JeffL
4184
Question again - are you supposed to get skill points when you level up? I just went from 2 to 3, and the only skill points I see are the two I got from power stones that I havent used yet.
Correct, 1 skill point per level, plus whatever stones you find.
Also don’t forget to slot the skills you want to use, I played a good 5 hours before realizing I had nothing slotted.
It’s more probable that the skill points you have are from leveling up, and the power stones glitched and didn’t gave you the point. I had a pair of occasions where I hold the button and Geralt did the seating animation but the stone didn’t gave me anything, sign bonus or point. I had to re-try again to get it.
Still playing, nowhere near finished but enjoying the game enormously. However, I would tend to agree with a previous post.
Taken on their own, the pure game mechanics (combat, levelling , balance) have some serious flaws (balance goes out of the window after 20-30 hours if you tend to be vaguely completionist).
IF nothing else existed, I would actually not be that impressed by it. Solid C+/B- game marred by flaws.
HOWEVER, the world, the writing, the characters, the storytelling the consistency, the attention to detail, the sense of wonder are superlative and more than make up for the flaws mentioned above.
I have never felt so immersed in a world like this where EVERYTHING is consistent AND so well written. That aspect absolutely makes this game and elevates it to such a degree.
And the open nature of the world plays such an important part. The sense of discovery is awesome.
I cannot recommend highly enough turning off the ? On the map AND the patching indicator. Go explore, wander about, discover. Then the game shines so brightly.
JeffL
4188
Very different from Skyrim. Very different. I don’t get the sense of wonder from exploration (so far) and wondering if I’m going to stumble into some amazing ruin in the middle of nowhere, with some collection of surprising backstories hidden, etc. I’m only in White Orchid, so obviously just in the beginning, but I don’t get the feeling the game rewards open world exploration with something that blows you away. OTOH, the few side quests have been very well written with unusual nuance of their own.
One question: finished the Griffin, it says we’re ready to leave White Orchid, but I don’t feel like I’ve seen much. I’m only just now level 3, and I’ve only seen and completed 6 side quests (the ones listed with the yellow exclamation points.) Plus, gotta go look, but maybe 3 or 4 contracts? A number of camps and monster nests and guarded treasures, but the density of discovered activities so far feels pretty light. Am I missing a lot?
Mainly the fact that White Orchard is tiny.
Unfortunately you’re not. If you find a cool place it is definitely linked to some quest. I’ve found maybe 2 exceptions and having completed the game I can safely say it just doesn’t happen. I found a very cool island early on and was so disappointed when I 20 minutes later got the assignment to go back to that very island for a quest… pretty much doing what I just did all over again.
So no, I don’t think this game has much on exploration when compared to games such as Morrowind, it’s just not that kind of game.
That said it’s still an out of this world fantastic game, but if you think you’re gonna come upon something really interesting that’s not linked to a quest or a quest marker, you’re mistaken.
I do feel like I’m on a brilliant realisation of… a farm.
I’m not really sure I see the downside to having exploration result in quests, especially when even the smallest side quest is well written and often surprising.
The ruins are what you’d expect to find in a plausible medieval low magic world: maybe some lord died without an hier and his small 3-story tower has crumbled because no one took care of it, and now there are some bandits living in it, and the local village pays it no mind because there’s nothing interesting there, except maybe a ghost.
Or perhaps you’d prefer a burned out village that has been devastated by a recent battle that took place recently!
To me there is a definite downside, some of my fondest memories of Morrowind was roaming through an intricate cave system, perhaps even starting underwater only to end up in some anonymous room, nearly missing that insane sword hanging above the fireplace. Other times I had to levitate to get to hidden rooms near impossible to spot. That’s exploration to me.
In W3, every “secret” lights up with witcher sense and you have waypoints every 10 feet. That’s not really exploration imho. In fact, the only real exploration came from the waypoint system bugging out, sending you miles off target.
On top of that you’re starting a quest with every “secret”, at that point it’s really not exploration anymore.
