Gaming The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

PCGamer early impressions (no spoilers), some comparisons to skyrim and DA:I

We can't get our Witcher 3 review up today for reasons explained here, but I've been playing the PS4 build for the last couple of days. I can't speculate about how the console version performs next to the PC version (except to note that the console version runs well enough, only occasionally dipping below 30 frames per second, pre day one patch), but I can say some other things about the game, and those other things are listed below.

The Northern Realms Are Bleak
Fantasy RPGs tend to be melodramatic, to the extent that some of their darker themes are obscured by the usual hoity-toity thee-and-thy nonsense. Skyrim, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Pillars of Eternity all take place in worlds where humankind’s very existence is at stake—and all manage to create some semblance of tension—but they’re not dark. They feel whimsical next to The Witcher 3.

Make no mistake: some of the characters you’ll encounter, and some of the locales you’ll visit in the Northern Realms, are incredibly bleak. It’s a cliche to compare epic fantasy adventures to Game of Thrones (and The Witcher itself is based on a series of novels), but there were a handful of scenarios in The Witcher 3 that made me squirm. Certain enemies and NPCs are horrible to look at, but do a little in-game research about their origins and you’ll be rewarded with even more horror.

Which is an excellent thing. The Witcher 3 is a very violent and very adult RPG, with laboured emphasis on the word “adult”. This world is genuinely destitute. Sidequests are less “collect five Nirnroot” and more “save helpless elderly lady from the ruthless thugs burning her house down”.

Depictions of poverty are unrelenting, especially in one early sequence where a drunken baron lords it over a swampland slum. You’ll be forced to make some decisions that will pull at your moral compass in some ethically charged ways, and there are several instances where the utilitarian option may not be the most sensible one.

The Northern Realms Are Beautiful
It’s well known by now, but the Northern Realms isn’t a seamless map like Skyrim. It’s a handful of massive sections, with the game’s lore necessitating loading screens due to the distance between each. If that puts you in mind of Dragon Age: Inquisition, then you’re only halfway there: the two major regions of the map feel bigger than those in DA:I, and they’re the most lifelike pastoral open world settings I’ve seen in a video game—and I played it on PS4.

Mood is where The Witcher 3 really shines: the weather effects, the wind in the trees, the boggy dirt roads and tumbledown cottages… none feel programmed or designed. None feel “gamey” (and some problems arise there, which I’ll get to later). You won’t be jumping to and from them at will—legwork is required.

You’ll start out in the relatively serene White Orchard region, but soon move on to Velen where the full extent of The Witcher’s melancholy beauty becomes apparent. From there you’ll visit another major region called the Skellige Isles. You can fast travel from road signs in most major locations, but you can’t just warp from the middle of nowhere. You can sail on small boats along Velen’s wide riverbeds or between the Skellige Isles islands, or you can call upon your (sometimes recalcitrant) steed Roach.

While Velen is rife with poverty, crime, miserable people and ravenous wolves, you’ll want to take the time to admire the scenery, and the sunsets in particular are gorgeous. Just take some rejuvenating raw meat in case you get chewed up a bit, okay?
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http://www.pcgamer.com/the-witcher-3-5-observations-from-the-full-game/
 
Revan said:
Yep. I think that for RPG games, the story is as important as gameplay. Also, usually after I throw a lot of hours into the game, on the final part of the game I get concentrated fully in story. In Inquisition, I didn't even bothered to do half of the staff in the last 2-3 regions, cause I was already fatigued. I the story isn't strong enough to keep me interesting, I don't know how can I invest 100 hours in this. That is assuming that I buy it on day 1.
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This happened to me as well. I skipped past the hissing wastes, empris du lion and a lot of the emerald graves as I just couldn't spend more hours doing the same stuff without it advancing any of the story. If those areas each had some part to play in the overall story instead of being full of poor sidequests and fetch quests it would have been a lot more interesting.

Skyrim sold 20m copies and I guess it is why Bioware and CD project have moved away from having a large story first and now have a greater focus on creating a huge open world even if it is full of more mundane tasks.
 
Attila said:
This happened to me as well. I skipped past the hissing wastes, empris du lion and a lot of the emerald graves as I just couldn't spend more hours doing the same stuff without it advancing any of the story. If those areas each had some part to play in the overall story instead of being full of poor sidequests and fetch quests it would have been a lot more interesting.

Skyrim sold 20m copies and I guess it is why Bioware and CD project have moved away from having a large story first and now have a greater focus on creating a huge open world even if it is full of more mundane tasks.
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Agree. Interestingly, I have only played Skyrim for 4-5 hours a few years ago.

Probably, 'the do whatever you want and a minimal story RPG' aren't just my type of games. Found Dragon Age: Origins far superior to these open world RPG.
 
