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

[abnaxus]

Pity they look like shit in the game.

 

[Merlkir]

I genuinely enjoyed the way Vilgefortz beat the crap out of Geralt in the books. And that he did it with a fucking stick. It's quite the fantasy meme that mages and wizards are weak, or even useless in melee. Sapkowski understood that beings who can do the shit mages can would probably find ways to be powerful in hand to hand as well.

About Ciri, wasn't she an ancestor to Morgan LeFey in the other dimension? Or a founder of some witch school or something? I don't remember the epilogue exactly, but iirc some witch students were reading a book about Ciri?
(implying she had a quite the life of a sorceress in the Arthurian world)

 

[Kalasanty11]

So to sum this up. She had extraordinary sword skill (but not on witcher level), shitty magic skill but has special ability to jump dimensions.

IIRC, she has no magical skills (like spells or signs) whatsoever (except for jumping dimensions), she renounced them on the desert

 

[MicoSelva]

She regained them later, as far as I remember.

 

[Perkel]

Generaly Sapkowski plays on mames, staples of genre. He like to show how stupid some of those things are and tries to make them realistic.


Like for example mages hunting dragons as bane of humanity.
By sapkowski lore Yennefer first talk about dragons as bane of humanity, each dragon can burn whole city and stuff.
to which Geralt says that only reason she is there, is pile of valuable stones that would devaluate current precious stone market if those stones would be taken by someone who would spend them instead of keeping them thus making life worse for mages (because they control market)


As of Arthurian world. There wasn't anything mentioned later. Just something to akin he takes her hand and they go somewhere. Arthurian world is also sapkowski take on rould table myth in his usuall way as Ciri finds knight who helps her as idiot, charming but idiot. That idealism can't work in real-life.

 

[Perkel]

IIRC, she has no magical skills (like spells or signs) whatsoever (except for jumping dimensions), she renounced them on the desert

In this lore you can't renounce your magic skills, as this is something you can do or not, same as breathing. Her renounce was basically more like mental blockade and later she "regained" her ability to cast.

She regained them later, as far as I remember.

yep

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

I genuinely enjoyed the way Vilgefortz beat the crap out of Geralt in the books. And that he did it with a fucking stick. It's quite the fantasy meme that mages and wizards are weak, or even useless in melee. Sapkowski understood that beings who can do the shit mages can would probably find ways to be powerful in hand to hand as well.

More like meme of early DnD editions.

 

[Tytus]

Didn't Geralt in the Witcher 2 say that. "Yennifer has told me that Ciri has left the world...never to return"?

She has returned because Arturian Knights had small dicks and their women had small boobs and bad hygiene. Her bisexuality just wasn't satisfied there. She should try Ferelden next.

 

[Merlkir]

I've opened up Lady of the Lake and re-reading the big battle...it's so fucking good. I wonder if CPR plan to have any big battle scenes in the third game. Could be, right? With Nilfgaard invading and all.

"Did you know he was a witcher?"
"Yeah, but other than that he was a decent guy."

:D

 

[Kalasanty11]

In this lore you can't renounce your magic skills, as this is something you can do or not, same as breathing. Her renounce was basically more like mental blockade and later she "regained" her ability to cast.

I thought she regained only ability of travelling between dimensions (which Horsey calls "true power which is in her blood", as opposed to "prestidigitation" which she lost at the desert). She doesn't use any magic (like fire bolts or whatever) in fight with Bonhart or later, iirc.

 

[Roguey]

Cool Geralt 63 CD Projekt.

By the by I hadn't seen the inventory until now or maybe I did and I forgot buuuuuuuuuut http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/14/aug/wic03b.jpg

Damnit CDP. I hated the list in Witcher 2 because it was too damn small and required a lot of tedious scrolling. Now I have to mouse-over a whole bunch of multi-colored potions and crap which is comparably tedious. Why don't you cargo cult copy SkyUI?

