The Witcher 3 GOTY Edition

[Junmarko]

CDPR are a great company. They could've just buried it, let Sapkowski wallow in his bitterness - very nice of them to do this.

 

[Old One]

Is that guy still writing Witcher novels, or is he done with that?

I'll have to read them one day.

 

[Swigen]

Is that guy still writing Witcher novels, or is he done with that?

I'll have to read them one day.

They’re pretty good. I started with the 2 short stories collections in the series and went from there. I’ve only played Wild Hunt and still haven’t read anything covered in the game yet.

 

[DalekFlay]

That's exactly the prob I had with it.

If you want to get your money's worth from it, do the main quest (it is boring in large parts, but Bloody Baron is good and towards the end things pick up slightly), the main side quests on Skellig Island, Fools Gold, Kiera Metz' side quest, and Carnal Sins. Don't waste any time exploring, pissing about with POIs or random contracts.

From that I got a 6/10 experience.

Yeah I thought the story was good, but the gameplay was repetitive objective marker chasing. I eventually stopped like halfway through, but I should try and finish it just mainstreaming the main quest.

 

[mwnn85]

Even agreeing to 0.5% of a major franchise like Star Wars, Grand Theft Auto, etc would be massive and practically never ending.
Has he been living under a rock for the last 30 years or so? The Iron Curtain ended in 1990~ so he can't use that as his excuse.

He really didn't think it was worth a gamble to get a percentage and perhaps a smaller cash payment?
Either CD Projekt have got devious brilliant negotiators or the man is a naive chump - I guess he didn't believe the material in his books had much value?

If the Netflix TV show breaks America & worldwide he'll be earning a packet and then there's DVD/Bluray/re-runs to consider.
Maybe even a motion picture. Plus all the other crap that comes with it i.e. toys, clothing, crockery, etc.
I hope for his sake he's somewhat better at negotiating now.

Maybe it was best for the game that he wasn't personally involved.
Look at someone like P. L. Travers and Mary Poppins - apparently she was a right pain in the arse.

 

[Storyfag]

Maybe it was best for the game that he wasn't personally involved.

It was. He lost his talent after the Witcher series. And he's a persistently nasty person. No good would have come from his involvement.

 

[passerby]

Netflix show is a dumpster fire taken over by talentless SJW hacks, it'll flop.

 

[Wunderbar]

Is that guy still writing Witcher novels, or is he done with that?

I'll have to read them one day.

he finished original series in 1998. Then, after "sudden resurgence", he wrote another book in 2013.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Is that guy still writing Witcher novels, or is he done with that?

I'll have to read them one day.

he finished original series in 1998. Then, after "sudden resurgence", he wrote another book in 2013.

And it seemed like a poor fanfiction

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Is that guy still writing Witcher novels, or is he done with that?

I'll have to read them one day.

he finished original series in 1998. Then, after "sudden resurgence", he wrote another book in 2013.

And it seemed like a poor fanfiction

That's only true if you think the "muh fantasy is serious business" novels are the shit. It was clearly meant as a throwback to the short stories, when "no fun allowed" approach was not yet in a full swing, probably due to the fortunate fact that the author did not yet see himself as the ultimate genius of writing. And it worked to an extent, I mean compared to Lady of the lake or the retarded czech trilogy at least it was a p fun read.

 

[Frozen]

Season of Storms is actually one of better novels in the series beside first 2 short stories collection.

He was never that great in novels to begin with.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

And it seemed like a poor fanfiction

To English speakers, they all read like poor fan fictions. Apparently subtle personality ticks and humor don't translate well.

 

[Yosharian]

Reminds me of the founder of Victoria's Secret. He sold the company for $1 million in 1982; by the early 90s, it was worth $1 billion. In 1993, he jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.

To be fair it seems likely that he did that as much because of his subsequent business failure as anything else:

In 1984, Raymond personally invested £650,000 to start My Child's Destiny.[5][7] The business sold high-end children's products in a single store in San Francisco and through mail order catalogues. The store suffered due to poor location and the image of being elitist, going bankrupt in 1986.[8]

Probably a combination of both.

Also, it appears that the company was changed dramatically after its sale to Leslie Wexner, which means that it's not necessarily the case that, if he hadn't sold it, he'd be sitting on $1bn:

In 1983, Wexner revamped Victoria's Secret's sales model. He discarded the money-losing model of selling lingerie to male customers and replaced it with one that focused on female customers.[19] Victoria's Secret transformed from "more burlesque than Main Street" to a mainstay that sold broadly accepted underwear. The "new colors, patterns and styles that promised sexiness packaged in a tasteful, glamorous way and with the snob appeal of European luxury" meant to appeal to female buyers.[19] To further this image, the Victoria's Secret catalog continued the practice that Raymond began:[20] listing the company's headquarters on catalogs at a fake London address, with the real headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.[19] The stores were redesigned to evoke 19th century England.

 

[Night Goat]

Bad writing: "Have you seen my father? He's a middle-aged man."
Good writing: "Have you seen my daughter? She's an ashen-haired woman."

 

[passerby]

How common middle aged men were in the game world and how common ashen haired young women were?

First apply to half of male population, while the other is a rare visual characteristics that someone could remember.

