The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[zinfamous]

This has been getting rave reviews, and it seems like most are mentioning improvements to the combat system, which was my biggest gripe with 2; I may have to pick this up.

In the video posted last night ^, the reviewer mentioned that signs work a bit differently--I don't quite get it, but it sounds like you can't activate them easily between sword swings. You sort of have to "disengage" to cast a sign, which I find troubling. On the flip side, all combat activations are far more fluid, apparently, compared to Witcher 2. Geralt used to like to string together motions on delays--so he'd continue swinging a sword through some combos while you are trying to dodge, was slow to respond to dodges or parrys, or signs, which certainly annoyed me with that combat. I think in the end, if that bit is really polished, I could tolerate a less fluid sign/sword type of combat. As long as everything is responsive, I think it's easier to adjust mechanics, especially as there is a dodge mechanic added to the roll, which is nice.

this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBWcRGWOTUQ

New video.

 

[sweenish]

On the flip side, is there anything more annoying than sloooooooowly mining ore in Skyrim or skinning an animal in Red Dead Redemption or opening a chest in Assassin's Creed? Yeah, loot animations are more immersive, but after you've seen them a couple times, they just start feeling like a complete waste of time. STOP TAKING 20 SECONDS TO DO THIS, WE ALL KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN.

RDR makes for a poor example, in my opinion.

It was repetitive, but quick. And completely thrown on its face later in the game to great effect.

DA:I would have been a perfect counter. It takes way too long to pick crap up. And I have to hold the button the entire time or they will disengage. I am not a fan of that. It's not nearly enough to get me to stop playing, but it's not fantastic.

 

[Stuka87]

Loot scenes are awesome the first time they happen, and suck from there on. I hated the animal skin scenes in FC3. After the millionth time its just annoying. I would be perfectly fine with just grabbing items without seeing an animation.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

RDR makes for a poor example, in my opinion.

It was repetitive, but quick. And completely thrown on its face later in the game to great effect.

RDR skinning actually annoys me more than the others because it's just disgusting. I mean, yes, I realize I'm skinning a coyote, but I don't really need the sounds of sinews snapping and blood spraying across the screen and then standing up to reveal a skinned coyote. You're ruining my jerky RDR.

 

[Annisman*]

pre loadinggggggggggg wooooooooooo

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Loot scenes are awesome the first time they happen, and suck from there on. I hated the animal skin scenes in FC3. After the millionth time its just annoying. I would be perfectly fine with just grabbing items without seeing an animation.

Or how about an option like Final Fantasy X had with aeons; you get the long animation the first time, but then you can have short animation sequences every other time you summon or do overdrives? Give us the "no loot animation" option so when we're grinding out a fetch quest to get 30 pelts or whatever, we don't need to watch the painstaking process of each one being harvested. That seems like a win.

 

[Merad]

The other problem is, depending on how the loot works--is it active as soon as the target dies, or only after the battle ends?

The previous games in the series both used a "loot after battle" system which was actually a bit annoying, because it took 3-5 seconds for "battle" to end after the last enemy died. I could only find one place in that video where he looted right after battle (about the 17 min mark, after killing the bear), but it's hard to tell with it because he was only fighting one enemy and he was staggered at the moment the bear died and couldn't run to it for a few seconds anyway...

In the video posted last night ^, the reviewer mentioned that signs work a bit differently--I don't quite get it, but it sounds like you can't activate them easily between sword swings.

I took it to mean that most signs have a small cast time now. In TW2 signs were insta-cast but you were often locked into a follow-through animation for a moment after the cast. From what I could tell in the video now it looks like you need a moment to do the cast but you're free as soon as it fires.

 

[Stuka87]

You do need a moment to cast, however, you no longer have to follow through on attacks. You can be mid attack, and still dodge out of the way. Which you could not do in TW2, which used to annoy me.

So from the reviews I have seen, sword play is great improved because it feels more responsive because you can break out of an attack. But signs require you to actually cast them, so they are not as easily used. No emergency Quen when you are about to die. Also, Quen got a big nerf compared to TW2.

 

[Merad]

Some interesting (non-spoilery) tidbits I've picked up so far in reviews:

• The world is generally agreed to be MUCH larger than Skyrim or GTA V
• Geralt's beard grows as time passes, you have to visit barbers if you want to stay clean shaven.
• Most side quests play out more like mysteries than typical "go here kill this" quests. Eg, you have to find clues to figure out what's been killing the livestock or who/what kidnapped the missing person.
• Dodges don't use any stamina, rolls do.
• At least on PS4, performance is sometimes an issue in large fights.
• The inventory doesn't seem to be the greatest, but console reviewers were complaining that it would be better with M+KB
  

Edit: According to PC Gamer, all of the review being posted today are on the PS4, because the PC build is still being finalized and hasn't been released for review yet.
Edit2: According to the twitter of CDPR's NA PR company, PC review keys will be sent out late today or tomorrow.