Related to the Roche/Iorveth discussion in The Witcher 2 thread, there’s a great line from a character in this game that I don’t want to spoil directly since it’s a nice surprise.
midway through the Novigrad main quest
[spoiler]I always liked Roche for his voice actor, goofy-yet-noble character design, and his directness. When you ask him about his old mission against the Squirrels, he delivers one of the best lines in the game:
“Who cares about the Scoia’tael? Temeria is all that matters now.”
This line reinforces his character, calls back to the conflict in the previous two games, reminds us that Temeria is currently a non-entity, and also shows how the scope of the series continues to increase. We’ve gone from a city-wide conflict to a regional conflict to one that spans most of the continent. The Scoia’tael really are a sidebar now. Unlike most games that pull the rug out from under you to reset the perceived danger curve each game, the conflict expansion across these three games feels so natural I almost missed it. Which is like everything else in TW3, I suppose![/spoiler]
This sums up my feelings exactly. The series is not, and never has been a dungeon crawl. What you do find here seems completely natural in context with the fiction of the world presented.
I love a good dungeon as much as the next person, but I don’t at all believe that this is somehow less for basically not having them.
I wonder if that’s a differentiator for Bethesda and we can look forward to another Morrowind from them.
JeffL
4198
This is why I disagreed with someone who said Witcher 3 and Skyrim were basically the same kind of game. They feel like completely different genres in many ways.
Skyrim (at least the way I play it) is this world that had been created with exploration in mind. The “story” is almost an add-on; it’s all about the world. You never know when walking across a certain part of the countryside, even if you’ve walked it dozens of times, what you might run into. I explored Skyrim for hundreds of hours, almost all on foot, and almost no fast travel, and I STILL would find a cave or ruin or something I’d walked right past 10 times before (I preferred to play with markers off.) The story that I cared about was the one I created in my mind in terms of who my character was, his background and history and motivations, all created by me.
So far, Witcher 3 feels to me like it is all about the story and world is just there to support the story. Everything is woven together in a wonderful manner, there’s no need (or room) for me to create my own story.
I think both games do an incredible job of what they do best. I’ve never found a game with a world that I so enjoyed just exploring for the sake of exploring than that in Skyrim. Best sandbox ever. And so far, it appears Witcher 3 excels in telling a story with nuance and memorable characters that surpass most story driven RPGs.
I would be delighted if I got a new Skyrim world every couple of years and a new Witcher 3 every couple of years in between. :)
Timex
4199
So far, Witcher 3 feels to me like it is all about the story and world is just there to support the story. Everything is woven together in a wonderful manner, there’s no need (or room) for me to create my own story.
But there like a million separate little points of interest and soarers quests and stuff that are separate from the main story. Tons of which aren’t marked on the map and are just some random stuff lying somewhere by a road or something.
Like some random skeleton lying in an alcove with a letter to his wife telling some story about his final hours.
I just don’t get the “there is no exploration” complaint. There is like, infinity stuff to explore.
olaf
4200
Witcher 3 feels like an evolution of Skyrim, to me. It does literally everything Skyrim did, better.
I agree, they are different games though I highly preferred the souped up Morrowind to Skyrim, never even finished Skyrim come to think of it.
My point here is that while they are different games, TW3 does have dungeons and hidden places and loot but the hidden places are lit up with big arrows and the loot is samey and level scaled.
As far as role playing goes, with hard dialog choices and branching quests; I nearly OD’ed. It had all of that. (though the romance parts were shallow, luckily I don’t care much for that anyway.)
As for exploration and skinner box interesting loot; Not good enough, it left me hungry. It could be much better without taking anything away from its true focus. I hope for changes in this area for when the extended edition comes around.
ShivaX
4202
What Skyrim were you playing? Because that pretty much describes 98% of that game as well.
They’re fairly different games though, I’ll agree. One is story based and one is a sandbox that had a story that no one cares about.