As I am only playing very few selected games (maybe 3-5 a year) I am really looking forward to this one. Beside Bloodborne the only must-get game being released 2015 in my books (I do not count DS2 Scholar of the first sin).
DA:I has been quite disappointing for me personally. Too bland.
I hope the atmosphere of TW3 can match with Skyrim and Dark/Demon`s Souls. Story-driven games tend to lack in that area.
 
Kaos said:
IGN: 'very poor story, too many fetch quests, poor frame rates, glitches, 9.3/10'
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Well, it wasn't exactly 'very poor story', but he criticized it. On the other side, he praised pretty much all other aspects of the game (glitches will get fixed on release or within a week after the release).

Vince Ingenito usually it is very harsh on his reviews (that's good). For example he gave to Dragon Age: Inquisition only 8.8/10 praising the world, length, RPG depth and combat, while criticizing the story. Keep in mind, the same game won ign's game of the year award (only the second BioWare game to do so). At comparison he gave to Witcher 3 a rating of 9.3/10 praising the world, characters, depth and gameplay while criticizing the story. Based on these reviews, it seems that they share the same similarities, strengths and weaknesses with The Witcher being slightly better.
 
Revan said:
Well, it wasn't exactly 'very poor story', but he criticized it. On the other side, he praised pretty much all other aspects of the game (glitches will get fixed on release or within a week after the release).

Vince Ingenito usually it is very harsh on his reviews (that's good). For example he gave to Dragon Age: Inquisition only 8.8/10 praising the world, length, RPG depth and combat, while criticizing the story. Keep in mind, the same game won ign's game of the year award (only the second BioWare game to do so). At comparison he gave to Witcher 3 a rating of 9.3/10 praising the world, characters, depth and gameplay while criticizing the story. Based on these reviews, it seems that they share the same similarities, strengths and weaknesses with The Witcher being slightly better.
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I know I'm joking, just exaggerating the meme of IGN overscoring everything :)

I'm actually really excited for this, the first two witcher games are amongst my favourite RPGs, so I naturally booked a day off for this :drool:
 
Kaos said:
I know I'm joking, just exaggerating the meme of IGN overscoring everything :)

I'm actually really excited for this, the first two witcher games are amongst my favourite RPGs, so I naturally booked a day off for this :drool:
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That is a poor taste for someone who has played pretty much every game ever made. :p

I think that ign's reviews and rating are fine. A bit unconsistent true (for example there were like 10+ games with higher rating than Inquisition last year, but then Inquisition won game of the year award) but that is to be expected considering that the reviews are made by different people (and each review is done only by a single person). Anyway, the guy said that he played it for more than a hundred hours, so I trust his review.
 
Revan said:
That is a poor taste for someone who has played pretty much every game ever made. :p

I think that ign's reviews and rating are fine. A bit unconsistent true (for example there were like 10+ games with higher rating than Inquisition last year, but then Inquisition won game of the year award) but that is to be expected considering that the reviews are made by different people (and each review is done only by a single person). Anyway, the guy said that he played it for more than a hundred hours, so I trust his review.
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:lol: I should have clarified that I meant in the last gen, only Mass Effect and Dragon Age origins was more enjoyable for me.

I have no problem with Ingenito, the fact him and Kevin van Ord have rated this very highly pretty much confirms its GOTY material.
 
I thought The Witcher series was meant to be based on a book? Don't know how it managed to end up with a bad story for this game in that case. I'm going to play witcher 2 before I get this as I can't remember anything that happened in that game or any of the characters apart from Gerald, the bald assassin and Trish.
 
Attila said:
I thought The Witcher series was meant to be based on a book? Don't know how it managed to end up with a bad story for this game in that case. I'm going to play witcher 2 before I get this as I can't remember anything that happened in that game or any of the characters apart from Gerald, the bald assassin and Trish.
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I'm sure the story is fine, it probably just suffers from the same problem all open games have with their narrative. Skyrim's main questline was pretty underwhelming.

You'd probably appreciate a lot more if you played the previous games though.
 
Skyrim's main questline was terrible. So linear. I still play modded Skyrim from time to time, and I get so sick of the one liner dialogue options. It's such a stretch to call it an "RPG" at times. The best thing about the game was that you could just feck off and run into the forest ignoring the quest NPCs and do your own thing. But when it came to advancing the story, it felt like a chore.
 
Attila said:
I thought The Witcher series was meant to be based on a book? Don't know how it managed to end up with a bad story for this game in that case. I'm going to play witcher 2 before I get this as I can't remember anything that happened in that game or any of the characters apart from Gerald, the bald assassin and Trish.
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Games are sequels to the series of books. Basically, Geralt 'dies' in the last book and then the story continues a few months later in The Witcher video game. The game stories are all original, though have characters from the books (Yennefer, Triss, Ciri etc).