 

[escrow4]

Some interesting (non-spoilery) tidbits I've picked up so far in reviews:

• The world is generally agreed to be MUCH larger than Skyrim or GTA V
• Geralt's beard grows as time passes, you have to visit barbers if you want to stay clean shaven.
• Most side quests play out more like mysteries than typical "go here kill this" quests. Eg, you have to find clues to figure out what's been killing the livestock or who/what kidnapped the missing person.
• Dodges don't use any stamina, rolls do.
• At least on PS4, performance is sometimes an issue in large fights.
• The inventory doesn't seem to be the greatest, but console reviewers were complaining that it would be better with M+KB
  

Edit: According to PC Gamer, all of the review being posted today are on the PS4, because the PC build is still being finalized and hasn't been released for review yet.
Edit2: According to the twitter of CDPR's NA PR company, PC review keys will be sent out late today or tomorrow.

One week to go and they still haven't shat out a ready PC build? PS4 out first? Anyone remember Witcher 2 that needed a patch and new drivers (vaguely remember running AMD hardware back then) that really improved performance?

 

[Grooveriding]

My expectation on visuals for the PC is this; looks decent, but not as good as the PR downsampled static screens or the 2013 gameplay video. It will not break new ground and be a 'Crysis' of 2015 with better graphics than anything we've seen before. I'd lay money that a game like Crysis 3 will overall still be a more visually and technologically impressive game than TW3 will be. Overall I doubt it will look much better than Dragon Age Inquisition does as far as RPGs go.

You'll get great performance at 1080p on maximum settings with a 970/980 card without any sort of hardware anti-aliasing turned on, such as MSAA, and with the hair/fur effects disabled. If you want to run MSAA and/or the hair simulation stuff you're going to need two of those cards to run it comfortably and keep your settings maxed. AMD cards will perform like shit because it's Gameworks and crossfire probably won't work at launch, necessitating CDPR to release a game patch to improve AMD's performance.

In short, it will be like any other recent cross platform release designed with the XBONE and PS4 as its console target with some improvements made for the PC, but most of what makes the PC better will be better anti aliasing, higher resolutions and a few effects sliders. We've seen the gameplay videos of PC, it's nothing stunning, but still a nice looking game. I don't buy that youtube compression is the culprit, just look up PC gameplay of Crysis 3's singleplayer campaign, it looks awesome just like it does on your PC.

It's nice to have the full package of amazing gameplay and incredible graphics that blow you away, but they're not going to expend the resources to design a game for people using $2000+ worth of video cards as well as keeping it passable on the crappy console boxes. Reviewers of the console versions are saying it can't even hold 30fps at 1080p on the PS4 when there are multiple enemies in battle.

I don't think we'll ever see another Crysis 1 situation. A company will go bankrupt designing a game that is a graphics evolution strictly for the PC these days. We won't get anything better until the next consoles come out years from now with hardware probably no better than an i5 2500k/gtx 780 at launch

 

[escrow4]

Grooveriding, don't forget Kepler. Hopefully Nvidia hasn't gassed and cremated it for this game.

 

[futurefields]

I'm glad I got the game for free with my card but not sure how I feel about having to fork out $25 for the expansion if I want "Blood and Wine, a 20-hour tale that will introduce the all-new in-game region of Toussaint, will take Geralt to a land untainted by war, where an atmosphere of carefree indulgence and knightly ritual masks an ancient, bloody secret." any company that continues to go down the expansion/season pass/dlc route instead of just building a full game and selling it for one price loses a bit of respect from me. Probably be some kind of level cap increases and stuff as well so any gamer who doesn't get it won't be able to max out the character. Just you wait!

 

[norseamd]

I'm glad I got the game for free with my card but not sure how I feel about having to fork out $25 for the expansion if I want "Blood and Wine, a 20-hour tale that will introduce the all-new in-game region of Toussaint, will take Geralt to a land untainted by war, where an atmosphere of carefree indulgence and knightly ritual masks an ancient, bloody secret." any company that continues to go down the expansion/season pass/dlc route instead of just building a full game and selling it for one price loses a bit of respect from me. Probably be some kind of level cap increases and stuff as well so any gamer who doesn't get it won't be able to max out the character. Just you wait!

Would be no surprises at all from me.

 

[Merad]

any company that continues to go down the expansion/season pass/dlc route instead of just building a full game and selling it for one price loses a bit of respect from me

Seriously? TW3 has 25 hours of content in a "speed run" through the main quest and 200+ hours if you explore the whole world. Complain about overpriced DLC all you want and I'll agree, but claiming it's not a full game is beyond ridiculous.

