I agree there are serious structural problems that don’t prevent it from being one of the greatest RPGs ever made. I overcame my issues with gear and crafting mostly by ignoring the systems after the first 20-30 hours. The quest level issue hasn’t bothered me too much because I’ve been content to stick to the guided path.
I simply wish these parts were better. In some ways combat has become a minigame rather than one of the key pillars that make up an RPG. I go through the relatively enjoyable motions on my way to the next quest. I have little interest in the progression or becoming a better player. It serves as a palate cleanser to make sure I’m not overwhelmed by the nearly-exhausting dialogue and quests. I love great melee combat, so it feels like a missed opportunity for me.
I still have to remind myself occasionally what a fantastic game this is. The slow burn is so slow it becomes imperceptible at times. It’s interesting to compare that to The Witcher 2, which was such a revelation. I was overcome by joy to find out how good RPG writing and characters could be, and it’s a monumental achievement to see they’ve maintained that level of quality in a huge open world game. But I’ve also recently discovered the joy of melee combat, exploration, and streamlining busywork. I feel a slight nagging void in those areas that I was too enthralled to notice in 2011.
That just means I’ve yet to find my perfect videogame. I guess the only solution is to keep on playing!
Ok, since you guys are bringing this up:
What is exactly an “open world” game? I mean, structure-wise, this is no different with the Witcher 1, if the Witcher 1 allowed travel between hubs. I know it’s a technicality, but normally when I think of open world I think of non-story centered games with emergent behavior that is fun for the shake of it, with many mini-games thrown in. There’s little to none emergence here. It’s sidequesting and exploration (to find more sidequests) but the game does not lead itself to aimless wandering without questing, as the typical open world games do. If you are not following a quest, there’s little to do.
Other than the amazing technical achievement of having such huge areas seamlessly loading in the background, I see very little relationship with traditional open world games as I understand them (open world as a genre, not as a strict descriptor). I was worried when they said they were going open world, and wondered what that could mean, and it seems it meant little (but for sheer size and interconnections between areas).
Is GTA V an open-world game? That’s about as story-centered as you can get in SP. (GTA Online is another matter entirely.) Sure, you can just wander after the initial setup mission, but if you don’t do the story missions, you won’t unlock the side activities.
In contrast, The Witcher 3 allows you to wander off almost immediately with all the side stuff being “gated” only by the recommended character level.
Bateau
4166
What you’re describing is a sandbox. Not every open world game is a sandbox.
So is the general population really just cool with the witcher kicking down their door and rifling through their possessions for anything of value?
Thanks for the detailed analysis Telefrog.
One thing that I think might help potion abuse is that they’ve finally patched it back in that high toxicity levels now deplete health. I’d like to see them fiddle with that balance of powerful potions, toxicity, and ancillary problems caused, be it health, stat depletion, whatever.
JMR
4169
Yeah they’re cool with the Witcher tax but just don’t do it when there are guards nearby like in town squares or military camps.
We talked about open world a week or two ago. I see it as breathing space between points of interest. It’s not necessary to put a minigame in that space.
Contrasting it with ‘sandbox’ is an interesting idea, but I wouldn’t call Assassin’s Creed a sandbox, for example. Too much direction.
JeffL
4171
Still VERY early in - just made level 3, to give you a feel, though I feel I have found almost all the question marks in White Orchid. BTW - I accidentally ran into a tiny mini-quest with a woman looking for her pan - are those marked in any way? There are so many characters that to have to walk up to every one and see if there is a ! next to their name could be tedious.
One other question: I have a couple of skill points I haven’t used, as I am trying to figure out the best way to use the (the first 3 I just threw into some combat stuff and Igni.) When I made Level 3 I could have sworn it told me I gained a couple of points - but I still only have the two I was sitting on. Did I miss something?
As I’m an old school-gamer, I’m not sure what you mean by a “traditional” open-world game. The original open world games were the Ultimas, which were much like The Witcher 3, i.e. fantasy RPGs with stories. What made them open world games is that you could explore the entire game world freely from the start and do things in the order you chose, not according to some fixed area-by-area progression.
I guess you mean GTA? But by your definition, single-player GTA 5 isn’t a “traditional” open-world game either. It has gobs and gobs of story, and there’s isn’t a whole lot to do if you’re not doing it. Basically you can wander aimlessly and kill people on foot, drive around aimlessly and kill people, fly around and kill yourself, or do some extremely tedious collectables grinding with little payoff.
From my perspective Witcher 3 has much more to do than GTA5 if you’re not doing the main story. Witcher 3 has tons of side quests, crafting, and characters progression. (Plus Gwent and horse racing … though personally I’m skipping those because there’s so much other stuff to do I can’t squeeze them in.)
I guess what I’m saying is that interesting non-story gameplay is a subjective thing. You should watch NerdCubed play Witcher 3 on YouTube. He’s a GTA-type guy. He loves fooling around just for the sake of it. He claims to hate RPGs … but he loves Witcher 3. And he mostly just wanders around slaughtering bears and bandits.
When Geralt is disappointed or saddened, his eyes say everything his monosyllabic grunts can’t.
Maybe it has and I just haven’t encountered it, but I’m kind of surprised “Geralt shrugs in disappointment” hasn’t become the new Downfall gif.
But they spit at me and call me a freak. Seems incongruous.
Seems like cause and effect.
They are marked on the minimap when you get close and characters often bark directly at you. It’s pretty noticeable.
Since they are unmarked globally you have to ride around. My theory is they start popping up on the main map if you’ve gone too long without finding them, but I may have just made that up.
But the ultimas (and the Fallouts and others) where different in that they were much more emergent in their systems (you could beat Fallout 1 and 2 very low level skipping 99.9% of the story, for example) while this feels much more WRPG structured (main story, which is not skippable and pretty fixed along with sidequests… I thing the open world vs. sandbox distinction makes sense to me (I think the Fallouts and the Ultimas and those branches of RPGs are more sandboxy). I’m loving the game, I just wonder how much (apart from immersion -which certainly is not trivial-) the open world is giving me in TW3. I think I would have enjoyed it as much had it had isolated hubs.
Juan, are you riding your horse a decent amount? It’s a really nice feeling that would be lost by quest hubs (though I don’t think it’s as beautiful and touching as walking through the snow in Skyrim due to the awkward horse clipping and route following).
Oh yes, that’s what I was talking about when I said immersion. The open map definitely adds to the game, I just don’t know the lack of it would have changed my opinion of the game much. It seems more like a really complex feature made just because they could afford it, just not integral to the design in the way it is for other open world games (although yes, I might be referring to sandboxes). But I might be the odd one thinking this.
I think I’d be cool with letting some samurai dude with two swords on his back, white hair and cat eyes, rummage through my things. In the end he’d steal a potato and a fork while awkwardly trying to move around my kitchen table and talking to himself; “wind’s howling”.
I’d pretty much pretend I didn’t notice him.
It’s a tricky question because I wouldn’t have known what I was missing. The scope and natural believability of the landscape is somewhat unprecedented.
I think it reinforces the same qualities in the story and characters, so yeah, it might have felt weird if it was a series of small boxes.
