Witcher 3

[Shrinweck]

Game comes out in a week and a half so I figured I'd get around to tossing up this thread.

Obviously not a wholly accurate representation of the game but basically the point of the thread was to post this. I will say this though, it isn't very often that Conan actually seems to be enjoying himself with a game, and while I'm guessing that has more to do with this game opening itself up to a wealth of jokes, he did genuinely look like he was having fun.



Last week I officially pre-ordered this game 11 months ago lol

[Eric]

THE GAME HAS BEEN DOWNGRADED! DOWNGRADED LIKE WATCH DOGS AND FFXV AND XENOSAGA AND OTHER STUFF! IT SUCKS NOW

2/10!

[Shrinweck]

Also, this, holy shit



I'm totally in for this hype train lol

Nice to see his daughter in a trailer, too

[kali o.]

I didn't like that ep of clueless gamer, but I am planning on picking up Witcher 3.

Thing is though...number 3 of anything usually sucks...so a part of me is a little apprehensive.

[Shrinweck]

I think when a third iteration sucks it's because at this point the developer/publisher has lost themselves to the cash-in of constant sequels. CDPR taking years to put out their sequels is there way of circumventing this... hopefully. My expectations up to this point have been somewhat low - at the very least we'll see an ending (or 36 of them) to Geralt's story. I've read some of the source material and while it wasn't super great, this adaptation is strong. I look forward to seeing what this game has to offer even if it's looked back on with hindsight as bad.

There's also over three hours of recorded material from the composer which is really, really cool. I'm not really worried about being let down, but it happens so often that it's difficult not to be cynical. Everything I've heard about this game, other than the minimum requirements, has made me more confident that this is something to look forward to. They've already let previewers play with sections of the game, which at this point, SOMEONE would be commenting loudly about how shit the game turned out.

[Eric]

Witcher 2 is 2.99 on steam as of the time of this post. Great game if you want to get into Witcher before 3 comes out next week.

I wouldn't recommend Witcher 1 unfortunately, it hasn't aged very well and the combat is atrocious.

[Shrinweck]

Yeah I loved Witcher 1 at release, but last time I tried to play through it I couldn't get through the first main city hub... and that was like 5-6 years ago. In all fairness, Witcher 1 was probably a 6.5/10 game with maybe a couple points added on when taken in hindsight/nostalgia goggles. Witcher 2 wasn't all that much better but it showed a lot of progress and the story really shined. For the first time in a game like this, there was a choice with a consequence that actually mattered, resulting in a complete different second act to the game depending on the choice (different location, different characters, wildly different quests with no (next to no?) overlap).

They were both bogged down by performance issues at release, but what made them special was that CDPR went above and beyond the call of a developer to patch and even expand the story for free. With all the delays, I have high hopes that this release will go more smoothly. I don't expect perfection, but I do expect satisfaction.

I think the important thing here is that this is a game franchise that is going to end. They built up a fanbase from basically nothing (it was originally a book series written in... Polish I think?) and yet they're abandoning it in favor of some weird ass Cyberpunk game. TBH I don't think I would want a neverending series of Geralt's adventures with the game becoming a neverending iterative Ubisoft AssCreed type game, but I do kind of hope that the universe doesn't end with this game.

[Eric]

resulting in a complete different second act to the game depending on the choice

There was no choice! Glorious Scoia'tael ftw!

[Shrinweck]

That was what I went for my full playthrough, as well. I never actually finished the second act with the other choice unfortunately.

[kali o.]

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/the-wit ... 0-6416135/

Seems to be getting near perfect scores across the board - nice.

[Eric]

Most games that let reviews drop a week beforehand are good games.

[Shrinweck]

This is great news - it's unfortunate that none of the reviews are for the PC, but it's hard to believe CDPR would fuck up the PC release.

