Let me be clear first: i love old and new crpgs, even that new deviant shit from Bioware.
Its great to play games like Skyrim, Witcher, Mass Effect , Dragon Age, etc. with awesome audio-video, action and fine overall effect [even if you don't have lot of time due to old age
]
They are VirtualStories for me, not REAL ,CRPG. Like mindless action movies which you are watching to relax [ it is real pain in case of Skyrim[without mods] becouse Elder Scrolls have just great Lore background and what it lacks is good hard crpg games].
They are like: okay i will buy, enjoy and left after few "AWESOME" moments i become bored. They are not demanding many hours of real "feeling". And they are EMPTY.
B U T , what i call true crpg is more like Divinity:OS , Wasteland 2, M&MX, Underrail, Age of Decadence, and old, well known to everybody here Classics like M&M, Betrayal at Krondor, Ultima, Fallouts, Ishar, Morrowind, Wizardy and many many others.
What i want to say that whole Witcher series is just HACK N' SLASH trying to act like crpg, [and same with other titles mentioned in 2 verse] . It's visuals and audio are just work of art, but rest is near to true shit.
I know all of Sapkowski books [but im far from love for them - they are just decent - and i should say other becouse im polish
]. It is great that we have lot of NPC but what for? For use few lines of linear dialogue? Without any way to interact with them ? Story ? Okay it is same as in Telltale so called "adventures". Whole game is based on hype and agressive marketing, but when you start to playing its so easy you want to just click through whole story and move on...
So i maybe wrong [and i hope i will be wrong] but Witcher 3 will be same as Mass Effect 3 - more of the same shit, with slightly better graphics, same mechanics and some more freedom.
I do not want few thousand square kilometers of free exploring, riding on fuckin horse, skiing or driving a boat, and whole packed with action in jaw dropping graphics .
All i want is a great and "slow" crpg mechanics, non-linear quests, many interesting npcs with ability to interact, fights with a room for tactic [look at DOS it can be done and game will not lose any dynamic or action!] with decent audio-video etc.
It's sad that a lot of really talented and new developers [like CDP RED] or real legends in our genre [like BIOWARE] , spend their time on creating "AWESOME" console shit than solid, classy CRPG game.
It's great to have devs like the ones from Underrail or Age of Decadence, Larian,, like Almost Human, like creators of Wasteland 2 [despites its rather weak game but still classy], becouse while im still like to consume AAA crpg fast food garbage,
i need to have real tasy crpg meals too. And they left memories, i still can remember great characters from many good crpgs, and stories too.