Game News The Witcher 3: Q&A Podcast + Screenshots

[Broseph]

CDPR's team on The Witcher 3 is twice the size of their team for The Witcher 2, and unlike Bethesda I doubt they're going to be blowing most of their budget on marketing. You guys act as if making an interesting open world game that is 20% larger than Skyrim is an impossible feat. It isn't. Do remember that Bethesda wastes most of their time and money in their games on making hundreds of identical dungeons with level scaled loot and enemies. Solution? Cut out most of the crappy optional dungeon crawling, replace with good content. Not hard.

Okay, enough CD Projekt white knighting. I'm going to play Ultima VII now and cleanse myself of the popamole.

 

[Grunker]

Cut out most of the crappy optional dungeon crawling, replace with good content. Not hard.

They make that crappy dungeon crawling because it's easy bro. Replacing it with good content is not easy. The definition of "not easy" is "hard."

Ergo, it is is not "not hard."

 

[Broseph]

Cut out most of the crappy optional dungeon crawling, replace with good content. Not hard.

They make that crappy dungeon crawling because it's easy bro. Replacing it with good content is not easy. The definition of "not easy" is "hard."

Ergo, it is is not "not hard."

Whatever. Still, I have confidence that the results won't be total shit. At the very least it will be a prettier hiking simulator than Skyrim, with better writing and quests.

 

[Grunker]

Cut out most of the crappy optional dungeon crawling, replace with good content. Not hard.

They make that crappy dungeon crawling because it's easy bro. Replacing it with good content is not easy. The definition of "not easy" is "hard."

Ergo, it is is not "not hard."

Whatever. Still, I have confidence that the results won't be total shit. At the very least it will be a prettier hiking simulator than Skyrim, with better writing and quests.

Oh, I'm fully expecting it to be just that. That's why I'm so disappointed.

 

[Rake]

Cut out most of the crappy optional dungeon crawling, replace with good content. Not hard.

They make that crappy dungeon crawling because it's easy bro. Replacing it with good content is not easy. The definition of "not easy" is "hard."

Ergo, it is is not "not hard."

Whatever. Still, I have confidence that the results won't be total shit. At the very least it will be a prettier hiking simulator than Skyrim, with better writing and quests.

Oh, I'm fully expecting it to be just that. That's why I'm so disappointed.

I'm excpecting something in the middle. Like New Vegas.
Obsidian proved that you can have story in an openworld game. And if Obsidian managed it with Bethesda's crapy engine in 19 months, i don't see why CDR can't something similar with their own engine,more time,propably more money, and no publiser's meddling.

 

[Grunker]

Point, I must admit.

 

[Jaesun]

and no publiser's meddling.

You do know they are a company that answers to shareholders right?

 

[Saxon1974]

Much more interested now that it will be more open world style. I hated the linearity in TW1 and couldnt stand TW2. This one I might like. The Tavern screeny looks pretty good, looks gritty and pretty well populated. Always hate games that have Taverns that always have 2 or 3 people in them. These are quasi-medieval style worlds and Taverns would have LOTS of people in them in the evenings....not 2 or 3 people

 

[Rake]

and no publiser's meddling.

You do know they are a company that answers to shareholders right?

Not the same. CDR has had significaly more freedom than most in their games.
My understanding is that the shareholders don't meddle in the day to day affairs. They will answer to shareholders if the game bombs. CDR are pretty smug that they don't have a publiser to control them

 

[Jaesun]

And that's why they make game specifically designed around this:

 

[Rake]

And that's why they make game specifically designed around this:

I never said that the gameplay won't be shit.
Just no more shit than Witcher 2.
No publiser also means that the money they make stays with them. Of course they will do what sells. And to be fair, even Twitcher 1 that was for PC, it was still console friendly

 

[Jaesun]

The point is CDProjekt is they design every single game around this:

And that is the type of games they will continually make (because that sells and pleases share holders).

You will NEVER see huge fucking incline from them doing something like this: http://www.chaos-chronicles.com/

Which is (possibly) not profitable and does not appeal to the masses. So tl:dr they are doing games that appeal to the masses designed around the XBox controller and pleases their shareholders..

 

[Zed]

say what you want about consoles and xbox, but as far as hand-controllers go, the xbox 360 controller is by far the best.

 

[Jaesun]

And continually dumbs down the creativity of every single Developer designing a game around this limitation (of which the PC does not).