Edit: The PC pre-load/full install is 21/25gb on Steam. It's amazing that a game this large, beautiful, and packed with voice work could be less than half as big as a game like GTA 5 (65gb). I wish I knew more about how games end up as big/bloated file space-wise. Like, I know that a game like SWTOR was 35gb because it's a fully voiced MMORPG and Elder Scrolls Online is like 80gb because it's a fully voiced MMORPG and the devs didn't give a fuck about optimizing the size, but what makes something like GTA5, an incredibly awesome port, so big while The Witcher 3 is comparatively tiny?

[Eric]

2013



2014



2015



I do wish some games were still PC Master Race first and Console Peasants later.

[Shrinweck]

Diablo 3 and Elder Scrolls Online were PC to console ports months (over a year?) after the fact both times... what these aren't great examples? ;)

[Eric]

Diablo 3 and Elder Scrolls Online were PC to console ports months (over a year?) after the fact both times... what these aren't great examples?

Both were planned console ports beforehand.

[Eric]

2013

2015


Still looks great, but that original target render man.

[Blotus]

Interwebs acting like this is the first case of bullshot. I have no resentment since I'll be playing on PS4 and not a $2k PC.

Only thing I'm worried about is feeling almost immediate burn out on the open-worldedness of it all. After GTA5, AC4, Mordor, Infamous, and Dragon age, if W3 is going to expect me to collect 50 purple flowers or some shit I'm going to kill myself.

But whatever, W2 was one of my favorites from last gen so I'm sure I'll like this. Come to me, Triss Merigold.

[Blotus]

That was what I went for my full playthrough, as well. I never actually finished the second act with the other choice unfortunately.

There's still time!!

Act 2 is drastically different.

[Blotus]

One last thing: I don't think I've seen a better pre-release online marketing campaign in forever.

[Shrinweck]

CDPR says they didn't downgrade the textures from 2013, that it is an affect called "sharpening" that tends to tire people's eyes out so it doesn't get used when actually playing the game. Apparently you can change the sharpening setting back so that it looks like that again on the PC through use of the Redkit/options menu.

[Eric]

Glorious Germans posted a comparison version of the PC version(Embargo lifted).

Commented video comparison of final PC version at ultra vs. Gameplay Trailer - Gamestar.de (German)
http://www.gamestar.de/videos/specials, ... 82708.html
PC version is at maxium with 4790k + GTX 980 without day 1 patch

short Summary:

View distance is (way) worse
less/no Tesselation (Pause at 3:11, edge of wall for example)
way worse sky
lower LOD
low res textures in final PC build compared to trailer
Insinde buildings way worse lightning
worse water, again no tesselation
and ofc. way worse fire

The commentator says the final PC-version is a lot closer to the PS4 version then the trailers of 2014 and theres no way that could be changed with a day 1 patch.

[Shrinweck]

Hmm I dunno that's the kind of shit a commentator pulls out of their ass for page views.

The witcher reddit page already has some links to people who are supposedly taking screen shots with the day one patch but there's nothing directly comparing it to the console versions. I don't really care if the PC version isn't a huge upgrade from the consoles - what matters is that the developers didn't pull an Ubisoft and purposefully downgrade the graphics to make the PC version look on par with the consoles.

There's a video of the PC version beside the trailer and I would say the release is almost always better looking.. Other than the sky. What's up with that? The sky looks worse in every single screen shot I've seen from the release version. There's also the tinkering people will be doing with SweetFX and Redkit that hasn't really been touched on yet. I guess the water/fire stuff looks worse too.



This is all very secondary stuff to me in the long run though. What matters to me is shitty business practices and a playable game. The graphics can be patched up over time and anyone who has played the other two Witcher games can testify that CDPR patches the shit out of their games. Up until now even their DLC has been free... but said free DLC didn't amount to 20+ hour adventures, so I'm cool with them charging.

[Julius Seeker]

2013



2014



2015



I do wish some games were still PC Master Race first and Console Peasants later.

