I must agree I didn't see any hype either, it was like I was the only one who knew it existed, and in our professional gaming store, they had only one copy displayed, and they didn't even display the collectors edition. I had to ask it myself.
I've encountered about 2 or 3 flashbacks now. The first one you encounter near the end of Act 1, and at the moment I'm still in act 2, I don't feel like rushing things.
At first the flashbacks seemed kinda weird. So instead of seeing you as you did it the moment itself, you see a piece of artwork of the option you chose at that specific moment. Watch out: possible spoiler!
In act 1 you are asked to protect some wares from a group of 'Drowners' who come out at night. The Drowners appear and at some point an elf appears and 'aids' you(I didn't even notice him until he approached me and my character automaticly said 'thanks for the help'), he then tells you the wares are ment for him and he offers you money. You can reject or accept the money, thus selecting to give the goods or don't give the goods. I 'sold' him the goods and a bit later in act 2, I found a man murdered. My character said: 'I know what caused these events' and you see a drawing where Geralt(your character) accepts money from an elf. At first I didn't realise this was the actual flashbacks, as I had never seen this picture before. So far, every time I saw a flashback, my character said: I know what caused these events, so it's pretty clear when you have a flashback.
I also get now why this game is rated 18+ in my country(tottaly off the record: i'm not 18 yet), and people who play the game will soon realise it too, why it has been rated 18+. Let's say that about after half an hour to 1 hour of actual gameplay, you'll have found you're first 'card' if you chose the right option. So far I have already found 4 'cards', I'm not sure but if you search around on the internet,you'll probably find out what these cards are, you can't do anything with them, they're more kinda 'trophies'.
I'm getting used to the combat system, and it's pretty fun after you developed your fighting skills a bit. Another thing I like is that you actually have to have some knowledge about the creatures you're fighting to get their valuable ingredients. i.e. you fight a ghoul whitout knowing anything about him. you beat him, but there is nothing on his corpse. A bit later you encounter a book about ghouls, reading it adds a file to your creature tab in your journal, if you would know beat a ghoul, you have a chance of findig some ghoul specific ingredients such as Ghoul blood. The same counts for herbs, if you don't know the herb, you can't extract it.
EDIT: Something that I both like and hate about this game: The auto-save function. You can't turn it off, but it did save me already a lot of time.
So when does it autosave? whenever one of your quests get's updated and you enter a new loading zone(i.e. you talk to a NPC who gives you some info about a certain quest you're on, the next time you enter a house or a new region, your game will be saved).It annoys me because sometimes you have to enter a house, talk to a person, and leave the house again. Say you got the quest outside, when you enter the house, the game saves(which takes longer then loading the house itself in my case), you talk to a person->your quest get's update, you leave the house, the game saves again.
Altough it comes in usefull, an option to toggle it off would have been nice. It could be that I've overlooked it, but i'm rather sure it isn't there.
Last edited by isorun; 05/11/07 09:46 PM.
