The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

[Azdeus]

Eurogamer interview with Andrzej Sapkowski

Edited March 25, 2017 by Azdeus

[SonicMage117]

I've finished the base game a couple times... maybe 3? And even though I've nade different choices for all playthroughs, I have gotten the same ending.

 

I haven't played either of the dlc though so maybe I should do that to get some variety.

 

*I could stare at the rivian sunrise all day*

[Fenixp]

The DLC is probably the best content Witcher 3 has to offer.

[ShadySands]

I still haven't gotten around to playing this 

 

Maybe after ME:A

[Wrath of Dagon]

I think I'll be playing it for a couple of years at least. Still nowhere close to getting out of the second area, even though I finished the main quest line there. And I can't play more than one action game at a time, so I had to put it on hiatus for now.

[SonicMage117]

The DLC is probably the best content Witcher 3 has to offer.

I want to get the dlc soon.

[Katphood]

[the_dog_days]

^ yuck. The locomotion clearly wasn't designed with first person in mind.

[SonicMage117]

That first person is much better than Skyrim, I think.

[Fenixp]

What are you talking about, the camera very clearly isn't designed to handle first person view. You'll always get the slight fish-eye effect when you just move 3rd person camera to 1st person without adjustments. As it is, a lot of people would vomit slightly :-P

[Humanoid]

First-person perspective pirouettes. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

 

 

Now if they could get the sex scenes working in first-person...

[SonicMage117]

I think the fisheye effect can be reduced with FOV slider. I wonder how combat would look and feel, that's the part which makes games like Skyrim and Fallout so horrible in first person. Swinging a sword in a first person bethesda game always concludes to your character side-shifting and the screen tilting. I can't imagine that being the case here, even with the galloping effect.

 

To be honest, I like that there's more wobbling in this first person mode but I can understand if people get motion sickness from it. In Skyrim, there's a bit of wobble but it has a very weird feeling to where it clips off the abimation so it feels like your character is floating and is stopped by an invisible wall. I've learned to like the more natural movement of the wobble with games like Outlast and such. Even better when you can see your characters hands place against the walls while peaking around corners and such.

[ShadySands]

I think I just don't like first person perspective

[Katphood]

the slight fish-eye effect 

 

[Zoraptor]

So, finished the main game. Around 110 hours, though that includes a couple of HoS quests (and some time I left the game paused). Overall, I'd regard it very positively. Anyway, some vaguely organised thoughts...

 

 

Got Ciri as witcher, Geralt alone (frankly, glad of that, see below), Nilfgaard wins endings.

 

Perhaps the biggest overall negative was the lack of carry over consequences from the previous games. Probably the largest one you got was Letho, else you had some flavour like Yen defenestrating the bed in Kaer Morhen and 10 seconds of Sile when you rescue Rita and that's about it. If there aren't going to be consequences I'd prefer there not to be the choices in the first place, frankly. In retrospect if Adda was barely going to be mentioned afterwards they should have made her unsaveable in TW1, and getting the dagger and freeing Saskia at the end of TW2 has literally no effect at all, I'd suspect that even the convo with Phillipa (who seems to forget if you rescued her in TW2 as well) about Saskia is the same whatever as well.

 

Another problem was people getting afflicted with plot mandated dumb and a certain amount of tell rather than show. Keira spending her time hiding from witch hunters then wanting to go off and bargain with Radovid, and particularly Dijkstra deciding he just has to spring his anti Temerian plot when you're around relying on your neutrality not to interfere... immediately after you've plotted to off Radovid and Roche has saved your life. That's not just stupid, it's outright moronic. I know why it was done that way as was the ham fisted handling of Radovid- a 'genius' in the end vignettes who isn't shown to be one in game at all- it was to provide 'hard' choices rather than obvious ones of doing everything anti Nilfgaard and by extension pro Radovid, but I think it should have been handled better. OTOH, Emhyr was done rather well in terms of generating some limited sympathy for him.

 

There were a bunch of other odd things floating around if you thought about them much (eg why did Avallach wear a mask when everyone either knew who he was or, as per the player/ Geralt, wouldn't recognise him anyway? Or Phillipa's location being very obvious if you'd played Vergen/ her Loc Muinne branch in TW2) but overall the story did hold together well enough, and many of the sub plots worked very well indeed.