Looks like the game is coming to Wii U after all.

[Eric]

Looks like the game is coming to Wii U after all.

You got jokes!

The consensus is the following were downgraded on the PC version over development:

Lighting/Shadows
Foliage
Environmental Effects
World Geometry / Details / Object Quantity
NPC Density
LOD / View Distance



(I still can't wait to play in 13 hours)!

[Shrinweck]

Got it working.... ish... on my below the minimum requirements video card but I had to turn it to low and turn basically everything off. Not worth it. Waiting until Wednesday when the GTX 960 I ordered gets here. The rest of my system can run this fucking thing on Ultra so why not pick up the last piece of the equation?

[Eric]

[Flip]

Been hearing nothing but good things in reviews about this game. I've not played 1 or 2, nor read the books, or know anything about the series, but i think i'll pick it up. Skyrim 2.0 cant really be bad, i figure.

[Shrinweck]

Well I bricked my mobo (probably) and there's a chance the GTX 960 I ordered came DoA so I'm taking my gaming PC to someone with proper diagnostic tools and shit to fix the computer and test the GTX 960. I might just say fuck it and play it on low until the possible RMA on the video card finishes going through, but that's a week off at best. Last time I took something to these guys it took a couple business days for them to get to my machine. The motherboard is probably the only thing on PCs that makes me nervous to replace myself, and on top of that there's always the chance that something else broke.

[kali o.]

Mobo's are the trickiest part in a PC, but still relatively simple to install (and troubleshoot).

As to the game...I dunno. It doesn't look great. The fact that my GPU can run it on Ultra indicates something is wrong...it's essentially a 580 (570 stock o/c). Years old at this point.

I played on low settings initially and the game looked even more like ass though (it was the foliage that ruined it).

[Shrinweck]

The guy said that he'd get to my computer today and may even have it ready today (although it being 7:30PM here I'm doubting that's happening), so I won't have to deal with the usual delay before they get to me. It dawned on me since this is the same place that fixed my motherboard (the one that I think i bricked now) a few years ago when it was physically cracked that they may even be able to fix my new video card if it is in fact DoA. One can dream. Please save me from having to RMA.

[Eric]

I usually buy from evga, they have great warrenty and RMA, it's part of the reason I haven't jumped on the Asus motherboard hype train, I had a 290X from Asus at one point and it was a nightmare waiting like 3 weeks to get the fucking card back. With EVGA, they'll usually ship out the motherboard or video card when I RMA before mine even gets to them.

At this point though I have spare CPUs, motherboards, graphics cards and RAM in case something breaks so I can cycle through things to see what's broken. x_x

[Shrinweck]

I've gone with EVGA for my past three or four video cards too but I'd obviously still rather not RMA lol. I haven't had to RMA a video card in over a decade and since I switched to EVGA I've never had one die on me, typically lasting the 3-5 years before I find it necessary to upgrade (bumping up against minimum requirements).

Excluding my video cards, all my old PC parts have made their way into other people's computers and I'm not going to go fishing in other people's desktops to diagnose my own.

[Blotus]

Nerds.

Anyway, loving it so far. Very surprised that I haven't had any game-breaking bugs or crashes yet on PS4. Mind you, plenty of funny clipping through geometry and other oddities, like this one below.

SPOILERS for anybody who hasn't completed the Bloody Baron associated quests (Ladies of the Wood/Family Matters)

http://streamable.com/b0re

[kali o.]

My feeling so far is it's a good game, however, I wish it was more immersive, open ended and sim-like (like red dead, TES). To be fair, the scope of the game is growing as I play (just finished Baron chain), so maybe it gets better.

If not, lets see what mods bring.

[Shrinweck]

The merchants with my baby called and the mobo was indeed the problem and apparently the new video card works (thank god), so tomorrow I guess I'll get a mobo at their store and have them install it.

