out of complete boredom i went ahead and torrented all 35 gigs of witcher 3: the wild hunt. I installed it. I launched the game, set preset to "high", game began running at perfect 60fps with minor dips only when grafix happened all of a sudden.
I did the intro. I admit I could not stomach the interminable cut-scenes, and after the intro where you run w/ Siri I just mashed SPACEBAR, not unlike my preferred method of playing Pillars of Eternity I should add! Ah, it was a welcome familiarity!
I finally, finally got "access" to what I suppose is the "open world", like 4 hours and 50 tutorials later (the tutorials were actually well done, though), but more egregiously: cutscenes.
More cutscenes.
Non-stop characters giving exposition and periodically assaulting me, the player, with a completely meaningless and superfluous "dialog choice". Now, now, I know the game actually does feature "worthy" "choices" in its "dialog choices", not from having played it but because it seems that the consensus about witcher games among the "true RPG gamer" crowd (i.e. morons who post here, like me, except dumber) is that the game's "choices" actually "matter", so I assume the might-as-well not-have-them dialog responses from the game's first few hours are not indicative of its BRANCHING CONTENT.
Either way, that actually does not matter whatsoever to me, or at least it is only peripheral. F: NV is the gold standard for "AAA-type open world RPG" and it will never be surpassed, and one of F: NV's biggest strengths is that almost none of its (unmatched by any other in its category) many, many, many "choices" are almost never gotten to or made by "dialog responses".
In F: NV it is the underlying gameplay systems such as the factions, quests done or not done, stuff you have acquired or not acquired, people you've talked to or not talked to, place you've discovered, people you may have killed or instead maybe left them alive; in F: NV the main way the player shapes his role playing experience is usually by doing shit, rarely via a dialog.
Anyway, back to Witcher 3.
Oh right, so I set out into the wild yonder and I just simply could not, cannot, understand the game's appeal. I had never actually before PLAYED witcher 3 (only w1 years ago), and I have to say: this is the prettiest interactive cut-scene with hiking simulation built-in that I've seen in a while!
Probably the prettiest!
I thought, somewhat smugly, that I am actually enjoying playing ELEX and Nier: Automata much more than Witcher 3, with Elex fitting more into W3's category of course. I don't particularly like ELEX, I think it's a boring sandbox that's bereft of any mechanical depth, with little incentives for the player to care about the game other than jet-packing around for a few mins.
I still find it a more recognizably "RPG"-like game than Witcher 3, though. Look, fuck it, I will not argue that W3 isn't an RPG. I'm just gonna finish by saying that after my 4-6 hour brief experience playing W3 and then promtply uninstalling it I think it plays more like a standard action-adventure game than an RPG, with even stuff like Skyrim evoking more RPG mechanics/stuff than Witcher 3 (!).
(Emphasis on the 'adventure' part as my god, this is worse than Metal Gear. Metal Gear is great cut-scene fun time because kojima, ninjas, la-li-lu-le-lo, psycho mantis, SNAAAAAAAKE, etc...
...Boring Witcher 3 cutscenes, er, please maybe less of them for next time? I remember W1 didn't feature this cut-scene assault. I remember it was quite a focused game.
TL;DR: After hating, and I mean hating W3 and its fans for ranking high in the Codex poll, and finally buckling down nad playing it, I'm now just confused instead of angry. It's a really run-of-the-mill game with nothing that stands out, and it's a faaar cry from the greatness of Fallout: New Vegas or even, dare I say it, Morrowind.