 

I liked the results of romancing both Triss and Yen. To be honest, I suspect that result was best for all involved since by any realistic estimate both relationships were utterly toxic, and I like there being consequences for trying to have your cake and eat it too. I did rather like the Bioshockesque approach to the initial parts of the Yen romance though, where the Djinn's curse shoehorns you into saying you love her etc. They're not badly written romances, rather the opposite compared to the typical Bioware approach, nor are they inconsistent or anything- they're just fundamentally bad relationships. Funnily enough, I ended up liking Phillipa more than either.

 

 

Gameplay wise, they got far, far closer to what they were aiming for with TW2. The combat was at worst decent, fairly varied and needing somewhat different approaches and there not being any arbitrary difficulty spikes like the cursed battlefield or Kayran, nor dumb QTEs. It was also not really difficult, but you'd die easily if you got lazy or stupid which is the approach I prefer if there's a lot of combat. Character development was poor though, I think I ended up with a dozen or so skill points unused because I plain forgot about them. Itemisation was dumb as rocks and I probably found a couple of dozen unique one of a kind you need a multi part schema from Loc Muinne and Bras of Ban Ard to make Addan Deiths lying around in random chests. I liked the exploration, but generally ignored annoying POI markers.

 

Overall though, I'd be confident that it will be one of my favourite games, probably top ten of all time. I'd definitely be hoping for another Witcher game, whether it involves Geralt or not.

Edited July 29, 2017 by Zoraptor

[213374U]

and particularly Dijkstra

 

Yeah, that's one of my biggest gripes with the writing as well, apart from the lack of meaningful consequences to choices made in TW/TW2 that you mentioned.

 

I'm going to use spoiler tags from now on because there's a bunch of people that haven't played it yet, apparently.

 

 

Dijkstra is portrayed as a rather cautious and level-headed guy and he even explicitly admits that combat isn't his strong suit. He also carries a permanent reminder of what it means to **** with Geralt. I think Roche and Ves can deal with him and his thugs by themselves even if you don't intervene. Would have been much more in character to simply poison the wine, even if that robbed the player of any agency.

 

I also found Ravodid's apparent transformation into a raving madman rather contrived. Made the decision to off him a no-brainer, which is not good. The man seems to have been walking on a razor's edge between sanity and insanity in previous games, but in 3 it's just comical how utterly bat**** he is. The absolute lack of in-game acknowledgment of the assassination was also disappointing. I think it was mentioned once in HoS.

 

Avallac'h's mask I think is to hide his progressive transformation into The Ugliest Man Alive -- unless I'm mistaken, the visions where he appears wearing it happen after he's been hit with the curse but before its effects are complete. This also ties in with Keira's bargain for the magic lamp, which she was supposed to get in exchange for a potion that helps fight off nerve decay.

 

My other beef with the writing is that the Wild Hunt is pretty weak for an antagonist that's supposed to keep a sort of narrative pressure on the player. I get that they went for the looming threat approach, but Eredin as a character has more dialogue in TW1 than he does in 3. And beyond the chase after White Orchard, they are absent for most of the game, save for Ciri's parts.

 

 

 

Gameplay wise, I went with a full overhaul mod right off the bat (School of the Roach) which seemed to appeal to my tastes. I died quite often because I have the patience of a three year old and waiting and learning patterns before CHARGING!!1 is not at all my speed, but the harder combat coupled with the "enemy upscaling" option in the game prevented the god syndrome that is so frequent in the late game of RPGs. Even a pack of wolves or especially boars can tear me a new one if I'm not careful, and I'm currently around level 50. There's none of this "meditate anywhere with alcohol and all your potions are refilled" nonsense, neither.

 

Itemization is still garbage though, and it pisses me off to no end that a random armor from some chest is better than the Elite Super Grandmaster Godslayer piece I spent 15k gold crafting, and hunting for the corresponding schematics. Next playthrough will probably be with a mod that tries to address that. I was thinking W3EE but that comes bundled with stupid Oblivion-esque "learn by doing" leveling which I detest. This doesn't even qualify as #firstworldproblems though, great game overall. Have yet to play B&W.