I reseated the god damned video card like eight times so there must have been a problem with the mobo in the first place. The POST screen came up so the video card was working enough to act as an in between for the mobo and monitor, so maybe it really needed a BIOS update. I would like to believe that this fuck up was just the shitty BIOS updater exe I pulled off the Intel site (who btw I'm probably not buying another mobo from ever again). Intel was basically no help - in a cost cutting maneuver the manual for my mobo wasn't available on their site and there just wasn't enough information available online for the issue I was having. The thing was beeping in 20 second or so delays three times. Long beeps. Zero information that helped on this anywhere. The closest thing I got from Intel was three long beeps that were back to back, representing an issue with the memory - which I didn't have an issue with. The last thing that was on my list to try based on the troubleshooting posts I did find was updating the BIOS... so, yeah, I guess it was just that mobo's time to die.

I MIGHT be playing this on ultra by this evening although at this point I'd be happy with Friday. Low expectations FTW

[Shrinweck]

Got my PC back in working order and put about an hours worth into this game and it's definitely fun. Runs wonderfully on ultra, too.

[Blotus]

Got my PC back in working order and put about an hours worth into this game and it's definitely fun. Runs wonderfully on ultra, too.

Nice. I'm definitely jealous of all the 60fps video and gifs I'm seeing on the Witcher reddit; not so much all the "this patch broke the game/this game runs like shit on my system" posts.

[Shrinweck]

The combat is growing on me, which is saying something because I kind of hated the combat in the previous iterations. In the Keira Metz side quest line, the boss fight with the golem and later the wild hunt dude both had me chugging all my vigor restoration items before the fights were even 25% over, so I had to hunt for moments of opportunity/use signs to still get through them. I think I'm going to switch my dodge and roll keys because I'm just so much more used to using space to get out of the way of things and dodge seems more like what I should be using.

The quests, even the side quests, are all really well done and it's fun going through Geralt's deductive reasoning as he's putting things together. I'm not crazy about the open world stuff. It's a nice distraction but all it ever seems to amount to is *kill 3-8 things* *maybe destroy something with a bomb* *loot/use everything that glows yellow*. I did the first races offered (the one outside of the Baron's place) and even those were pretty snooze-y. Still a strong 9/10 game, but the open world stuff really keeps it from being out of this world.

It's tempting to install a mod that makes the weight limit issue go away (i.e. this one, that increases the maximum to a possible 9000), but I just gotta do a "as the developers intended" playthrough the one time, I suppose.

[Blotus]

You really having issue with the weight limit? Sell some shit! 99% of the weapons and armor you get off corpses are trash. Upgrade them saddlebags, son.

CDPR REALLY needs to add a 'books and notes' page to the inventory. You're probably starting to see your 'usable items' page that houses the oils and potions become littered with books; it makes absolutely no sense that it sorts that page by Oils, Books, THEN potions, so that every time you want to switch potions you have to scroll by all these fuckin books.

But maybe I should take my own advice and sell some shit.

[Shrinweck]

Races were the last thing I did before making that post so I had the saddlebags but hadn't actually played with them yet. Once I got the first saddlebag upgrade and played the game again I had less of an issue with weight.

[Shrinweck]

I botched the resolution to the baron and

Spoiler: show

he hung himself

so I played a little more but it just didn't sit right with me. I kinda got a rotten ending to the Fyke Tower quest too so I decided to scrap the playthrough and begin again. I just finished the Keira Metz quest line again so I'm gonna start tackling the baron/crone stuff next time I get into the game.

[kali o.]

Bah - I always do "pure" first playthrough...whatever happens, happens. The baron ended the same way for me.

PS - Witcher 3 has the best drinking scene ever. Near the end of the game but awesome.

