The Witcher 3 Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

So now stats are irrelevant in an RPG? lol okay

 

My point (with the Gothic example) was more in the line that gear upgrades should be rare but substantial (instead of 10% upgrade every few hours) rather than that Geralt should start his adventure in rags and a rusty dagger. First Witcher had good itemization as well, especially compared to the sequel where you'd waste time collecting ingredients to fashion a supposedly superb sword only to kill a random soldier wielding a better one (with a generic name) few hours later.

Regarding heavy armor, it just doesn't feel like a good fit for Geralt's fighting style.

 

Progression system is not RPG mechanic same way getting better gun in new COD doesn't make it more RPG.
On other hand RPG without C&C or systems which makes you decide course of action with some repercussions won't be RPG.
Take for example PST. Combat in that game was atrocious and rare and Obsidian could as well remove any stats (making high wisdom playtrough default ) and still game would be RPG.

RPG main definitions are nonlinearity, story and proper consequences of your choices.
The more game strives toward those goals the more RPG it is.

 

Your dumbfuck tag is long overdue.

 

Shut the fuck up.
Your simpleton stupid proclamations and declaratory oneliners only show how fucking stupid and limited you are.

Obviously no, since those features can be and are part of various game genres.

What makes a game RPG is achieving these through tools such as character stats that differentiate one player character from another and directly influence how the plot develops or how the quests can be handled.

 

No, he cannot handle heavy armor.

In theory, of course he could. In practice, that would get him killed fast. Witchers are trained to fight monsters, often huge and/or highly agile predators that could turn a regular human into a bloody goo in instant. That was stated multiple times throughout the books. Witchers are trained for purpose of fighting these monsters - therefore they are fast, lightweight, agile and cunning - not to mention, generally resourceful - otherwise they would end up dead like any other man - and they often too. As Geralt once stated, there are no tombs or burial grounds of witchers. Places where they die - there is nobody to go there and get their corpse back. Because they do not want and because they can not. The reason is obvious.

Digressing a bit, point is here - having uberhuman strength, speed and so on doesn't mean witchers are without flaws and weaknesses. In order to minimize their weak spots, they hone qualities which they deem important and build their technique upon those. Wearing a heavy piece of metal on the battlefield is something witcher can easily handle - but fighting in it and surviving is not something he is best at.

There's a segment in one story which deals with this - albeit in a somewhat indirect manner - how speed and maneuverability, paired with swordsmanship and Signs. are witcher's greatest assets, and they can give him an upper-hand in many situations in which a heavily-armored person would be at a loss.


On the other hand, J_C does have a point - CDPR has already departed from a book a lot in certain segments (and from logic as well), so this is not really surprising. It is bad design, however.
And funnily enough, it is sort a game trilogy retcon too - in TW1 both Kalkstein and Geralt affirm that heavy armor is not for witchers - therefore, the whole Raven uber-armor quest in the last Chapter. But that armor get retconned in TW2, so it is not that surprising to retcon it some more - only thing is, in TW2 retconning was handled better.

 

To expand on my thoughts on the monster design in the games and books (colourful and boss-like vs. walking treetrunk with pincers) - the games continue to paint the witchers as monster hunters, hunters being emphasized. I think this is wrong, Geralt does very little hunting in the books. The monsters in the Witcher world are mostly evolved creatures, with some of them having origins in the conjunction of the spheres. (crazy magic boom boom) When they're like something out of fairytales or myths, there's always a twist to it, very few of them are straight up mythological - like dragons. Most creatures Geralt fights are indeed moss covered tree trunks with pincers or tentacles, or magic-crafted velociraptors with maker brands on their skin. (I like the Kikimore, kayran, the endrega and aracha are great)
Wild Hunt, so far, is showing many more "bosses" straight out of mythology, actual spirits, spirit masters, demons etc. It feels very Slavic, but it isn't actually drawing from the books.

Geralt is much more like a pest control worker - he comes because you have a pest problem and stuff usually goes wrong, because you didn't tell him everything, or because of other unexpected circumstances. (it's like if you call the exterminator because of mice and you also have wasps in the attic, or the entire house is overgrown with black mold) It also fits much better with the attitude people have towards witchers - they know they're necessary, but still, monsters are creepy and so are witchers. Pest control people are experts in their field and hard working, but because you call them only when you have a pest problem, we associate them with the unpleasantness of cockroaches or bed bugs. Hunters on the other hand are glorified, they're sportsmen and heroic figures, tracking the prey, battling nature and overcoming obstacles for a living.
There certainly is a hunter element in the witcher profession, but the games over emphasize it, imo.

TL;DR: The monsters in W. games are too mythological and not weird enough. (less cyclops, more treetrunk with pincers) Geralt is too much like a hunter, or a dragon slayer, not enough like pest control.

 

Geralt does plenty of pest control in the games, in the form of the monster hunting contracts he gets in every new location. And those are the weakest parts of the games imo. I hated going in circle in that fucking valley looking for noonwraiths in TW1.

In TW3, monster hunting is a more fleshed-out experience, with unique monsters that behave like bosses, with emphasis on preparation and investigation (so they say) before the encounter. I fully support this approach.

 

It's like DA: O all over again. Might as well be have some Polish translation of "Are you mother fucking ready!!!"

I particularly liked how one of the dirty peasants with a spear, fighting Geralt, did some one leg leap 3 feet into the air like he was some sort of reincarnation of Achilles. They done fucked it up son.

 

He was motherfucking ready.