 

[Broseph]

Just give me my well-made popamole and I will be content. The TWitcher series is the epitome of Good For What It Is™, and I'm perfectly okay with that. It's no substitute for a real cRPG, sure, but I had fun with the first two games.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

Witcher 3 for popamole of the decade.

 

[RK47]

I don't know, I never had any need to use gamepad to play Witcher.

 

[Black]

For all the shitty design TW2 had, I don't think there's even one location that's copy-pasted.
With it going open world I doubt it'll remain the same.

 

[RRRrrr]

• Despite being an open world title, the game will retain some of Witcher 2's more "directed" cinematic presentation style-> Too bad. I hated the popamole "cinematic presentation"
• The Game Informer guys have the impression that the secondary characters from previous games (such as Triss, Dandelion, and Zoltan) will be of lesser importance in Witcher 3.-> Is that even possible? They hardly did anything in TW2, how can they be even less important? Not exist at all?
• There will probably be some repeatable quests, but they won't be as large a part of the game as they are in Skyrim.-> What happened to the 100 hours hand-crafted quests? Generated is also hand-crafted because it is made by hand. Oh, an The Witcher is an adventure game because it is such an adventurous experience, right? I saw some morons calling Skyrim an adventure game on reddit (not kidding), so TW3 should go in that direction.
• There will be a combat "Focus Mode", which will either be similar to VATS or be based on special abilities (they haven't decided yet).-> This migh be a little less shitty if they make it for monster only and about hitting the weak spots that you've learned about from books.
• The inventory system will be improved over what was in Witcher 2.-> Didn't they say the same thing about TW2 /improving the inventory system from tw1/?

 

[Mrowak]

The point is CDProjekt is they design every single game around this:

And that is the type of games they will continually make (because that sells and pleases share holders).

You will NEVER see huge fucking incline from them doing something like this: http://www.chaos-chronicles.com/

Which is (possibly) not profitable and does not appeal to the masses. So tl:dr they are doing games that appeal to the masses designed around the XBox controller and pleases their shareholders..

No Jeasun. They sure as hell won't make a tactical RPG, but their reasons are different:

1) Much like RPGCodex when it goes: "duh, it's not an RPG because it is not TB/you don't control characters" they go "it's not an RPG when you control more than one character" - it's a sort of golden rule of PnP RPGs, which made all the Wizardies and similar games look like popamole. They have never been and never will be shooting to provide the experience from those titles.

2) The devs wanted to provide control over just one character, hence there is limited number crunching and greater emphasis on player's input. Which is a good thing in a non-tactical, non-party-based RPG. I mean, where they gameplay in combat would go if you kept rolling dice?

3) Speaking of combat - it is taken straight from games they were impressed by: Arkham Asylum and Demon Souls. The idea was to create something fast-paced, heart-pounding action - which they would have managed to do, if they hadn't screwed up the balance (Quen and Rolling being overpowered). So far they are getting it right when it comes to TW3.

4) Story and story-telling is the area the devs concentrate on because they genuinely believe this is what RPGs are about (as opposed to stats and dice rolling). Sadly nobody told them that the stroy should be told in gameplay and through gameplay mechanics (e.g. character progression). Strangely enough they are making improvements in this regard as well.

 

[Roguey]

I'm going to play Ultima VII now and cleanse myself of the popamole.

yeahbuhwha?

 

[Licaon_Kter]

I don't know, I never had any need to use gamepad to play Witcher.

I don't own a controller to compare, but Witcher 1 and 2 have a strange control mechanic for Geralt, the movement is *not right*, I don't know how to put it any other way, but i find my self fighting with strafe and mouse to get him where I want, more so in combat. Yeah, after a while I got its quirks figured out and I adapt to them but it was strange in 1 and became stranger in 2 since the quirks were different.

 

[MasPingon]

I got Razer Onza XBill pad on PC and tried to play TW2 with it. It was the worst experience I have ever had playing the game with pad. Mouse + keyboard controls were bad, but using gamepad is where the true pain begins

 

[RK47]

Witcher 3 for potatomole of the decade. : x

 

[Broseph]

I'm going to play Ultima VII now and cleanse myself of the popamole.

yeahbuhwha?

Clusterfuck real time combat aside, Ultima VII isn't really popamole. It's not as if it started some decline, either. We still had great CRPGs for years after.