I bought the first this weekend on Steam, and will start a Witcher run after I finish Dragon Age Awakening.

And no homo but I have to say Geralt von Riva is a damn good looking character.

Damn! My PC is perfect for TW1, but the mobo onboard GPU is under minimum requirements for TW2, I'll have to get a graphics card... Luckily even the low-power, fanless ones I prefer are beyond TW2 recommended requirements, so no problem, as soon as I'll finish TW1, I'll get one.

Oh and the franchise passed 4 million units the other day

That's awesome. More to follow during the long awaited steam sale. :)

Do you recommend playing 1 before i play this one. Thanks. 

Playing the first will give you a better understanding of the world and characters plus you get a few perks for importing a save (doesn't make any other major changes other than a few peices of dialog) but it can be a real slog as it's very long and has many streatches of boring fetch quests and repetitive combat. 

Tho the W1 does have some good elements mainly in the writing and choices. But it is not esentual to enjoy 2 which is a much more accessable and I would say enjoyable gameplay experience. And whether you jump in with one or two you are not going to understand a lot of what is going on and who characters are at first unless you have read the books. the fiction is quite dense and they didn't do the best job of easing you into it, personally I kinda like that but many people can't stand it. 

I see. I am still not sure which way i'll go. Picked the first one from steam and second from GOG. Played a bit of 2nd just to see if my computer can handle it. Surpringly i can run it well on medium quite well with 9800 GTX+. Very interesting opening i have to say. The mission structure and how he is telling the back story. Will delve into them sometime for sure. Thanks. 

I'm currently playing it on Xbox, one of the best RPGs on the system.

Definitely play the first game first. It helps contextualize the world so much.

Ok, so I just bought the Witcher 2 during the steam sale fro 16 dollars. I've heard that the story is kind of important, so should I buy the first Witcher and play that? It's only $2.50 until another hour, so I think I'll get it.

16 USD? When did that happen!?

Ever since the beginning of the sales it's been 23.99 € here.

Edit: NVM, It's been one of those flash sales that last only a few hours. And I was sleeping.