Company News CD Projekt: "We will combine story driven and open-world RPGs for the first time."

[pistletoe]

And its all a hell of a lot more expensive. Whatever, I just see them tooting their own horn, something they've always done. Not sure why everyone here is so up in arms over it all of a sudden. There were a slew of things they promised that didn't make it in to TW2 due to budget and time constraints, so I always take the PR speak with a grain of salt, no matter the company.

 

[Jaesun]

What does a "branching story" mean, anyway? New Vegas doesn't have a branching story?

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[Twinkle]

So TW3 was officially announced via Game Informer. GERALT GETS MANLY BEARD YOU CAN RIDE HORSIES AND ITS BIGGER THAN SKYRIM TAKE THAT BETHESDA.

Prooflink:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=511690

 

[Lancehead]

I really would like to know what the hell they mean by "non-linear storytelling" and "truly open world" so I can process what this "first time" they talk about.

 

[Jasede]

The Witcher can suck my balls, but maybe their Cyberpunk game won't be a horrible action game / linear action-adventure hybrid. Though I expect nothing from potatoes.

 

[Broseph]

Everyone wants Skyrim's audience these days.

Anyway, "we will combine storytelling and open world for first time!" is indeed retarded PR bullshit. That said, I am mildly interested in TW3. Although 20% bigger than Skyrim really isn't that much of an achievement, considering that Skyrim is like 10 square miles IIRC.

 

[Jasede]

I don't know, Skyrim feels pretty freaking huge, area-wise.
Shame everything looks the same (exaggeration).

Morrowind was more entertaining to explore. If you're gonna be a hiking sim you've got to embrace that and offer many different, cool locales, all part of some strange culture worth learning about.

 

[Broseph]

A large part of that was the design of the in-game map and the lack of locations showing up on your magical quest compass. Modded Skyrim feels surprisingly close to Morrowind, exploration wise. I do agree with you though about Morrowind being generally a lot more entertaining to explore. If the TWitcher devs are taking inspiration from Elder Scrolls for exploration, Morrowind's obviously the game to look to.


Hear that, CDPR? Don't completely fuck up your open world design with a shitty GPS.

 

[Infinitron]

The previous Witcher games already had a GPS, though.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I wonder if they will be able to have enough content for such a large landmass, without Bethesda´s resources and with Cdprojekt´s usual attention to detail in their world design... either this will take 10 years to be released or it will be mostly empty landmass.

 

[Infinitron]

I wonder if they will be able to have enough content for such a large landmass, without Bethesda´s resources and with Cdprojekt´s usual attention to detail in their world design... either this will take 10 years to be released or it will be mostly empty landmass.

Procedural generation, possibly?

 

[Kem0sabe]

Procedural generation, possibly?

Seems like everyone want´s to be like Skyrim, first Dragon Age, now the Witcher... what the fuck is so great about Skyrim?

 

[Infinitron]

Procedural generation, possibly?

Seems like everyone want´s to be like Skyrim, first Dragon Age, now the Witcher... what the fuck is so great about Skyrim?

That it's the best-selling single player western RPG in all of history, I think.

 

[Kem0sabe]

That it's the best-selling single player western RPG in all of history, I think.

So was WoW in respect to western mmo´s... spawned a lot of "inspired" work by other developers, most if not all of which failed miserably.

The Witcher games were always very "tight" story driven rpg´s, while trying to emulate a genre (open world rpg) which they have little experience with, they risk the entire franchise.

Anyways, Skyrim sold a lot of copies, thats true, but i´ve read that close to 85% of those sales where on consoles, and more than half the total was on the xbox, platforms that were at the peak of their install base. Looking forward to The Witcher 3, i think they are risking a lot on pushing such an ambitious project for the nextgen consoles that will have a much smaller market share than the current generation.

That´s a lot of risks for such a small company. They are literally betting the house on this, will be interesting to see how it turns out.

 

[Infinitron]

That´s a lot of risks for such a small company. They are literally betting the house on this, will be interesting to see how it turns out.

I don't think CDPR are so small anymore, if they're making this and an open-world Cyberpunk game at the same time.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I don't think CDPR are so small anymore, if they're making this and an open-world Cyberpunk game at the same time.

Forgot about that one completely, haven´t been following it much since it was announced.

 

[Captain Shrek]

The previous Witcher games already had a GPS, though.

Not to mention that it is the least important issue in an open area design. The more important things are keeping character skills that affect exploration , good AI and actual content instead of everyone wishing that they want the nuclear winter back.

EDIT: The good AI can be replaced by "sufficiently" deep scripted characters. Worked for Morrowind.

 

[odrzut]

The previous Witcher games already had a GPS, though.

The acceptable kind of GPS. When the quest was about finding something GPS was disabled (like in the Cedric quest with following his blood trails). Arrow was only enabled when Geralt should know where he's going, cause he was there already, or he got precise instructions. That's OK with me.

procedural generation

I'd like to play Dwarf Fortress adventure mode with Red Engine. Dwarf Fortress got procedura generation right - you have to start with ridiculus level of details and generate few centuries of history for the world to be beliveable. But it still won't work with predefined character and hand-scripted quests.

 

[pistletoe]

Well, I don't need TW3 to be like Skyrim. I hope they can pull this off.

 

[Gerrard]

I wonder if they will be able to have enough content for such a large landmass, without Bethesda´s resources and with Cdprojekt´s usual attention to detail in their world design... either this will take 10 years to be released or it will be mostly empty landmass.

I'd much prefer it that way rather than being full of shit like Skyrim was. I'd also prefer it to be actually big and not "20% bigger than Skyrim". They are going to compress a lot of the world into a really tiny area with "something interesting always in sight". That will be shitty.