The Witcher 3 GOTY Edition

[Zombra]

Your arguments ignore what can be clearly observed in the game

Not at all. Geralt is not depicted as a loser in the early game. He doesn't get laughed at by townspeople. He doesn't get eaten by wolves. He is not a sad sack. He doesn't cry about how he's not strong enough to put on a leather coat. Everywhere he goes, he's treated with respect, and he kills anything that fucks with him. Again, he survives 100% of all fights.

Imagine watching an episode of the Witcher TV show. Imagine the writers decide to put in a scene where Geralt fights off a pack of wolves. Would he strip naked, do dance emotes and let the wolves bite him 50 times until he finally killed them all with a ping pong paddle just for lulz, because he has so many hit points he doesn't give a fuk? No. The wolves would look dangerous and we would see Geralt work for it, because despite his "high level", i.e. backstory of being an experienced fighter, he is not a bulletproof superhero and the story does not intend to portray him as a bulletproof superhero. That doesn't make him a weakling, sad sack or not awesome; it just means that wolf bites hurt because they should hurt, and being attacked by 10 bandits is actually a troublesome thing because it should be troublesome even for a dude who's been around. Any disconnect you see, you see because you are looking for it, because you want to see it. That's still on you, not the game.

 

[Harthwain]

Huh? Why would he not fight wolves? Does Geralt ever say, "No more wolves for me!" Does he ever say, "Oh, my skin is immune to wolf bites now." No. He's the same guy he always was. If wolves try to bite him, he stabs them. Not sure how this is read as a sudden lack of skill.

It's not that he wouldn't fight wolves. It's how the game handles him being able to kill a wolf "before" and "after". In TW1 you could say Geralt had to recollect his fighting skills. In TW3 he is already a seasoned witcher. I wouldn't mind wolves being crazy dangerous as a baseline (I am of the opinion that any fight being lethal is a sign of the Incline™).

However, this doesn't really happen in game - you either have serious issues killing a wolf/dog or kill it without problem, because it is all tied to your level as the player. Not only this turns game into a kind of shitty singleplayer MMO (and makes combat uninteresting, in my opinion, although there are more issues with it than just that), you also experience Geralt (as the in-game character) not being as powerful as he ought to be, for no real in-game reason. And it's not feasible to handwave this as "the player-Geralt is not Geralt-Geralt", because even though the player is animating Geralt the developers made it clear they ensured that the player-controlled Geralt can only act like Geralt-Geralt would. Meaning you're still playing as Geralt.

Story and mechanics are two absolutely different sets of rules.

But that's the whole point regarding the dissonance between Geralt as depicted in the story (or in the books) and Geralt controlled by the player. I will say it again: Death Stranding has story and mechanics tied very closely together so there is no such difference between the story and the mechanics. To me the design ends up being mediocre and combat suffers most because of this.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Barring some minor quibbles that I brought up, I don't see much wrong with Zombra's premise. It's the basis for an argument as to why handing players a god-like meta time control power probably isn't a great idea.

 

[Zombra]

stuff

I don't disagree with any of this. Yes, the Witcher series are RPGs where numbers go up, and gameplay gets easier as you level higher. This was never in dispute but doesn't truly matter to the story, because the player experience and the character experience are simply not the same. I'm happy to concede that other games explain why the protagonists have an easier time later. I maintain that it's not strictly necessary, and doesn't ruin anything in the Witcher games for anyone who bothers to think it through. Anyway, I appreciate your trying to wrap this up with a sense of sanity.

 

[Zombra]

Barring some minor quibbles that I brought up, I don't see much wrong with Zombra's premise. It's the basis for an argument as to why handing players a god-like meta time control power probably isn't a great idea.

The normal save game system isn't the problem here at all. The problem is when idiots get confused and think it's part of the in-game lore. Like they believe Geralt is squinting to read the HUD to figure out how much mana he has, and he gets scared when the player clicks on Exit Game.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

The very simple point is that the mechanics make the Geralt of this game appear much less dangerous than he is supposed to be in the story. Of course you can choose to ignore how you need to strike what are supposed to be weak animals so many times to kill them, or come up with some personal explanation, but what all players unavoidably see when they play the game is the guy using supposedly lethal techniques that should be enough to severely maim much more dangerous creatures yet taking off only a fraction of a weak animal's health every time he lands a clean hit.

