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The Witcher Franchise Sales Revealed

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
Witcher 1 was a great game, bogged down by overly-simplistic combat and that fucking dull as fuck Swamp level. Still a quality title, and a nice evolution from the RPGs of old.

Witcher 2 was superb IMO. Can see why it didn't sit well with some, and I myself hated it for the first 15 hours or so, but then it all clicked. Whilst it definitely stepped too much into AAA territory at times, it managed to find a really sweet spot of old school & new school for me. Superb pacing, and amazingly satisfying C&C.

Witcher 3's main game was bloated Ubisoft wannabee bullshit, with virtually nothing of interest to see in the main quest after the Bloody Baron, 85% of quests dull as fuck, and the worst out of the series for having you feel anything like a Witcher when it comes to relying on traps/oils/etc.

It's a fucking crime that TW3 gets the praise it does, because there's a million devs now trying to make games like that instead of TW1/TW2, and there seems to be this mass collective concious formed illusion that TW3 is the peak of RPG's, and how such games should be done.

It's not. It's not even as good as it's own expansions or prequels.
 
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2house2fly

Magister
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
1,877
I was pretty comprehensively sold on the game by the Bloody Baron Quest, so much so that it took me a long time to realize that nothing after that even came close
 

Santander02

Arcane
Joined
Sep 29, 2009
Messages
3,363
I was pretty comprehensively sold on the game by the Bloody Baron Quest, so much so that it took me a long time to realize that nothing after that even came close

The Von Everc bride's ghost quest in Hearts of stone comes close.

Witcher 3's main game was bloated Ubisoft wannabee bullshit

Huh, you know that's excellent way to describe why this game's "open world" is so shit. Thanks.
 

ortucis

Prophet
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Messages
2,015
Spending the next 5 years watching fucktarded companies try to mimic TW3 is gonna be interesting that's for sure.

EA/Biowank will undoubtably be the most amusing. Seeing Dragon Age: Inquisition & Mass Effect: Andromeda spectacularly fail at trying to capture Skyrim's high-selling open world, was just the start of this decline.

Considering next BioWare project is Destiny clone, I doubt it they give a flying fuck about create proper RPG's anymore.
 

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
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I liked and still like Witcher 3. The thing is to not ask the game for things it can't give you. What it can give you is a cool interactive movie. Whether you like the movie and the characters is entirely up to you.
 

ilitarist

Learned
Illiterate Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 17, 2016
Messages
857
Tw1 had the most "flavour" of all three games. It actually brought that interesting slavic folklore influence. Remember the wedding quest? No other witcher game managed to hit those same notes. Tw2 had the absolute worst gameplay of the series, but made up for it with plot and strong c&c. Tw3 is simply AAA done right.

It was also the most rough and inconsistent. There was a lot of juvenile stuff like that datesim card collecting. Writing was all over the place and the story was dumped on you in a manner that makes Witcher 3 a better starting point than Witcher 1.

Also most of us probably played Enhanced Edition. The initial release was much, much worse.
 

ortucis

Prophet
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Messages
2,015
Tw1 had the most "flavour" of all three games. It actually brought that interesting slavic folklore influence. Remember the wedding quest? No other witcher game managed to hit those same notes. Tw2 had the absolute worst gameplay of the series, but made up for it with plot and strong c&c. Tw3 is simply AAA done right.

It was also the most rough and inconsistent. There was a lot of juvenile stuff like that datesim card collecting. Writing was all over the place and the story was dumped on you in a manner that makes Witcher 3 a better starting point than Witcher 1.

Also most of us probably played Enhanced Edition. The initial release was much, much worse.

I played Witcher when it was new (don't think I ever played enhanced edition), and I still find it had more "realistic" cities and villages than any other Witcher game.

I still remember the starting village (those annoying fucking dogs) compared to generic Witcher 3 CnP villages and cities. Not saying I hate Witcher 3, I enjoyed it. But I still think the first Witcher was much better.
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
Tw1 had the most "flavour" of all three games. It actually brought that interesting slavic folklore influence. Remember the wedding quest? No other witcher game managed to hit those same notes. Tw2 had the absolute worst gameplay of the series, but made up for it with plot and strong c&c. Tw3 is simply AAA done right.

There was a wedding quest in Hearts of Stone that was vastly better than anything in TW1, with that same "flavour" to boot.
 

NotAGolfer

Arcane
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Dec 1, 2013
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Land of Bier and Bratwurst
Divinity: Original Sin 2
I was pretty comprehensively sold on the game by the Bloody Baron Quest, so much so that it took me a long time to realize that nothing after that even came close

The Von Everc bride's ghost quest in Hearts of stone comes close.
In fact a lot of TW3 quests are pretty great, that's the main reason why it's not complete garbage despite the horrible itemization.
Exploring that beautiful to look at but boring to hike through gameworld with all those cookie-cutter sidequests where you have to do some witcher sense scavenger hunt 99% of the cases and read the same diary notes about the horrors of war gets tiresome though. Also combat is boring.
 

ortucis

Prophet
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Messages
2,015
Only quest I remember from Witcher 3 is the Baron quest. Everything else has already faded from memory, and probably for a good reason.