Edited July 28, 2017 by 213374U

[Zoraptor]

I won't use spoiler tags since it seems nobody else has been even going back to the previous thread. Meh, seems a lot of people are playing it now for some reason so yeah, spoiler tags.

 

 

I'm sure they overdid Radovid to try and make the choice between him/ Redania and, effectively, Emhyr/ Nilfgaard less of an obvious one, but they definitely went too far the other way for my tastes. I don't mind him being unlikable, but assassinating him wasn't really much of a choice and there wasn't any 'in game' evidence of him being a great commander either. And yeah, the lack of in game acknowledgement of his death was more than a bit jarring at times, I'm sure one of the post game White Orchard people even said that Radovid kicked the Nilfgaardians out in a bark. I do wonder if they reworked things at some point fairly close to release, perhaps after some tester feedback, since they do seem to change a reasonable amount otherwise like the new checkpoints in Novigrad etc and Radovid being dead is an obvious change point.

 

That leads to another thing I forgot- the war doesn't really feel urgent, while there's lots of evidence for it a few skirmishes and the like would have fleshed things out. As it is it feels almost completely static.

 

That Avallach explanation definitely works.

 

I agree that the Wild Hunt was a weak antagonist, but I don't really mind it for some reason. I guess it's the same reason that I wouldn't consider Alvin/ Jacques a poor antagonist in TW1- they are the looming threat rather than the direct antagonist for most of the game, and the proximal antagonist role is taken up by various others who generally do the role well. I wasn't that keen on the little character development they were given though, things like Imlerith hanging out with the crones seems pretty contrived all things considered. It's basically the Reaper conundrum from Mass Effect, do you 'humanise' the Reapers or leave them as a cosmic force out to eradicate sentient life for their own reasons. OTOH, something like Alvin/ Jacques' throwing your words back in your face was definitely lacking though I guess how you influenced Ciri instead would be the counterpart to that.

 

Edited July 29, 2017 by Zoraptor

[213374U]

So I found a mod that does something about itemization, in part at least (addressing crafted and DLC equipment obsolescence):

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2120

 

What this does is automagically and constantly update base values for witcher gear and Relic DLC stuff, bringing it up to par with random leveled vendor trash that you come across. Attributes are untouched which means that there's still a valid reason to upgrade to a higher tier. From what little I've tested, seems to work fine. Not sure if balance will be thrown out the window though, considering that devs never intended for witcher gear to level like random loot.

 

edit: 3 level 48 boars still do a number on me easily with my (leveled) Mastercrafted Feline armor, so yeah, doesn't look like it's imba. Enemy Upscaling on.

Edited July 29, 2017 by 213374U

[Zoraptor]

Finished Heart of Stone expansion. Overall... yeah, I liked it a lot. If someone described some of the quests to me I'd probably think it sounded pretty silly, but it's done with charm and panache.

 

 

Wedding and Iris subplots were great, Gaunter made a good if slightly obvious villain. Shani is by far the nicest of Geralt's love interests- couldn't imagine either of them taking flowers to Vlodimir's tomb- and unlike Triss and Yen she's also far too good for him. The minor plots felt rather disconnected though, the Flaming Rose were just kind of there (nice that you could mention Siegfried though) as was the Ofieri merchants, and I really couldn't see much point in Glyphs.

 

 

Currently in Blood and Wine and it really is quite beautiful.

[213374U]

I was surprised by how good HoS was.

 

 

Loved the whole running errand boy for immortal David Beckham thing, and they managed to make the guy grow on me, even though he's actually a total douche. Thumbs up.

 

BaW however... I was disappointed.

 

The parody of knights and wine culture was a bit over the top for me, and kinda off-putting after -and in contrast with- the darker tone of the game overall. And it's not just that one of the main plot threads is kind of a Twilight Gone Wrong thing... the whole treatment of vampires is idiotic. "Only a vampire can really kill a vampire", seriously? That's some contrived bull**** to justify Regis getting better from being a stain on the floor last time Geralt saw him. And then they had to go full DBZ, complete with "this isn't even my final form" unskippable cutscenes, for a character that's about as relatable and likable as Anakin Skywalker in EP3. Unseen is just your friendly neighborhood Antediluvian waiting for Gehenna Conjunction of Spheres.