It would have felt more appropriate if you could kill enemies that are supposed to be weak with a single hit or two from the beginning of the game, and make Geralt hard to hit for weaker enemies, but when he does get hit, even from weaker enemies, lose a big chunk of his life, get status effects representing injuries that make him weak, and so on. Can you try to overlook these and act like there are no inconsistencies between what Geralt is supposed to be in the story and the game's version of Geralt, because how many strikes it takes to kill a wolf for some reason to you doesn't count in your estimation of his strength, the NPCs treat him with respect like they were designed to, and because you can savescum? Of course.

This does not change how the source of the dissonance is that Geralt looks like a feeble clown (and is in fact feeble in the beginning of the game for needing to hit weak enemies so many times with a large sword to kill them, only other enemies that are defeated by him are even weaker) when players go through the ridiculous experience where he is spinning around and hacking away at weak enemies one chip damage at a time thanks to low-risk, shallow combat mechanics befitting an MMO instead of those that could have been much more coherent with the setting, even if not absolutely so, and how NPCs treat him with fear and respect because somehow this feeble man is among the strongest people in the game.

How you think you're "supposed" to interpret these things has nothing to do with the fact that Geralt looks like a weak bitch in the beginning of the game because you can clearly see how many hits it takes him to kill a wolf or some drunk guy in a tavern. That is the fundamental complaint regarding the dissonance and pointing out that you can choose to separate the story from the mechanics if you feel like it does not address this at all.

 

[pomenitul]

If you truly wish to embody Geralt and reduce ludonarrative dissonance to an afterthought, I've got two words for you, buddy: git gud.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

My contention is that the game doesn't even try to resolve this dissonance.

Finally, a sensible statement on the subject. I don't disagree here.

Well they eventually did somewhat try, with the upscaling option in a patch. It created super mice.

And then other studios like ubisoft copied that enemy upscaling solution.

 

[Perkel]

How about you codexers. When is your first playthrough ? After 5th or 6th ?

 

[thelegend]

Most overrated European garbage game.

 

[Ismaul]

How about you codexers. When is your first playthrough ? After 5th or 6th ?

C'mon man you know this one.

It's the 7th time that counts.

 

[Humanophage]

I am trying to like it, but the default interface is genuinely awful due to console intrusion (no buttons for signs? what the heck is this minimap? why no camera control?), while modding is so poorly integrated it leads to game-breaking bugs. Right now, I am unable to progress because the game imagines I am still in Geralt's body during a Ciri sequence, and so I am stuck in a cutscene where the dialogue options won't show up. I wish games did away with all that unnecessary cinematic cutscene machinima nonsense, especially since even something so elementary won't work 7 years after release.

 

[jackofshadows]

no buttons for signs?

You can bind every sign individually in vanilla. See options for minimap too, turn off the footprints for example. You can customize interface a lot in general even in vanilla.

 

[Humanophage]

no buttons for signs?

You can bind every sign individually in vanilla. See options for minimap too, turn off the footprints for example. You can customize interface a lot in general even in vanilla.

Can you? It seems you can only bind to select them rather than cast them. E.g., press 3 to select, then press Q to cast. Instead of press Q to cast straight away (why the two have to be separated is puzzling - it's the standard approach to have this bar with skills and one-click casting).

The minimap is too closely zoomed in and there is no option to zoom it out. Thankfully, the mod for it seems fool-proof.

 

[jackofshadows]

Can you? It seems you can only bind to select them rather than cast them. E.g., press 3 to select, then press Q to cast. Instead of press Q to cast straight away (why the two have to be separated is puzzling - it's the standard approach to have this bar with skills and one-click casting).

The minimap is too closely zoomed in and there is no option to zoom it out. Thankfully, the mod for it seems fool-proof.

Ah, you were about that. Yes, annoying as it was in D2 and now in every cross-platform game it seems. Agree on the minimap although it didn't bother me much, just used the map from time to time.

 

[ferratilis]

Before they ruin the game with their 'next-gen' update and render all the good mods incompatible, I wanted to do another playthrough with Ghost Mode and all the related wghost81 mods. Among the usual suite (Friendly HUD, Friendly Meditation, Preparations, Friendly Stash, Combat animations, Enhanced Targeting etc.), he recently released a new one, that significantly improves controls for both Geralt and Roach. You can now control the movement speed using mouse wheel, just like in old Splinter Cell games, and the animations have been improved as well. Also, Roach is not controlled by camera movements anymore, making riding a lot more enjoyable and somewhat skill-dependent (it takes some getting used to). Honestly, this is all I ever wanted in a third person game when it comes to movement and control. Together with Enhanced Targeting, E3 Combat Animations and Combat Stance, it's a huge improvement over vanilla. Anyone who previously couldn't get into W3 because of bad controls should try this, it could make the game a lot more enjoyable.

https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/6377?tab=description

This guy has done so much for the game over the years, turning CDPR's mediocre gameplay, terrible economy and systems into something palatable. He should've been hired years ago, but instead they hired that Polish autist who made HD Reworked Project lol.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Before they ruin the game with their 'next-gen' update and render all the good mods incompatible,

I guess I will need to pirate the current version on GOG just to be safe huh. Been wanting to replay this with mod but yet to have the time.