[Shrinweck]

I'm lucky when I don't restart 5-10 times in an RPG although it's typically about fooling around with classes than story stuff. In the Witcher series I've basically always concentrated on the fast sword styles, so that isn't as much of an issue. This playthrough I've been spending much more time with things like Gwent, so if I screw something else up I'll probably stick with it. I forgot to turn on the "Simulate Witcher 2 save" thing so I'm definitely going to end up finishing my other playthrough/starting a new one once this one is done. I did get to play through the Letho cameo on my previous save file which is probably the biggest thing I wanted to see out of the simulated Witcher 2 save. Dude is bad ass and the voice actor, in my opinion, thickened up his accent which I really love.

The bit in Witcher 2 where Letho assassinates King Foltest and jumps out of the window is probably the coolest cinematic moment in the entire series (that I've seen so far).



I don't like Gwent but when I'm playing it I can't fucking stop. Fucking card games, dude. It's definitely better than that dumb ass poker dice game. Also I'm 90% sure the computer cheats at Gwent. So many times has the computer beat me on their last fucking card, for example pulling a spy that I damn well know they would have played earlier just because it'll get them two cards that will definitely push them over the edge.

[kali o.]

Finished it today. Got a relatively good ending I think...

Spoiler: show

- Ciri lived and became a witcher
- Emperor conquered all, Temeria became a vassal
- Geralt got fat and lazy with Yennifer

I went back to play witcher 2, so I could import a save...and...well, I couldn't play it after playing Witcher 3. I made it to Chapter 1 before I had to close it down. My nitpicks with the graphics aside (and movement control), Witcher 3 is a far superior game.

[Blotus]

PS - Witcher 3 has the best drinking scene ever. Near the end of the game but awesome.

Can confirm. I knew I should've been a good witcher and just gone to bed but the payoff for pushing that night to its limit is glorious. Summon the bitches!

[Blotus]

I had the same baron end as you two, but was satisfied with it.

Spoiler: show

Despite his ongoing mission to convince you that he's not such a bad guy, well, he was. Great character, probably my favorite so far (I'm just about finished), but I thought it was a fitting end for him.

One thing that irks me about the save import/save sim questions:

Spoiler: show

Since Iorvath isn't in the game, there's no incentive not to say you were with Roche. If I'd known that from the beginning then I wouldn't have said I'd chosen Iorvath, since I imagine there's got to be SOME bonus of choosing Roche... even though he still spoke to me as though we were good old pals. IIRC, you don't have that much positive interaction with him if you go for Iorvath in W2. Oh well. Expansion maybe?

[Shrinweck]

I got the different baron ending wherein

Spoiler: show

he takes his wife (who has gone crazy because of him/the crones) to the mountains to be healed. I like this ending more for sure. There's no argument about the guy not being a bad guy but he showed remorse. I think one's position on the baron is largely based on how forgiving you can be towards the guy and real remorse goes a long way with me. Also in this end, his daughter doesn't become a total bitch towards you and probably won't end up being a total Eternal Flame fanatic. He gets blessed/cursed with having to take care of his senile wife, knowing damn full well it's entirely his own fault, which is incredibly more courageous then getting lit and hanging yourself.

In this ending all three of them get to live with their mistakes which I just like more.

[Blotus]

Finished it today. Got a relatively good ending I think...

I'm finished now too. I imagine they've been touting how many different possible endings you can get, but...

Spoiler: show

The only real difference you see in gameplay is probably Ciri's choice -- otherwise, it's just those waterpaint vignettes. In mine she chose to go become Emhyr's successor, Temeria became a vassal, and Gerry lived with Triss.

I felt kind of gypped in choosing Triss. Post boning, there's only one scene in her 'Final Preparations' quest where her and Gerry do more than exchange pleasantries.

Not including the defence of Kaer Morhen because I don't even think the two exchanged more than a "hey" throughout. Seems Yen is the 'canon' choice, but I really had no attachment to her character initially since I'd never read any of the books. I wonder if choosing Triss and/or telling Yen that Gerry doesn't feel the bond between them any more after breaking the Djinn's curse contributed to her being ice cold toward Gerry for the rest of the game, or if that's just how she'd be anyway. 'Course, there was the whole drunken dresses and megascope thing too.