I have selective Amnesia.
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
Interesting, off the top of my head I remember..

Baron (obviously, and I remember it in detail)
Carnal Sins
Posession (baby oven!)
Cave of Dreams
The one with theatre play
Drinking at Kaer Morhen
Towerful of Mice
Last Wish
....hmm, I could actually go on for quite a while.
 

ortucis

Prophet
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Messages
2,015
Interesting, off the top of my head I remember..

Baron (obviously, and I remember it in detail)
Carnal Sins
Posession (baby oven!)
Cave of Dreams
The one with theatre play
Drinking at Kaer Morhen
Towerful of Mice
Last Wish
....hmm, I could actually go on for quite a while.

:deadtroll:


How long did it take to copy them off of Witcher wiki?
 

2house2fly

Magister
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
1,877
I remember the quest where the climax is throwing a baby in the oven, but probably not for the reasons I'm supposed to. Of the other ones in that list I remember some of them, though at least one I would describe less as a quest and more as a cutscene
 

Correct_Carlo

Arcane
Joined
Jul 19, 2012
Messages
8,468
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Pronouns: He/Him/His
The games are all very different in terms of gameplay, but I honestly think they are more or less consistent in terms of the quality of the writing and design when it comes to main quests.

In fact, while I love Witcher 1, it's also somewhat rough around the edges in overall structure and design. I have never liked the cheap "Geralt has amnesia" device that CDPR used to introduce players to the world. They are great at showing rather than telling and conveying information without hand holding, so the amnesia subplot always struck me as an unnecessary crutch. The Witcher 1 is also very oddly structured. The first chapter is pretty dull, or at least dull if you don't know the lore, and I don't think does as good of a job of introducing players to the universe as the later chapters in the city do. Things pick up considerably once you get to the city, but just as the politics/faction wars are heating up, the game suddenly transports you to a high fantasy diversion in the countryside. I have come to love the countryside chapter, as it has some really great quests in it, but it does kind of stop the game dead in its tracks while you do a bunch of other unrelated shit. I've always felt like Witcher 1 was CDPR figuring out how to structure games. There are a lot of mistakes in it that they seemed to deliberately set out to correct in Witcher 2 (which is very relentless in its drive through the narrative, with almost no fat, to the point that you will actually miss 1/4 of the content depending on your choices).

Then there's Witcher 3, but you really can't compare the structure of W3 with W1 and W2 just because it's an open world game so its quests are designed to be more modular. I do think it has some of the best individual quests in the series (the Bloody Baron/Crones stuff might be my favorite across all 3 games).
 

Comrade Goby

Magister
Joined
Apr 29, 2011
Messages
1,219
Project: Eternity
Only quest I remember from Witcher 3 is the Baron quest. Everything else has already faded from memory, and probably for a good reason.

I have selective Amnesia.

If you don't remember the crones painting then you are a turboplebian
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,087
Location
Bulgaria
The thing that put me off the first witcher was all the fucking and retardation,lonely elf in a cave,give her some bread,now she is all "Let me such your cock great knight!". I do like my genres separated,i have plenty of japan jizz games to play if i want to. The second one is skipped because they were marketing was all about the tits and the raping. The third one is not bat AAA action RPG,shame that fighting is shit.
 

KK1001

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 30, 2015
Messages
621
This is why we can't have big budget AAA games only on PC. The first year saw a little over two thirds of the revenue come from consoles. Later on, PC did fine, but Steam sales - while very profitable for Valve - have pretty much created an expectation among gamers that they can merely wait a year or so and pick up everything + DLC for $20 or $30 less.

Valve's digital monopoly has done far more damage to gaming than fucking piracy.
 

Theldaran

Liturgist
Joined
Oct 10, 2015
Messages
1,772
The Witcher 3 has sold more copies on the Playstation 4 than on PC. :M

:hmmm:

Maybe related to the fact that you need a pretty good PC to fully enjoy it (not just graphics at min and 20-30 FPS). As the years passed the sales were pretty much sustained, because hardware has become more accesible (but not that much, with those absurd RAM prices and the GPU inflation).

I don't know how it runs in consoles, though, but I'm betting a solid 30 FPS with sudden drops.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,656
Later on, PC did fine, but Steam sales - while very profitable for Valve - have pretty much created an expectation among gamers that they can merely wait a year or so and pick up everything + DLC for $20 or $30 less.
The same is just as true for the console market, and that time may come even earlier given that companies have to compete with used copies.
 

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