I guess it'll be similar to Inquisition. The story to be okay, though not spectacular. But the problem being that the story will amount for only 10-20% of the game, with the other 80 hours being spend by killing monsters, finding treasures, grinding and collecting flowers. Which is fine for some time, but after 20-30 hours of doing so, it becomes incredibly broing (at least for me).
 
According to Kevin vanOrd (gamespot)



Frame rate dips are impossible to iron out when the world is constantly streaming and they're no load times.
 
I feel like the whole plot narrative is slightly overworked. I mean, are there any open world RPG's with a truly fantastic storyline?
 
DWelbz19 said:
I feel like the whole plot narrative is slightly overworked. I mean, are there any open world RPG's with a truly fantastic storyline?
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Well it's only natural to compare it to the last game in the series (Witcher 2) which had a really strong storyline. I don't like RPG's going open world if it means that the storyline has to be sacrificed. In the case of Dragon Age the story seemed to be good for the first two thirds of the game and then it seemed like a huge chunk was missing (like it was meant to have a third act). Whether that is because of the time they spent instead on creating huge open spaces and trying to create things to do in them(a lot of which was just fetch quests) meant they neglected making main quests I'm not sure but it's the only explanation I can think of
 
The story was probably the reason I loved the Witcher 2 so much. I mean, I thought the combat was more than functional and the visuals were great but the depth of the narrative was what really sets it apart for me.

So excited for Wild Hunt. Not sure the last time I was this excited for a game's release. I know it's not going to let me down.
 
Ugh I would really love to blitz through the witcher 2 before this comes out but I know I won't have time.

Comparing Skyrim to the Witcher or Dragon Age is a bit misleading imo. The appeal of the latter two is meant to be story and challenging third person (or top down) combat. Skyrim's appeal had nothing to do with story, it sold gangbusters and drew millions in with its character progression. All open(ish) world fantasy RPGs, but the Elder Scrolls series has a fundamentally different approach to what makes an RPG enjoyable.
 
Melvyn said:
Do you need to play 1 and 2 before playing this?
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Apparently not, it will give you feedback about the back story and you should be able to play it without playing priors. I will.
 
Melvyn said:
Do you need to play 1 and 2 before playing this?
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Yep. The game scans your brain and if it finds that you haven't played the previous two games, it simply refuses to start.

no Mel, you don't need the other two games. it may help, but it will be a new story (like what Dragon Age games do).
 
Melvyn said:
Do you need to play 1 and 2 before playing this?
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Apparently not but a couple of the reviews I've read have said it's definitely worth doing a bit of reading up on the events of the two games as a lot of big characters and events etc could mean feck all to you and break your immersion.
 
Melvyn said:
But I'm not a fan of the first game's combat D:
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First one was awful, I didn't play it. Second one was a big improve although a lot of people didn't like it. Hopefully the third one is much better.
 
If you want to play the second one, there's a semi official combat mod for it which improves a lot of the problems of W2's combat. Good thing is, the guy who did it is working on W3 I believe so hopefully the new has a more refined combat system.
 
Thinking of trading in Far Cry 4 towards buying this, even though I haven't played the others. There's plenty of story recaps on YouTube as far as I can see though.
 
Decided to pre-order it even though I told myself I wouldn't pre-order games anymore! Zavvi have it for £40 if anyone is interested.
 
PlayerOne said:
Decided to pre-order it even though I told myself I wouldn't pre-order games anymore! Zavvi have it for £40 if anyone is interested.
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It's €49.79 on GOG.com and €50 on Steam (just over £36). Even cheaper if you have Witcher 1 or 2 (5% discount for each).

Edit: Just realised there might be a difference depending on whether you get it for console or PC!
 
Combat in the second game was amazing after one of their developers brought out a extended edition combat patch thingi. witcher 2 is one of my favourite games of all time. highly recommend!
 
Cina said:
think I'll stick to the PC version and hope my 7870HD can run it at a decent level!
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I prefer using the controller tbh, I think the gameplay will be smoother with it. Although I have never been a fan of mouse and keyboard for games like this.

Wowi said:
It's €49.79 on GOG.com and €50 on Steam (just over £36). Even cheaper if you have Witcher 1 or 2 (5% discount for each).

Edit: Just realised there might be a difference depending on whether you get it for console or PC!
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I'm getting it for the PS4. PC gamers have it good though, you guys get everything at a big discount.
 
This release seems to be driving a console war amongst the retailers, so I'm tempted to finally pick up a PS4 even though I could just get it on pc. White ps4 + Witcher 3 for £280 on Amazon from midnight tonight. Very tempting.
 
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