 

in movies perhaps. full plate armor wasn't that heavy and you could easily jump, run, do cartwheels and so on.

"Cumberstone" part was that in sun metal quickly gets hot and inside of it you have something like kitchen. Same with cold. Another part of that is that when you walk 20miles then you should do it without armor or on horse. But that is full plate. If you had something like breasplate + mail then you would be essentially super protected and you would be able to be fast almost as dude without armor.

Basically it was like spear. Its only downsides were that you couldn't take it to nearest pub

As of Geralt. He mostly fight with fast and agile monsters and drunk people so armor would be only hindrance to him.
But if he had to take on 3-4 knights in full body armor and they would know how to fight then he would like to probably wear something that will give him some protection in case of something going bad. He wasn't idiot.

 

Where the fuck did you get that out from?

Carthweels? for fuck sake... to what length will people go to excuse some shit entertainment they like... for fuck sake...

 

There's another video where he does cartwheels. The idea of plate turning you into a monolith is a balance measure for games. Geralt is above the average human's strength, anyway. He'd probably be pretty mobile even if he used a full suit like the guy in the video.

 

Did any of you tried to wear a full plate armor or any armor of any kind? No? Then shut the fuck up and stop pretending like you know your shit.

Geralt is a mutant who can shot fire,slow time,blow air from his asshole and you tell me he can't wear a 40 pound armor because you don't feel like he can't?

 

Mobility was a problem when it came to late medieval european warfare- the british won at Agincourt because french knights were too heavy to move quickly enough in the muddy battlefield.

 

I'll be your reasonable response. Full plate wasn't that heavy. There is a lot of myths out there about knights being unable to get up after falling over or being lifted by cranes onto horses. Yeah that didn't happen.

It's one of those myths that gets circulated around so much people just automatically believe. Like... The eskimo's having 80 different words for snow (they don't, it is in fact variations of the word snow.... much like English e.g. snowing, snowed, snowstorm, snowy, icy, ice.), or that humans only use X% of their brain (we use all of it, no hidden potential for psychic powers is hiding inside our skulls). It's all complete and utter bullshit. Follow any such rumor to its original source, and you find some retarded journalist or tv presenter who in his desire to shock and amaze, twists information given from an actual professional to an absolutely surreal level of dumbfuckery. People watch or read said piece of information, and OMG much information, wow, so clever.

That's not to say plate armor was light. It would still slow you down, its harder to breathe with a helm on, the joints can jam up etc. But it's not any worse than what most modern military army service men have to put up with.

 

Correct, but that's because of environmental conditions making it a bad choice for the occasion and not because the armor itself was badly designed and turned them into statues.

 

proper full plate armor not done by some hack provides full movement of all joints.
Full steel plate would weight 15-25 kg which is less than modern infantry equipment and what is most important it was spread through whole body evenly so if you had 15kg plate you wouldn't really feel it that much

It was made for a war not for a fucking faggot stone figure walks like in movies so it had to be light and at the same time provide full movement. In reality soldier in full plate would be just little bit slower than unarmored soldier.



Original full plate armor set (owned by polish king) along with DLC horse armor.

Actually it is fine for breathing. I tried full plate and most of air i breathed was inhaled by vents in front of mouth.
But yes it would be major problem in hot sun. This is also why there were so many types of helms. Some people prefered more open ones, some prefered completely closed ones.

Actually i wore full plate along with several other (trip with friends in college) If you are in poland in several places there are museums that don't mind people trying out that stuff and ton of medieval weapons you can dick around with.

Most awesome was chainmail + breastplate. Basically felt like you wore heavy clothes not armor.

Full plate doesn't mean what most of people think.
People think that full plate mean that even joints are some kind of hard shaped thing. Far from truth. Sure some design had those (but they were not common) but most of the time you didn't really need anything other than trousers as front was fully secure by extended boots(?) and you would need to be really unlucky to get hit in back of joint. As for upper joins mail would do without problem.

So you have basically shaped hard metal where you don't have joints thus 0 movement problems.

 

The armor you get for completing the main quest in Oblivion had a similar design, actually.

 

Is that polish armour based on the Lion armour set?

 

Actually this is fairly accurate.. Polish farmers from the mid 1600's were commonly trained by a roman soldier from each city in the art of air lunge warfare where the katana could actually cut through 3 inches of steel in one swipe and could slice bullets in half, I also have no idea what I am talking about and hate when history nerds devolve every conversation into this bullshit.

 

Naaah ornamental sets for kings and higher nobility were pretty much similar in design because most of the time they were made mostly by same people.

But that plate looks great though. Still it would be probably worse in actual battle than normal basic plate due to all those crap decorations weight. Steel wasn't really good material to sculpt so i assume those sculptures are from different metal heavier one.

 

Tis not about historical accuracy my son. When thou chooseth to entertain 'A for awesome' popamoleth, thou incites the devil to entereth one's heart. Thou yonder beholdeth and the masses do despair.

 

Another myth:
Archers were weak.

Reality.
Average archer had better musculature than average foot soldier or knight.

Average archer had to sustain fire and be accurate shooting from 50-60kg draw warbow (some had even 80kg draw!!!).

A modern longbow's draw is typically 25kg or less, and by modern convention measured at 28 inches (71.1 cm). Historically, hunting bows usually had draw weights of 25-28 kg (220–270 N), which is enough for all but the very largest game and which most reasonably fit adults can manage with practice. Today, there are few modern longbowmen capable of using 80 kg (800–820 N) bows accurately.[10][11]