I don't know what to go back to the game for now -- I'm at too high a level vs all of the remaining secondary and contract quests, and I never found the combat in the game to be difficult at any point (played on whatever is the 2nd hardest diff).

Hope the rumored New Game Plus DLC offers maybe some insanely high-levelled mobs.

[Shrinweck]

I've been doing everything level appropriate quest in the game as I come across it so I can do something approaching a 100% of the game for my first playthrough and get an idea of what I may want to do in future ones. The main quests just constantly metes out experience so you outpace the sidequests quickly if you don't do them. I'm about 30 hours into this playthrough and I still haven't

Spoiler: show

rescued Dandelion

and I'm still probably 3-5 hours away from getting to the point where I even can.

Gwent also adds a bunch of hours to the game although I can see why someone wouldn't really care about this part of the game. So far I've been buying every card I come across and playing every merchant/NPC it lets me for their cards

[Shrinweck]

Finished it today. Got a relatively good ending I think...

I'm finished now too. I imagine they've been touting how many different possible endings you can get, but...

Spoiler: show

The only real difference you see in gameplay is probably Ciri's choice -- otherwise, it's just those waterpaint vignettes. In mine she chose to go become Emhyr's successor, Temeria became a vassal, and Gerry lived with Triss.

I felt kind of gypped in choosing Triss. Post boning, there's only one scene in her 'Final Preparations' quest where her and Gerry do more than exchange pleasantries.

Not including the defence of Kaer Morhen because I don't even think the two exchanged more than a "hey" throughout. Seems Yen is the 'canon' choice, but I really had no attachment to her character initially since I'd never read any of the books. I wonder if choosing Triss and/or telling Yen that Gerry doesn't feel the bond between them any more after breaking the Djinn's curse contributed to her being ice cold toward Gerry for the rest of the game, or if that's just how she'd be anyway. 'Course, there was the whole drunken dresses and megascope thing too.

I don't know what to go back to the game for now -- I'm at too high a level vs all of the remaining secondary and contract quests, and I never found the combat in the game to be difficult at any point (played on whatever is the 2nd hardest diff).

Hope the rumored New Game Plus DLC offers maybe some insanely high-levelled mobs.

Finally put the 20 hours (88 total to beat it, counting the 12-20 or so I 'wasted' when I wanted to completely redo the game from the beginning after wanting the different Baron ending) I had left in to finish this now that the DLC is coming out in a few days. Started up NG+ but I'm only like 5 minutes in. I got the bad ending lol

Spoiler: show

Basically Ciri didn't get encouraged to be enough of a bad ass and she's implied dead/lost in the frozen world (chose incorrectly in too many of five decisions.. because of the choices I made I only got to make four of the decisions and I answered incorrectly on two it looks like). The ending because of this with Geralt alone and going after the crone who took her medallion was so good that I almost don't mind the fuck ups that had me loading up NG+ before quitting lol. I never would have gotten around to watching this ending and it'll probably motivate me to finish my NG+ playthrough even if at a certain point I'm just hammering through the story quests.

Also worth noting, not that you'd go barking up that tree a second time (probably), they've added some more Yen/Ciri/Triss dialog if you choose Triss over Yen. Apparently the player backlash agreeing with you about feeling cheated was strong enough that they literally augmented the story. I'm gonna go with Triss this time to check it out and probably just fire up the old youtube to see what a happy ending with Yen and Ciri looks like lol.

Temeria and Skellige got good endings, so at least I got that right.

I was originally just going to go through the story but I played for maybe 10 minutes before I was playing Gwent and shit again. The Gwent tournament was pretty cool and the fist fighting sidequests had a very satisfying end to them. Looking forward to seeing what the game has to offer me with the mimic'd witcher 2 save that I accidentally disabled for my first time through :(