 

 

Meh. I don't know, writer exhaustion perhaps? On the other hand, production values are pretty great. Beauclair is stunning, and as always, attention to detail is impressive. Well worth the price, and I don't even remember the last time I felt that way regarding DLC.

Edited August 8, 2017 by 213374U

[Wormerine]

With Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine I felt that CD project red went for the short stories feel Witchers books had in their first two tomes. While they ar connected to the main game, they feel like separate adventures, with unique atmosphere and story arcs. HoS is probably my fav part of the witcher franchise and B&W is a wonderful farewell to Geralt and the trilogy as a whole. I think that Super Bunny Hop did a great job pointing out B&W weaknesses in storytelling and it does have some contrivances which could be ironed out with a bit more time.

 

Overall, still high quality adventures no matter how you look at it.

 

Replaying Witcher 2 recently, I did realise how little presence did scoiatel have in W3 and that's a shame, though from what I understand they storyline has been cut out from the game as devs deemed it not good enough.

[Labadal]

I, too, just finished Hearts of Stone. I really liked it. I agree that Hearts of Stone has that short story feel that the books had. You nailed it with that description. It was a grim expansion, yet they managed to have some funny moments. Great work. On to the next expansion.

[Zoraptor]

HoS spoilers.

 

I'm pretty sure that HoS's plot is directly based on a fairy tale, Gaunter is definitely based on the common fairy tale deal maker/ djinn archetype that is already used in the game.

 

They certainly did a good job with Olgierd, though it was never going to be a hard choice as to whether to abandon him at the end even if he were shown to be a lot worse. If I had one criticism it's that there's a bit of a discord introduced by Vlodimir, they sound far more like braggarts (stereotypical Jack Sparrow like pirates almost) than brigands, and while a lot is made of what happens to Iris- when he was already in his HoS phase- very little is made of Olgierd basically murdering Vlodimir when he was still normal. The latter is something that should have been made more of, since as above the decision whether to abandon Olgierd at the end needs to have some difficulty to it.

 

 

B&W spoilers.

 

Not quite finished, but I suspect I'm on the penultimate main quest mission since I'm fighting Detlaff again, which is as annoying as the Kayran fight. I'm not sure the over poweredness of higher Vampires (which certainly doesn't mesh with the one you meet in Novigrad) is to get Regis back since apparently the books have multiple hints that he survived, I suspect it's more so that you have a plot reason to need Regis around and can't just run off and do the plot yourself. It also seems like the sort of thing that highly intelligent monsters would put out about themselves without it actually being true, much like stakes, garlic etc being effective when they aren't.

 

Didn't mind the chivalry type stuff at all, since it was pretty obviously a veneer. Villages overrun with bandits and basically bandit armies, Knights dumping girls off in the wilderness to die, an emotional cripple Heath Ledger "Knight's Tale" lookalike etc makes it clear that Beauclair is a fairy tale in both senses. The wine stuff was pretty tropey, especially the two rivals falling in lurve eventually, but in the end the whole expansion is fairy tales. OTOH the plot twist with Syanna was a bit obvious, Geralt says he recognises the drawing of her and at that point there's literally two character entry level women you've met in B&W, one of whom has potentially left on a trip to avoid the aforementioned manchild in knight's armour while the other has an older sister who mysteriously disappeared. Hmm.

 

Thematically, I guess the plot is meant as a counter to that of HoS- you have the emo vampire who now can't control his emotions vs the human who has lost all of his. It works well enough as that; but it is ironic that Detlaff who definitely has less responsibility for his situation than Olgierd has for his doesn't really generate any sympathy at all despite that and Regis's best efforts.

 

 

Replaying Witcher 2 recently, I did realise how little presence did scoiatel have in W3 and that's a shame, though from what I understand they storyline has been cut out from the game as devs deemed it not good enough.

 

Only main game spoilers below.

