I'm currently playing Witcher 1 in order to get a save file for this, but one of the problems I had which meant I never finished it when it launched was how unnecessarily circuitous the quests were for a computer RPG as opposed to pen and paper.

For example one of the quests involves going to one house to speak to Raymond, then going to the hospital to see Shani, then being told to visit her at her house later, which involves several conversations with her housekeeper before finally being told to go somewhere else. From a plot sense this works and would work very well in P&P where all of these steps would take only a few seconds, but actually trudging around is wearing on my patience.

Did CD Projekt change this for the sequel, bringing characters you need to communicate with closer together and stopping some of the messenger-boy aspect? Or did they stick firmly to old-style P&P quest design?

Yes, I always found those quests annoying, myself; made no sense why I couldn't ask Shani about doing the autopsy while she was in the hospital, for example. The quest design in TW2 is much better, and I can't recall any of this nonsense happening there.

Witcher 1 is not designed for speed runs. If you plan to ply through it as fast as possible, before you start the Witcher 2, you are bound to get frustrated. Just play TW2 first, the save to import is not that important. Then, if you'll like it, you can take your time with the first game. It really shines when you are not in the hurry to finish it.

The trick is to play the quests mixed into each other. Told to get to Shani at a later time? Follow another quest in the meantime.

Of course this involves two things:

1.) Brace yourself in taking on the quests in a serial way (one after the other) and do them parallel to each other.

2.) Look at the quest description and the map, draw a map of locations in your head (or on a piece of paper...yes with a pencil...what do you mean you don't know what a pencil is? Jesus...*g*) and plan your way to avoid running around for a single quest.

Be effective! You're getting two benefits this way: It's actually faster (that's what you want I guess) and it makes more fun.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad to hear Witcher 2 is better in this regard, I was playing Witcher 1 just on it's own merits rather than just trying to speed run through it to get a save for Witcher 2, which admittedly holds some appeal, but I'm just not enjoying it in the least. Hopefully Witcher 2 is a lot better but I suspect I don't have a fraction of the tolerance needed to play this.

Mhm...well if you like to call it so, yes, then the Witcher 2 is better in this way. It's quests are a lot more linear, easier, simpler..."streamlined" so to speak. And I bet you will miss some of the complex quests of The Witcher. :P

Maybe I will, the richness and complexity of Witcher's quests are a big draw, but if they cut out the hopelessly tedious grind as well the tradeoff will be more than worthwhile. If they could maintain the rich complexity of Witcher 1's quests just without having to go across 3 maps in order to buy the precise brand of vodka you need to bribe an inconsequential character that would be the ideal.

Unfortunately I've had to give up on W1 though; my boredom threshhold was pierced by a quest which had me looking for well over an hour without success for a drug pusher who is "in the slums". Doing dozens of laps with the ALT key held down didn't simulate an investigation as well as CD Projekt might have thought.

I know I don't miss them. I also found TW2 to be much better in regards to quests. But another thing I liked about TW2 is that there is variety in "Witcher's Contracts" quests. In the first game you would just go out and kill X number of monster Y and collect enough of body part Z to give to the quest giver in exchange for your reward.

But in this game, not only are there different ways of doing those contracts, like with grapeshot bombing nests or using harpy traps, there are also contract quests where you don't have to kill any monsters. One of the best examples is the Troll Contract in Chapter 1. It makes the game much closer to what being a witcher would be like, AND because the game gives you barely any experience for killing stuff, you don't feel forced into taking a violent path because you want to level up faster.

Well, there's a "track quest on map" feature in your journal. And the witcher wiki has detailed descriptions of every quest.

That particular drug pusher's name is Angus i think, he's a bit before the inn.

I agree. The problem with quests in TW1 was that in many ocassions you had to guess what the developers wanted you to do, instead of the game telling you.

And I don't mean handholding, some stuff was simply counter intuitive.

I think you are starting to realize computer gaming is not an ideal hobby.