 

[Nihiliste]

The game is looking beautiful and should be good for some casual fun. Within the same genre it looks significantly better than pansexual age - EAware is probably thrilled that CDProjekt ended up moving the release date.

 

[made]

Cool Geralt 63 CD Projekt.

By the by I hadn't seen the inventory until now or maybe I did and I forgot buuuuuuuuuut http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/14/aug/wic03b.jpg

Damnit CDP. I hated the list in Witcher 2 because it was too damn small and required a lot of tedious scrolling. Now I have to mouse-over a whole bunch of multi-colored potions and crap which is comparably tedious. Why don't you cargo cult copy SkyUI?

Shut your whore mouth. Grid inventory rules. Given sufficiently distinct icons you'll memorize what's what soon enough.

 

[Perkel]

In this lore you can't renounce your magic skills, as this is something you can do or not, same as breathing. Her renounce was basically more like mental blockade and later she "regained" her ability to cast.

I thought she regained only ability of travelling between dimensions (which Horsey calls "true power which is in her blood", as opposed to "prestidigitation" which she lost at the desert). She doesn't use any magic (like fire bolts or whatever) in fight with Bonhart or later, iirc.

Because like i said she didn't had skills to cast anything worthwile in fight. She had only basic magic skills training before she was send via portal to desert.

 

[Perkel]

Cool Geralt 63 CD Projekt.

By the by I hadn't seen the inventory until now or maybe I did and I forgot buuuuuuuuuut http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/14/aug/wic03b.jpg

Damnit CDP. I hated the list in Witcher 2 because it was too damn small and required a lot of tedious scrolling. Now I have to mouse-over a whole bunch of multi-colored potions and crap which is comparably tedious. Why don't you cargo cult copy SkyUI?

Grid menu for life. SkyUI suck donkey balls because precisely it is list menu.

 

[Infinitron]

RPS preview: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/08/15/the-witcher-3-gamescom-preview/

Eyes On: The Witcher 3

I’ve been watching somebody chopping monsters into pieces. In a miniature temporary cinema in the chaos of Gamescom, The Witcher 3 is on display, strutting around the place like a peacock. In a forty-five-minute live presentation, it proves itself to be the most handsome game at the show but I’m left wondering what exactly it has to show beneath all the finery. That doesn’t mean I want to see its nude collectible sex card but I do want to see what really makes it tick.


Hitman: Absolution is responsible for one of my strangest memories of the last few years of gaming. Despite all of the things that felt like a step (or sprint) back from the emergent farce and thrills of the series’ greatest settings, Absolution did one thing better than any other game I’d ever seen before. Crowds. After seeing the herds of potential victims in the Chinatown area, it’s hard to look at the small groups that constitute urban life in other games the same way.

Whether The Witcher 3 achieves its loftier goals or not, it will almost certainly serve to spoil the cluster of buildings that often constitute the capital city of a digital fantasy kingdom. Novigrad, the largest city in the game, is enormous. Geralt arrives on horseback and rides by the docks, where boats ply their trade and the cry of the fishmongers can be heard (thanks, Fink).

The scale of the environment is staggering and the NPCs that inhabit it apparently have their own schedules and behaviours. People spend the day going about their business, whatever it might be, and when night falls, they head home or to taverns. It’s a living city, at least to some extent, although the visible interactions with the populace either involve nudging them aside, like an Assassin, or receiving quests from them. It’s the questing that forms the bulk of the playthrough (watched rather than experienced) and there’s little evidence of a dynamic open world.

That’s not to say the world isn’t impressive. Outside the city, Geralt performs parkour as he scrambles across cliffsides and searches for alternate routes to his objectives. He’s able to use his witchy (witchery?) senses to track and hunt, overlaying glowing red foot and claw marks onto the terrain. When he finds his prey, combat is violent, fast and fluid, with special abilities interrupting enemy attacks and tipping the advantage in his favour.