 

[norseamd]

True it does seem like a full game. And the expansion are not tiny at least. But I am worried that CDPR is pushing the typical publisher crap in this game and their overall business philosophy.

 

[zinfamous]

Seriously? TW3 has 25 hours of content in a "speed run" through the main quest and 200+ hours if you explore the whole world. Complain about overpriced DLC all you want and I'll agree, but claiming it's not a full game is beyond ridiculous.

It looks like DLC is already ready to go? I agree with the playtime/value of main game, not a big deal...but releasing paid DLC on vanilla release is always just a bad move, imo.

If this were out in ~2 months or so, great.

 

[zinfamous]

True it does seem like a full game. And the expansion are not tiny at least. But I am worried that CDPR is pushing the typical publisher crap in this game and their overall business philosophy.

And their expansion stuff was always free before, so there's that--at least I think it was.

Though, this is much different than the few quests/items with their previous extra content in games.

 

[zinfamous]

OK, dingleberries, go to 1:35 in this video and tell me what you see. Bear in mind, this is PS4 version.

http://www.gameblog.fr/tests/2226-the-witcher-iii-wild-hunt-pc-ps4-xbox-one

 

[Merad]

It looks like DLC is already ready to go? I agree with the playtime/value of main game, not a big deal...but releasing paid DLC on vanilla release is always just a bad move, imo.

If this were out in ~2 months or so, great.

According to the official site the 10 hour DLC is out in October and the 20 hour one is slated for Q1 2016.

Also everyone gets 16 free "DLC" but the 4 that have been announced so far are small things like new hair styles for Geralt and armor sets.

 

[zinfamous]

According to the official site the 10 hour DLC is out in October and the 20 hour one is slated for Q1 2016.

Also everyone gets 16 free "DLC" but the 4 that have been announced so far are small things like new hair styles for Geralt and armor sets.

Ah, nothing wrong with that, then. I guess I assumed it was ready since they already released a "substantial" amount of detail for the campaigns--meaning play time and environment, type of content, etc.

:thumbsup:

 

[chimaxi83]

OK, dingleberries, go to 1:35 in this video and tell me what you see. Bear in mind, this is PS4 version.

http://www.gameblog.fr/tests/2226-the-witcher-iii-wild-hunt-pc-ps4-xbox-one

A sharply squared corner, stupid hair that is too bouncy, and a game that I CANNOT EFFING WAIT to play.

 

[zinfamous]

A sharply squared corner, stupid hair that is too bouncy, and a game that I CANNOT EFFING WAIT to play.

yeah, the corner is square, but you'll notice that the grass and rocks are there, plus the big ass crack and the stone texture (not the bricks). I'm seeing one "problem," but the other quality elements that were "missing" are back. I'm thinking that running on higher settings, you won't be getting the sharp square textures, but that rounded look from earlier. This is the "worst" version of the game in that video, supposedly.

Seeing some combo of this tells me that the quality has not been removed from the assets--it is still there and can be chosen with proper settings.

 

[Merad]

Seeing some combo of this tells me that the quality has not been removed from the assets--it is still there and can be chosen with proper settings.

The detail on the stones is almost certainly a tessellation/displacement mapping effect. You can see something very similar in stonework pieces on the HEaven benchmark actually. Possibly it's disabled for performance reasons on PS4?

 

[ArenCordial]

And their expansion stuff was always free before, so there's that--at least I think it was.

Though, this is much different than the few quests/items with their previous extra content in games.

The problem is too many people read the headlines at game news sites rather than actually read what exactly CDPR has said on the matter. (Though often its the poor reporting of those sites as well).

Basically their philosophy is this: They want to create an arbitrary distinction between DLC and expansions. The word DLC in their opinion has devalued content because anything downloadable falls into that category. There's a ocean of difference between Horse Armor and Dragonborn for instance, but both are DLC. What they think the industry should adopt is setting the standard that DLC is small bits of content, like Horse Armor or Mass Effect's appearance packs, should be free to purchasers as a reward gamers not pirating the developers games. Hence the 16 free DLC they are giving to anyone who buys TW3, and the previous game's Enhanced Editions.

Expansions though should be significant content in both size and scope. Things like new areas, new cutscenes that require significant work and truly add something to game. These would be your Dragonborns, Shivering Isles, or Mask of the Betrayers and these they argue are ok as for money for given the investment into them. They've argued that these should be priced at a value so games aren't forking of twenties for 3 hours of content.

Remember at one point TW1 was going to have an outsourced expansion before they had to cancel it, and I can remember before TW2 was released they were mulling the idea of doing an expansion.

TLDR; CDPR hasn't been against paid extra content if they think its priced fairly and significant in size and scope.