Thoughts on Witchaven?

[Apex Veiko]

It's at the very least enjoyable, that is if you're playing it with the EGwhaven patch through dosbox. The enemies that were made with claymation look good, it has a decent atmosphere, and being leveled up to the point where you can one-hit low tier enemies with your bare fists is also fun.

It's not great on its own, but when held against the rest of Capstone's catalog, it's a masterpiece. It's not a boring slog like Corridor 7, and you can actually look at it and not vomit from how terrible it looks like Operation Body Count. I've never played the second game but I heard it was worse in every conceivable way. So there's that.

Also its cover art is badass, it could easily be album art for a hard rock band.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Apex Veiko

[Noiser]

Heh, I don't get tired to repeat myself: It's good and Capstone doesn't deserve all the hate it gets (mostly from youtube bandwagon). Witchaven in particular is very charming for what it is, however people have different expectations in games and it shows.

[Master O]

For anyone playing Witchaven & Witchaven II in DOS, the patches for their respective games can be found at https://ettingrinder.youfailit.net/wh-egwhaven.html.

[CrocMagnum]

27 minutes ago, Apex Veiko said:

...Also its cover art is badass, it could easily be album art for a hard rock band.

Indeed. It's also a nod to a famous Conan painting made by Frank Frazetta. He did the following art between 1965-1966. Frazetta was lightyears ahead of his time: 

[Dynamo]

I believe the Witchaven cover art is actually licensed from an already existing artwork, though the name of the original artist eludes me at the moment...

[Gez]

21 minutes ago, Dynamo said:

I believe the Witchaven cover art is actually licensed from an already existing artwork, though the name of the original artist eludes me at the moment...

I believe it's one of Frazetta's Death Dealer series.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

7 hours ago, Dynamo said:

What was wrong with Witchaven 2 anyway, apart from the rushed production? All I know about it is that it uses new enemies with significantly higher resolution sprites alongside the old, janky 2d sprites of the original game, making for a weird look.

The biggest issues (IMO) were that they messed with the balance of the weapons/enemies in ways that don't make a lot of sense (it comes across as that they were experimenting with changes/placeholder data that were meant to be temporary, then rushed it out), and the new features added meant a bunch of new bugs added as well.

 

18 minutes ago, Dynamo said:

I believe the Witchaven cover art is actually licensed from an already existing artwork, though the name of the original artist eludes me at the moment...

Ken Kelly.

 

1 minute ago, Gez said:

It's one of Frazetta's Death Dealer series.

No.  Although as Ken Kelly was Frazetta's student it may have been meant to be the same character or reminiscent of.

[Gez]

Okay, so after checking, it's not Death Dealer, it's Death's End. An even edgier name!

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Both Witchaven 1 & 2 obviously look like a low-budget rip-off of Heretic and Hexen due to the graphics and aesthetics.

[CrocMagnum]

1 hour ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

... Although as Ken Kelly was Frazetta's student it may have been meant to be the same character or reminiscent of.

Thanks for the clarification. The connection between the two paintings is indeed very striking. 

[Murdoch]

All of Capstone's stuff looks like bad mods based on footage I have seen. To be fair I have only played the Corridor 7 demo, and thought it was atrocious. Nothing I have seen of Witchhaven gives me any inkling that it will be any different. Some people might be able to look past some flaws and persist with it, but I have a list of mods and games to play through long enough to keep me busy till about 15 years after my death. I do not have time to waste on "kind of OK if look past the glaring issues".

[DNSKILL5]

Good ideas, fun multiplayer, badly executed, rushed release. 

[Devalaous]

I find a lot of old jank charming in its own right (Hence why I play Maximum Doom sometimes and giggle at the things people used to make), but generally that doesnt apply to engines. Remasters and stable source ports or even just quality of life unofficial patches to make things not crash, have native resolution, and less-ass controls can overcome lots of bad design for me.

[ReaperAA]

Anyone putting this above Hexen must be out of their mind (also Hexen's puzzly nature is overstated in my opinion)

 

Speaking of Capstone games, I feel the devs there had good creative ideas but didn't knew how to polish their games. I feel like if they had focused on just 1 game (either Witchaven or TekWar) rather than both, the result would've been much more polished.

 

[SealSpace]

My least favorite Capstone title and boomer shooter as well as one of my biggest sources of contempt and disgust for a game. 

 

 

[SealSpace]

And despite what the majority says, I think Witchaven is the worst Capstone game ever, not Tekwar or even OBC (yeah I went there... bite me).

[MrFroz]

Haven't played it, and I'm really torn on whether I should do it or not after reading the posts here.

[mrthejoshmon]

6 hours ago, MrFroz said:

Haven't played it, and I'm really torn on whether I should do it or not after reading the posts here.