 

 

Yeah, Iorveth was mentioned in some barks but that was it. I do wonder if they originally planned another Witcher 1/2 like choice- it would certainly make Dijkstra's plot a bit more comprehensible, him a less of an idiot, and the choice there more difficult if he had Iorveth as back up with the promise of freeing Aedirn with Saskia as Queen* in much the same way as Emhyr was offering Roche a 'free' Temeria. Both prior games had the choice between scoiatel and humans as a significant plot point, there was basically nothing of that sort in TW3 except deciding what to do with that one scoiatel camp you get a contract on in the early game.

 

*haven't read the comics, no idea if that was even plausible as it stands

 

[Labadal]

HoS spoilers.

 

I'm pretty sure that HoS's plot is directly based on a fairy tale, Gaunter is definitely based on the common fairy tale deal maker/ djinn archetype that is already used in the game.

 

They certainly did a good job with Olgierd, though it was never going to be a hard choice as to whether to abandon him at the end even if he were shown to be a lot worse. If I had one criticism it's that there's a bit of a discord introduced by Vlodimir, they sound far more like braggarts (stereotypical Jack Sparrow like pirates almost) than brigands, and while a lot is made of what happens to Iris- when he was already in his HoS phase- very little is made of Olgierd basically murdering Vlodimir when he was still normal. The latter is something that should have been made more of, since as above the decision whether to abandon Olgierd at the end needs to have some difficulty to it.

 

 

B&W spoilers.

 

Not quite finished, but I suspect I'm on the penultimate main quest mission since I'm fighting Detlaff again, which is as annoying as the Kayran fight. I'm not sure the over poweredness of higher Vampires (which certainly doesn't mesh with the one you meet in Novigrad) is to get Regis back since apparently the books have multiple hints that he survived, I suspect it's more so that you have a plot reason to need Regis around and can't just run off and do the plot yourself. It also seems like the sort of thing that highly intelligent monsters would put out about themselves without it actually being true, much like stakes, garlic etc being effective when they aren't.

 

Didn't mind the chivalry type stuff at all, since it was pretty obviously a veneer. Villages overrun with bandits and basically bandit armies, Knights dumping girls off in the wilderness to die, an emotional cripple Heath Ledger "Knight's Tale" lookalike etc makes it clear that Beauclair is a fairy tale in both senses. The wine stuff was pretty tropey, especially the two rivals falling in lurve eventually, but in the end the whole expansion is fairy tales. OTOH the plot twist with Syanna was a bit obvious, Geralt says he recognises the drawing of her and at that point there's literally two character entry level women you've met in B&W, one of whom has potentially left on a trip to avoid the aforementioned manchild in knight's armour while the other has an older sister who mysteriously disappeared. Hmm.

 

Thematically, I guess the plot is meant as a counter to that of HoS- you have the emo vampire who now can't control his emotions vs the human who has lost all of his. It works well enough as that; but it is ironic that Detlaff who definitely has less responsibility for his situation than Olgierd has for his doesn't really generate any sympathy at all despite that and Regis's best efforts.

 

 

Replaying Witcher 2 recently, I did realise how little presence did scoiatel have in W3 and that's a shame, though from what I understand they storyline has been cut out from the game as devs deemed it not good enough.

 

Only main game spoilers below.

 

 

Yeah, Iorveth was mentioned in some barks but that was it. I do wonder if they originally planned another Witcher 1/2 like choice- it would certainly make Dijkstra's plot a bit more comprehensible, him a less of an idiot, and the choice there more difficult if he had Iorveth as back up with the promise of freeing Aedirn with Saskia as Queen* in much the same way as Emhyr was offering Roche a 'free' Temeria. Both prior games had the choice between scoiatel and humans as a significant plot point, there was basically nothing of that sort in TW3 except deciding what to do with that one scoiatel camp you get a contract on in the early game.

 

*haven't read the comics, no idea if that was even plausible as it stands

 

About HoS:

I spared Olgierd. I despised him, but I despised Gaunter even more. Didn't want him to get away.

Edited August 8, 2017 by Labadal

[Zoraptor]

HoS

 

Pretty much the same for me. Gaunter is exactly the sort of thing that Witchers are meant to go after, more so than mindless Drowners and the like. Olgierd is very far from being a nice guy and wasn't even before he had the wish/ curse as an excuse, but if it's a choice between him and Gaunter he'd have to be far worse for it to be a hard choice.