The Witcher Witcher 3 was too big and had bad pacing

[Carrion]

When the open world game has little urgency in its main quest, people complain that they were offered no motivation.

Usually those people are morons, though. Gotta have majestic end-of-the-world scenarios unfolding in the first five minutes because everything else is too subtle for them. Lack of motivation can be a real issue, of course, but a non-motivating plot doesn't become any more motivating by adding fake urgency in the mix.

Fallout and Morrowind are two games that get it right, the former with actual urgency (before patches, at least) and the latter by doing the opposite and encouraging exploration at every turn.

Perhaps more on topic, all three games have pacing issues because a huge emphasis in CDPR's design philosophy was to immerse the player in Sapkowski's fictional universe. They talk about it quite a bit in interviews for the first game. A game which featured plodding, overly large, mazelike maps and a relatively slow walking speed.

I don't know what you're talking about. TW1's pacing was damn near perfect. Okay, I get that someone might complain about the fetchy nature of some of the quests, the hordes of drowners, the amount of backtracking in a couple of the chapters etc., but those are minor things that never bothered me. The way the story is built up through the five chapters (the slow start that sucks you in, the heightening of the stakes at Vizima, the breather that is the fourth act, the return to burning Vizima and the grande finale), the balance between fighting and not fighting, the tight design of (most of) the quests, the overall amount of variety — it's goddamn excellent, and very few games can match it.

It's a bit disappointing that the sequels didn't manage to capture that certain warm feeling you have when spending a day in Vizima, meeting up with your buddies, killing a monster or two and collecting the orens, forwarding the main quest one little piece at a time when you're in the mood and somewhere close by, playing dice, wooing ladies, getting drunk and fighting in a bar and staggering home to a nagging girlfriend... In the sequels you're usually running from one quest to another with little downtime* in between, and although the quests themselves are usually very well paced, it's not quite the same.

* In TW3 it usually means Gwent.

 

[luj1]

What an idiotic thread title. "Big" has nothing to do with how good or bad Witcher 3 is, while "pacing" in a free-form sandbox is almost entirely under player's control.

 

[alyvain]

in a free-form sandbox

If you aren't speaking about Minecraft, your argument is invalid

 

[TheChickenKing]

I don't know what you're talking about. TW1's pacing was damn near perfect. Okay, I get that someone might complain about the fetchy nature of some of the quests, the hordes of drowners, the amount of backtracking in a couple of the chapters etc., but those are minor things that never bothered me. The way the story is built up through the five chapters (the slow start that sucks you in, the heightening of the stakes at Vizima, the breather that is the fourth act, the return to burning Vizima and the grande finale), the balance between fighting and not fighting, the tight design of (most of) the quests, the overall amount of variety — it's goddamn excellent, and very few games can match it.

It's a bit disappointing that the sequels didn't manage to capture that certain warm feeling you have when spending a day in Vizima, meeting up with your buddies, killing a monster or two and collecting the orens, forwarding the main quest one little piece at a time when you're in the mood and somewhere close by, playing dice, wooing ladies, getting drunk and fighting in a bar and staggering home to a nagging girlfriend... In the sequels you're usually running from one quest to another with little downtime* in between, and although the quests themselves are usually very well paced, it's not quite the same.

* In TW3 it usually means Gwent.

Those things you mentioned really bothered me a lot. I do understand that "certain warm feeling" you're referencing, though, and I greatly appreciate CDPR's general exploration and enjoyment of the more mundane things in life. That being said, I think the Witcher 1 delights in a little too much tedium sometimes, and some of the quests are just poorly designed (asking you to walk back and forth between a few locations multiple times without really doing anything) and chapters 4 and 5 get actively ridiculous with the amount of trash they throw at you. Old Vizima in chapter 5 is particularly heinous, with drowners popping out of the ground like hipsters swarming an Apple store.