The standout scuffle is against a nest of harpies, which swoop and scratch, threatening to send Geralt tumbling from the precipice he’s fighting on. A wrist-mounted crossbow allow him to pick at them from mid-range, or to hit them full-on in the face as they dive. It’s the most promising sequence, the splendour of the city aside, showing that quick responses, parrying and dodging are more important than toe-to-toe bludgeoning. The environment comes into play as well, as the deadly dance is performed in loosening circles, with the player struggling to stay on firm ground as attacks and feints cut off his movements and push him toward the precarious cliff-edge.

Fighting human opponents in another area, the environment comes into play again. This time it’s in the form of an exploding barrel, which Geralt lights with his Igni fire cone. Sizzle, boom, rain of flesh. It’s certainly gory but, in the tradition of exploding barrel kills since time began, it’s very convenient and faintly absurd.

It’s hard to tell whether The Witcher 3 is embracing that absurdity. The presentation’s forty-five minutes involve what feels like forty-seven minutes of dialogue, much of it delivered in a lovely soup of regional British accents. It’s all a bit daft, as tales of swords, destinies and corsets tend to be, but even when a godling called Jonny (Dobby the house elf cosplaying as Gollum) provides some light relief among he grim and the grit, the script seems to be almost entirely earnest.

Sample lines – “Do you have bollocks?” and “You need a knight-errant or a witch hunter, not a witcher.” I mentioned that line to Graham, unaware of the distinction between a witch, one who witches and a witch hunter. He suggested witchers might have unionised their slaying, creating a division between them and the strike-busting witch hunters. Seems likely.

My occasional aversion to fantasy lore aside, there’s a pleasing fairytale quality to Geralt’s hunts. He’s not punching orcs, he’s seeking half-forgotten creatures and dangerous rumours. Rumours with teeth and a bulbous eyes. And he’s doing it in one of the most beautifully detailed environments I’ve ever seen. It’s stunning to look at, both in terms of its preposterous scale and the intricacy of every texture, tree and living thing. It’s a place that I want to spend time in but, despite the open world claims, on the evidence of this short visit it’s a place in which time is spent listening to instructions, following quest markers and hitting things until the die.

There are alternate routes to find, I’ve seen that with my own eyes, but the destination has always been a verbose quest-giver or an angry monster. There’s no single moment, outside the city walls, that makes the extravagant world seem like more than a backdrop for a series of encounters. The order they occur in will vary as players explore as they see fit rather than being pushed in a specific direction but despite the beauty of the place, it may not contain as much surprise, improvisation and mystery as the most convincing fictional spaces.

For one moment, as Geralt traipsed through a swamp, ominous stomping flooded out of CD Projekt’s meaty bass system. Local wildlife, large, we were told. It sounded bloody enormous and didn’t appear to be related to any current quest. And apparently it wasn’t because instead of encountering the source of the sound, or even turning around to look at it, we were plunged into another dialogue-heavy cutscene, at which point the mystery interloper apparently ceased to exist.

Maybe that’s the moment that made me so grumpy. It’s understandable that a live demonstration shows certain highlights and hits the right beats, but when so much of the conversation around the game is about freedom, it’s disappointing to have the one moment when something unexpected threatens to emerge onto the prescribed path be cut short for the sake of another cutscene.

I’m judging the presentation rather than the game because that’s all I can judge at the moment. It left me with the suspicion that the wonders of the world might be window-dressing for a series of fights and fetch quests rather than a thing to be enjoyed in its own right. If that’s the case, it will at least be the best window-dressing that a window ever wore, but it would have been reassuring to see something other than running, jumping and killing.

And then I remember the city. If nothing else, The Witcher 3 will have Novigrad and every other game that tries to fob us off with Tinyside-on-Twee when we’re supposed to be seeing the greatest kingdom in the world, or a bungalow in place of New York, may well be at least a little ashamed.