 

[JDR13]

Bad writing: "Have you seen my father? He's a middle-aged man."
Good writing: "Have you seen my daughter? She's an ashen-haired woman."

Yeah, because that's an accurate representation of the writing....

 

[Thal]

Bad writing: "Have you seen my father? He's a middle-aged man."
Good writing: "Have you seen my daughter? She's an ashen-haired woman."

The thing is, when you evaluate Witcher 3's writing you have to treat it as a screenplay and not as a novel. The game is riddled with scenes that were clearly designed to invoke emotion, and it worked. Like the scene where Geralt can ask Dudu to adopt Ciri's form for a moment.
They miss the mark to every now and then too, but on the whole they clearly broke new ground. You can't take that away from them, especially not by comparing it to Fallout 3 of all games.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Fallout 3's main quest was horrible. Game wasn't bad as a whole though. People hate it more than it deserves because it isn't the Fallout successor we all wanted, yet knew we wouldn't get.
Good dungeon crawler with a few standout quests and NPCs to fill in the blanks.

 

[JDR13]

Fallout 3's main quest was horrible. Game wasn't bad as a whole though. People hate it more than it deserves because it isn't the Fallout successor we all wanted, yet knew we wouldn't get.
Good dungeon crawler with a few standout quests and NPCs to fill in the blanks.

I think vanilla FO3 is mostly garbage, but the game can be a great experience with the right mods.

The writing and voice acting are laughably bad, but the world is fun to explore, and the atmosphere is really good in parts.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The writing and voice acting are laughably bad, but the world is fun to explore, and the atmosphere is really good in parts.

That sums up both FO3 and FO4.
All of the success they've had is due to acquiring something they had no part in creating. The only good parts of the games are inherently due to the Fallout setting and what was already established by its predecessors.

 

[laclongquan]

My bad. I forgot how important it is to be fashion-conscious while slaying monsters.

Being strong is just a short term state. Being cool/beautiful is FOREVER.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

I think vanilla FO3 is mostly garbage, but the game can be a great experience with the right mods.

The writing and voice acting are laughably bad, but the world is fun to explore, and the atmosphere is really good in parts.

Mods make every Bethesda game better. They're part of the package at this point.
As to voice acting, people love to say this about virtually every Bethesda RPG. I just don't see it. The voice acting is on par with every other RPG in the world. No Witcher 3 levels of gravitas, but certainly not shitty. Too few voice actors for the number of voiced NPCs? Sure. But I wouldn't knock the actors' performances.

But because we're on the point, here's a brief diatribe: why do we even care about voice acting? Unless we're subjected to JRPG levels of horrendous ear torture, I rank voice acting far, far, far down the list of things I care about. And yet, whenever I see a list of criticisms for Bethesda games, voice acting pops up on the list shortly after actually important problems, like lack of C&C or retardo-level skill systems. I honestly think its all Oblivion's fault. The voice acting was really good in Oblivion, but there were also, like... 10 voice actors for something around 1,000 NPCs. People started associating voice acting with less detailed dialogue, and thus it became a criticism.

In other word, when people complain about voice acting, they're really echoing memes from 2006 that were supposed to target dialogue as a system, and not the quality of voice actors.

That sums up both FO3 and FO4.
All of the success they've had is due to acquiring something they had no part in creating. The only good parts of the games are inherently due to the Fallout setting and what was already established by its predecessors.

I completely disagree.
First and foremost, Fallout 3 is infinitely better than Fallout 4 -- Fallout 4 is the worst AAA RPG I have ever played by orders of magnitude.
Second, do you really thing Bethesda's initial success with Fallout 3 came because of the Fallout name? The very concept lacks context. Fallout was a cult classic. Fallout 2 was a slightly more popular cult classic. And that isn't a knock on Fallout -- they're two of the best games ever made. It's just a proxy of where gaming was at the time. It was super nerdy, and the nerdiest of the nerdy was CRPGs.

Fallout 3 owes its relative success to association with Morrowind, and to a greater extent Oblivion (hence all the "Oblivion with guns" comparisons).
If the Fallout name turned Fallout 3's release into a hype steam engine, then Fallout 3's association with the creators of TES transformed the fanfare into a hype bullet train.

As to the (de)merits of FO3, that's a different topic altogether.

 

[JDR13]

As to voice acting, people love to say this about virtually every Bethesda RPG. I just don't see it. The voice acting is on par with every other RPG in the world.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

As to voice acting, people love to say this about virtually every Bethesda RPG. I just don't see it. The voice acting is on par with every other RPG in the world.

*except ones that have legit really good performances.
Most RPGs and video games in general have very middling voice acting. Fallout 3 sits comfortably with most everybody else in the band of mediocrity.

 

[JDR13]

Most RPGs and video games in general have very middling voice acting. Fallout 3 sits comfortably with most everybody else in the band of mediocrity.

Thing is, Bethesda isn't everybody else. They're one of the most prominent AAA companies in the industry, and many of those others in the band of mediocrity as you put it aren't spending nearly as much money on their games or reaping close to the same profits.

To me, poor voice acting stands out a little more when you know the game's budget was in the tens of millions. When you consider Bethesda's resources, stuff like this is mind-boggling to me.