Isn't next gen shit supposed to graphics only usually? They gonna do other stuff to the game?

 

[ferratilis]

Good idea, I'll also have to pirate the 1.31 version to save it. Steam disabled the option to toggle updates on a per-game basis. Gaben, you fat fuck!

So far, they only said they will include that HD Reworked Project and some other graphics mods, add gaytracing and HDR support, and a 15 minute quest inspired by the Netflix show. There could be other things, but they weren't announced. Knowing CDPR of the last few years, expect the game to get worse. I want to be optimistic that they contacted some of the good modders to include their stuff, but it'd doubtful.

At least they should update their HUD not to be locked at 30fps anymore, but even that would be too much to expect. Not to mention hundreds and hundreds of clipping and LOD bugs that were fixed by Besserwiser.

 

[Tyrr]

I hope they do it like Skyrim. The next gen version as a separate game.
That way you will still be able to run the old one with all the mods.

 

[Yosharian]

Wait Witcher 3 is receiving an update?

 

[jackofshadows]

he

She.

 

[Justicar]

Good idea, I'll also have to pirate the 1.31 version to save it. Steam disabled the option to toggle updates on a per-game basis. Gaben, you fat fuck!

So far, they only said they will include that HD Reworked Project and some other graphics mods, add gaytracing and HDR support, and a 15 minute quest inspired by the Netflix show. There could be other things, but they weren't announced. Knowing CDPR of the last few years, expect the game to get worse. I want to be optimistic that they contacted some of the good modders to include their stuff, but it'd doubtful.

At least they should update their HUD not to be locked at 30fps anymore, but even that would be too much to expect. Not to mention hundreds and hundreds of clipping and LOD bugs that were fixed by Besserwiser.

Just download the gog instaler nigger what is the problem?

 

[gurugeorge]

Before they ruin the game with their 'next-gen' update and render all the good mods incompatible, I wanted to do another playthrough with Ghost Mode and all the related wghost81 mods. Among the usual suite (Friendly HUD, Friendly Meditation, Preparations, Friendly Stash, Combat animations, Enhanced Targeting etc.), he recently released a new one, that significantly improves controls for both Geralt and Roach. You can now control the movement speed using mouse wheel, just like in old Splinter Cell games, and the animations have been improved as well. Also, Roach is not controlled by camera movements anymore, making riding a lot more enjoyable and somewhat skill-dependent (it takes some getting used to). Honestly, this is all I ever wanted in a third person game when it comes to movement and control. Together with Enhanced Targeting, E3 Combat Animations and Combat Stance, it's a huge improvement over vanilla. Anyone who previously couldn't get into W3 because of bad controls should try this, it could make the game a lot more enjoyable.

https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/6377?tab=description

This guy has done so much for the game over the years, turning CDPR's mediocre gameplay, terrible economy and systems into something palatable. He should've been hired years ago, but instead they hired that Polish autist who made HD Reworked Project lol.

I thought it was a she? But yeah, his/her mods are all great. It's always amazed me why developers have never taken advantage of the mouse wheel for movement speed. There was a mod for Skyrim that did it too (although of course being Skyrim it wasn't possible to make it really smooth, but it worked ok). If you have that, and then use SHIFT+wheel for zoom in and zoom out (after all, that's something you're doing to be doing less of), it feels great to use.

 

[Storyfag]

It's always amazed me why developers have never taken advantage of the mouse wheel for movement speed.

Because games are designed with c*ntrollers in mind.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

^But gamepad controls were also poorly implemented. They made it so that a fully tilted thumbstick makes your character run while you have to keep it tilted only half the way through in order to walk which is the wrong scheme for a slow paced rpg where you might want to walk most of the time (there's the horse for fast overworld travel), it's a strain on your thumb to keep the stick at a slight constant tilt instead of all the way tilted (same kind of crap you get in the newer AC games). It's the kind of control scheme you'd expect from a mario game instead where you're meant to be running everywhere.

It's why the immersive cam mod's "Immersive Motion" submod is so important, as well as its "Alternate Horse Controls" submod that changes the horse control scheme to work like autowalk/BOTW/SOTC's horse control schemes rather than vanilla's super mario scheme, making modded PC witcher a much better gamepad experience than the console one,.