Gripes and doubts aside, there’s no doubt that I’ll want to experience the streets and the docks for myself next February. And I might even enjoy a spot of hunting as well, exploring the dark places of the world. At the moment, the visuals and technical accomplishment of the environments set the game apart from just about anything else, and that might be enough, if there is enough variety in the bestiary and locations.

There are also, of course, the decisions that cause the plot and its subplots to branch, changing the world in ways great and small. The tightly packaged presentation ends with a choice – to stab a tree in the heart or not to stab a tree in the heart. In this playthrough, Geralt went sword-happy and the blood flowed, causing the children at a local orphanage to vanish from the world. There’s a reason, a connection between those things, because we are in the realm of folklore and fairytale, where ancient beings protect and harm depending on the actions of men like Geralt who slice through the threads of destiny.

It might be brilliant and if it is, I’ll happily eat these words with a side of humble pie. Perhaps if it were being described as a bigger, bolder Witcher 2, I wouldn’t be voicing these doubts, but this is described as a different kind of game, or at least a different kind of world. On the evidence I’ve seen though, The Witcher is talking the heavily-accented Welsh talk but it’s not yet convincingly walking the walk. I’d love to be proved wrong.

 

[Rahdulan]

That's what you get when your media presentation isn't all just ACTION ACTION ACTION. Watch yourselves CDPR, lest you bore the journalists.

 

[Athelas]

I would like to see at least open-world games get rid of the way you get 'locked' in a cutscene when you enter a conversation. Especially after playing Dark Souls where engaging in dialogue happens as seamlessly as any other part of gameplay (of course, that game's conversations involve only 'yes/no' responses, but it could still work with more elaborate dialogue options).

 

[Infinitron]

 

[cvv]

I’m judging the presentation rather than the game because that’s all I can judge at the moment. It left me with the suspicion that the wonders of the world might be window-dressing for a series of fights and fetch quests rather than a thing to be enjoyed in its own right.

What...does that even mean?

 

[Perkel]

Those are new screenshots.

 

[made]

I would like to see at least open-world games get rid of the way you get 'locked' in a cutscene when you enter a conversation. Especially after playing Dark Souls where engaging in dialogue happens as seamlessly as any other part of gameplay (of course, that game's conversations involve only 'yes/no' responses, but it could still work with more elaborate dialogue options).

It is somewhat worrisome that everything they've shown so far is chock full with cutscenes, I hope that's just for the presentations. I really don't want my travel and exploration interrupted by scripted sequences at every turn.

 

[Roguey]

Shut your whore mouth. Grid inventory rules. Given sufficiently distinct icons you'll memorize what's what soon enough.

Those are not sufficiently distinct icons. I'm not going to memorize dozens of potion colors, that's a ridiculous demand.

Grid menu for life. SkyUI suck donkey balls because precisely it is list menu.

Wrong. Certain games benefit more from icons than a list, but this isn't one of them.

 

[Roguey]

Despite all of the things that felt like a step (or sprint) back from the emergent farce and thrills of the series’ greatest settings, Absolution did one thing better than any other game I’d ever seen before. Crowds. After seeing the herds of potential victims in the Chinatown area, it’s hard to look at the small groups that constitute urban life in other games the same way.
...
The scale of the environment is staggering and the NPCs that inhabit it apparently have their own schedules and behaviours. People spend the day going about their business, whatever it might be, and when night falls, they head home or to taverns.

If the crowds in Absolution are anything like the crowd in the Mardi Gras level of Blood Money, you can't have both these things. The reason they're able to display so many is because they have no AI.

 

[Perkel]

Grid menu for life. SkyUI suck donkey balls because precisely it is list menu.

Wrong. Certain games benefit more from icons than a list, but this isn't one of them.

No list menu works well with m+k and SkyUI is no different. It's way better what was in vanilla Skyrim but ultimately it is fucking list menu which works best with pad not mouse.

If list menus would be better for m+k we wouldn't have Windows and OS going into grid design.