That being said, I don't intend to drag TW1 through the mud. I played through it again recently and there's some brilliant stuff in there held back by some nasty issues that feel related to the obviously low budget and borderline "fan-made" nature of the project. My point was more that many of the issues with the first game extend in certain ways to the sequels, though they do all have their own problems. I don't feel like TW3's pacing was particularly poor either, though it had issues. I'm mostly just confused by the general attitude that specifically vilifies the sequels while praising the first game. It was awesome, but it had its own problems too.

 

[anvi]

TW1's pacing was damn near perfect.

Yeah Two Worlds was pretty cool.

 

[mfkndggrfll]

When the open world game has little urgency in its main quest, people complain that they were offered no motivation.

Usually those people are morons, though. Gotta have majestic end-of-the-world scenarios unfolding in the first five minutes because everything else is too subtle for them. Lack of motivation can be a real issue, of course, but a non-motivating plot doesn't become any more motivating by adding fake urgency in the mix.

Fallout and Morrowind are two games that get it right, the former with actual urgency (before patches, at least) and the latter by doing the opposite and encouraging exploration at every turn.

Perhaps more on topic, all three games have pacing issues because a huge emphasis in CDPR's design philosophy was to immerse the player in Sapkowski's fictional universe. They talk about it quite a bit in interviews for the first game. A game which featured plodding, overly large, mazelike maps and a relatively slow walking speed.

I don't know what you're talking about. TW1's pacing was damn near perfect. Okay, I get that someone might complain about the fetchy nature of some of the quests, the hordes of drowners, the amount of backtracking in a couple of the chapters etc., but those are minor things that never bothered me. The way the story is built up through the five chapters (the slow start that sucks you in, the heightening of the stakes at Vizima, the breather that is the fourth act, the return to burning Vizima and the grande finale), the balance between fighting and not fighting, the tight design of (most of) the quests, the overall amount of variety — it's goddamn excellent, and very few games can match it.

It's a bit disappointing that the sequels didn't manage to capture that certain warm feeling you have when spending a day in Vizima, meeting up with your buddies, killing a monster or two and collecting the orens, forwarding the main quest one little piece at a time when you're in the mood and somewhere close by, playing dice, wooing ladies, getting drunk and fighting in a bar and staggering home to a nagging girlfriend... In the sequels you're usually running from one quest to another with little downtime* in between, and although the quests themselves are usually very well paced, it's not quite the same.

* In TW3 it usually means Gwent.

Actually the lack of urgency in Morrowind is a major flaw since you get a special snowflake treatment when the king himself gets you freed from jail then has you running errands.

 

[DalekFlay]

Lack of urgency works as well in Morrowind as any RPG really. Dagoth isn't actively invading yet, he's contained at the center, so it's a kind of stalemate situation for the time being. Your goal is to get powerful enough to invade HIS territory and defeat him, which justifies the questing and relationship building. It's nowhere near a Mass Effect 3 where the Reapers are actively invading and you're spending your time buying the crew doughnuts.

 

[Zer0wing]

Space Rangers 2 have the best pacing. Dominators are actively invading individual trade routes and actively invade YOUR ass too, already, right fucking now.

 

[adddeed]

Space Rangers 2 puts all these "RPGs" to shame easily.

 

[anvi]

Space Rangers 2 is brilliant. You really start as a small fish in a big pond. The world is dangerous and scary, pirates can kill you easy, any faction that doesn't like you can kill you easy. And if you even see a Dominator you are probably dead. But you progress and get stronger and soon you can face the pirates and usually win. Dominators if you see them you have to bail fast, but you get by. Then later in the game you can destroy any pirate and you start actively hunting Dominators. You can pick a few off and then bail like a true stalker. Then end game you can take on entire armies of anything because you are so badass. That game did progression perfectly.

 

[Falksi]

So I've slagged The Witcher 3 off a lot, it's wank, but I thought I'd pop it on last night to see if my opinion had changed a year or so after playing it.

No. It's fucking awful. I mean absolutely fuciking awful.

