I feel actively bored in fights, the amnesia Geralt suffers from seems to serve no purpose other than forcing the player to engage in a bizarre form of in-game micro transactions which only lengthens the game as one tries to scrounge up gold in order to either pay for ingredients from traders or paying the same traders for the requisite knowledge required for you to harvest the ingredients yourself, and , moreover, the pacing plods at half the speed of a Stanely Kubrick film without any sense of tension. If people really like this, then more power to them, but I am not one of them.

Do watch a playtrough video / force yourself towards the end. Why would you do that? Well, because the second game fixes vast majority of things you seem to dislike about the fist one - including killing monsters to research them (altho you can still use books if you wish to do that, nice touch I feel.) It also has way higher production values and story seemed, at least to me, far better.

This assumes that I am in fact able to play the second game; I am not. My computer barely surpasses the minimum system requirements for the first game, and even on the lowest graphical setting, I still experience slowdown on occasion, and it flat out failed a CYRI query for the second game. Furthermore, if a game is not fun, the sequel being good is at best an argument for skipping game one and watching its let's play as opposed to actually playing through the first one, as the promise of a marvelous follow up does not make the preceding slog any easier (if anything, it makes it seem to drag even more).

That said, I am considering playing this again after doing some research on the game; it turns out the the game has next to nothing useful to buy, as the best armor can be acquired on a quest (with maybe 1 or set available for sale before then), replacement weapons for my witcher blades are incompatible with/not influenced by the witcher fighting styles (as far as I can tell, the wiki is kind of vague on this) and as a result do not seem to be worth the money. In essence, it seems that all that gold is really useful for, aside from advancing the plot, is for buying alcohol and books, meaning that there is no reason to hoard money, meaning I can proceed through the game more easily without having to agnoize over my finances.

On the other hand, I find it somewhat frustrating that so little in the way of character building is available in terms of equipment; this is usually a key part of most CRPGs in my experience, and without it, all that is left is the largely pre-defined character abilities Geralt acquires throughout the game, making the character feel somewhat static.

Well yeah, that's why I said either watch a playtrough or force yourself :-P It is a shame that you can't run the second game, while some people prefer the first one, Witcher 2 is just ... Even the equipment is there! Loads of it! And crafting! And ... stuff. At any rate, it's not really true that you can't buy useful stuff, there is a sword (yes, a sword, in the 4th act) which is worth buying, but ... That's about it really. I have always found the first Witcher to be mediocre at best at its gameplay aspects, but I am a huge fan of the books and I love how TW games tie into them so nicely. I hate that they've used the cheapest plot element aka 'amnesia', but still, it's great.

Most swords actually do support the use of witcher styles. There's a fairly easy way to check: Weapons which don't support them have about one or two animations repeating over and over while attacking, while weapons which do support them are visibly used in precisely the same manner as the witcher swords.

I really like what TW2 does in that respect: He's progressively remembering, which recaps story of the books (surprisingly in a very thoughtful, not spoiling fashion so you can read the anyway) and it then ends up expanding upon them, so people who have not red the books will understand the story anyway, and those who have will get a lot of interesting references and nuances out of it. Very nice.

Ok, now the game is actively trying to piss me off; who the seven hells is this King of the Wild Hunt bloke? Geralt seems to know him, refers to a prior meeting with him in his journal, and the wiki seems to inidicate that he should have appeared in the Prologue, yet I am completely in the dark. The preliminary research I have done indicates that the fans seem to take this in stride, something that I have no patience for and will not be doing. Did I somehow miss out on a part of the prologue, or is this just shit storytelling?

He met him right at the beginning. Remember Geralt running with the voices following? Well those were the Wild Hunt.