You can get both in a bundle cheap on GOG which launches in DOSBox preconfigured for you with modern controls.

 

People say its worth playing on a sourceport, I disagree as sourceports do not give you the authentic hot mess experience that the game actually is (again, completed both, they are fucking technical disasters).

 

Playing it is the only way to get your answer. If anything, it'll help you recognise better games.

 

Also if anyone says Witchaven is better than Hexen then I question if they've even played them both and not just watched YouTube videos. Hexen has the advantage of an actual combat system that works for starters.

Edited December 24, 2023 by mrthejoshmon

[Doominator2]

Holy Shit I came here thinking Witchfire came out then realized we're really just talking about Witchhaven :(

 

Edit: Oh wait Witchfire did come out I guess?

[Aaron Blain]

I don't know anything about Build Engine modding, but my guess is that most of WH's problems are hard-coded. I've been looking at the WitchavenGDX Source Code but I haven't managed to find any of the logic that interests me yet. It's mostly the player physics that bother me but there are probably other minor issues that could be fixed without an unreasonable amount of work.

[Master O]

1 hour ago, Aaron Blain said:

I don't know anything about Build Engine modding, but my guess is that most of WH's problems are hard-coded. I've been looking at the WitchavenGDX Source Code but I haven't managed to find any of the logic that interests me yet. It's mostly the player physics that bother me but there are probably other minor issues that could be fixed without an unreasonable amount of work.

 

WH's problems are because Capstone created this game in the first place. :D

[SealSpace]

In addition, I'll probably admit the second Witchaven was a partial improvement over the first due to having more weapon and magic variety and a nicer looking final boss and some cooler new enemies, however not by much as a game honestly. It's still a piece of shit regardless.

 

If half of Witchaven's music were nearly as cool, exciting, and badass as C7's and OBC's output, I might have been more willing to tolerate it as a game, but again it still wouldn't improve my opinion on the game by a whole lot either, however I would have had something to respect it for.

 

On 12/21/2023 at 12:09 PM, Kinsie said:

All of the Capstone games were a perfect storm behind the scenes: Low budgets meant they couldn't hire any steady hands, meaning most of the staff were inexperienced and in many cases, straight out of school. And extremely short schedules (as in, six months or so a game) meant that there was little-to-no room for such luxuries as design documents or effective QA.

 

Witchaven 2 was not a good time. The company was running out of money and management were making a (failed) bid to take it public, regularly bringing in prospective investors to show around and give the whole dog-and-pony show. Morale was bad, all the different factions (management, development, marketing, QA...) hated each other, and the end of the tunnel was pretty clearly in sight. That they shipped anything at all is a tiny miracle.

If Capstone actually had much higher budget and more talented dudes to develop the game, C7, OBC, and Tekwar would have been much greater masterpieces and more appealing to me than it already is (C7 at least) and seeing a full-blown sequel to C7 would have been nice. And Witchaven would have been a more bearable game, but it still probably wouldn't be Heretic or Hexen I or II. 

 

On 12/21/2023 at 2:39 PM, magicsofa said:

...

 

...I'd rather play Tekwar

Based Opinion Detected. 

[ApprihensivSoul]

Honestly I loved both of them, though they are of course trash. I wanted them to more mobility, like with the aforementioned physics fixes. I've always thought they would play well with more commit to attacks, ie enemies that lunge forward for melee, and giving the player ability to dodge somehow.

The one thing from them I unironically wish was more prevalent in other first person games was the density of death traps. Death traps are an integral part of dungeon diving for me, and most Doom-esque games are worse for minimizing them.

 

On 12/21/2023 at 8:12 AM, Aaron Blain said:

 

Honestly, I think they would both be great with a little polish.

[Helm]

what I'm getting from this thread is that we all wanted to like it much more than we did when it came out- says something about the presentation ad copy and demo but yeah if anyone actually has sat here to finish this game they would know it's a rough one. 

[MrFlibble]

Maybe some games are not really meant to be played to completion...

 

Just a thought.

 

I played the demo of WH a while ago, just to check it out. Indeed it feels like some very ambitious game design was undermined by a lack of resources, apparently. Also let's not forget that back in 1995 when this came out, there were far fewer games to choose from, and the overall experience with first-person games of this type, both on the part of players and developers was much more limited. 

[ApprihensivSoul]

I think that you're more right than you realize, Mr.Flibble, though maybe not limited to this type of case.

In general I think the idea of completing a game for its own sake can negatively effect people's overall enjoyment, and finishing everything we like can be really defeating to one's own satisfaction. Look at how many people prefer episode 1 of Doom or the first six-to-eleven maps of Doom 2, etc. There's some sort of value to saying "I really enjoyed my time, but I've had enough."