You aren't involved. You do nothing. Combat is crap, "role-playing" is none-existant and the whole main game just boils down to running between cut-scenes you rarely actually influence. It's fucking incredible the lack of player interaction needed to progress. And Christ the combat is an absolute nothing affair. It feels like playing a QTE.

You can literally button bash your way through conversations & combat without paying attention to anything and still progress. Woeful stuff.

The most overrated game in existence ever.

 

[anvi]

Falksi gets it. You are welcome on my ark when the floods come.

 

[cvv]

You aren't involved. You do nothing. Combat is crap, "role-playing" is none-existant and the whole main game just boils down to running between cut-scenes you rarely actually influence. It's fucking incredible the lack of player interaction needed to progress. And Christ the combat is an absolute nothing affair. It feels like playing a QTE.

And yet characters talk and behave like real people, with real human motivations and relationships, and when I play TW3 I'm not ashamed of myself for still loving videogames despite approaching 40.

If a game is wank systems-wise you can always pick up an overhaul mod (Ghost Mode or EE for Witcher). If the systems are great but the writing and vibe are aimed at developmentally stunted manchildren (D:OS anyone?) no mod in the world can prevent you from feeling like a complete waste of a perfectly good sperm.

 

[Falksi]

Falksi gets it. You are welcome on my ark when the floods come.

It will be an honour to sail with the like-minded enlighten ones, over the corpses of the drowned decline enablers.

 

[Carrion]

Show me on the doll where The Witcher 3 touched you.

There's no doubt that biggest decline in the series happened with TW2. TW3 was incline in some parts and decline in others — for example, it brought back that famous "Slavic feel" from TW1, but mechanically it ended up being even more of a mess than its already dumbed-down predecessor. Much like TW2, it's full of mind-bogglingly bad and outright baffling stuff (mostly gameplay-related) and stays afloat mainly because of its writing. It takes the same cinematic approach but just does a much better job with it overall. The main story is kind of a mess and ends up being the worst in the series, but like cvv said, the game does a great job with its characters and their interactions, effortlessly pulling off stuff that companies like BioWare can only dream of.

It's a severely flawed game for sure, but it does some things exceptionally well.

 

[Swigen]

 

[Outmind]

You put up a metacritic score of a game... on the Codex.

What is that supposed to accomplish exactly?

 

[Molina]

When the open world game has little urgency in its main quest, people complain that they were offered no motivation.

Actually the lack of urgency in Morrowind is a major flaw since you get a special snowflake treatment when the king himself gets you freed from jail then has you running errands.

Not exactly. We learned very quickly that he freed us not for our beautiful eyes, but to fuck the Velothi. What would have been great was if we weren't the Neverarine. But Arcanum has already done it.

In the case of the Witcher 3, you have to play it like you are watching a TV shows. Little by little.

 

[Master]

And yet characters talk and behave like real people, with real human motivations and relationships, and when I play TW3 I'm not ashamed of myself for still loving videogames despite approaching 40.

You must be kidding. They talk and act like in a TV show, which is more shameful than games. The only good writing still is (was) by MCA...

 

[Lord_Potato]

I didn't know MCA wrote for the Witcher. Have to read tr credits more carefully.

 

[Master]

I meant in games in general. I suppose the first Witcher had *nice* writing, made better by great (funny) voice acting. But once Poles got a real budget...

 

[Swigen]

You put up a metacritic score of a game... on the Codex.

What is that supposed to accomplish exactly?

 

[Machocruz]

Fantasy gobbledygook is the stuff of grown ups. Right.

 

[DalekFlay]

The most overrated game in existence ever.

It has a good story staring a cool dude and sexy babes, and a very nicely made fantasy world with an adult feel to it, plus tons of busy work so you can feel like you're accomplishing things. That's sadly all a lot of people want, even on here apparently.

 

[Immortal]

Mmm.. Good Pole Bait Here.