I have The Witcher 3 GOTY edition, or whatever it was called, for Xbox but have never opened it. I’m waiting for the One X to experience it for the first time at its best. I like that the Pro and X are great excuses to experience the game (again) on the big screen.
Wendelius
Yeah I had put aside TW3 on Xbox for a number of reasons but since they’re updating it for the X I will definitely have to check it out again.
Ya know, looking at those screenshots I really don’t see a dramatic enough difference to impress me.
Just finished the main story earlier this week, but putting pause on it for now. When the One X update comes out, that’s probably when I’ll dive into Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine.
The difference is significantly more pronounced in movement. It looks really pristine even when downsampled to 1080p TV compared to original.
I’m just starting the game. It gave me a little lecture when I got into the first town about don’t steal because it’ll upset the villagers, but I looted something right in front of the garrison commander and he didn’t react. Is this a game where I should (or at least can) loot everything that’s not nailed down?
Loot everything. The game will tell you before looting if it will actually have consequenses, I only remember that happening at one garrison, where there were guards everywhere, can’t remember where it was now.
But The Taxman Cometh!
Actually looting people’s houses is:
Loot chests, bodies etc, but trust me, rummaging through people’s houses and stealing their forks is not needed. Even if the NPCs don’t react (usually guards do, villagers don’t).
Well now I feel like an ass :(
But no, I agree. After the first couple of hours, there wasn’t any need of looting anything in regular homes as the inventory was constantly full
Do not presume to tell me how to live my life.
Yep, and in the houses there is nothing valuable anyway. Inventory size can be increased heavily by the various saddles though.
Well then, rummage away! I stand by the fact that it is a waste of time though :)
I wish this was true. If you have any desire to craft all bombs, potions, oils, armors, swords, etc… then you better be checking those cupboards. It’s also fuel for the raging alcoholism of an alchemy build on death march.
There are AutoLoot mods out there that let you set custom filters on what to loot and when, etc., that can ease the pain of being a klepto.
Late to the party (yuge backlog and all that), I’ve finally finished Witcher 3 base game.
And what a game.
Good:
The father/daughter relationship is the best part. I got the “best” or “2nd best” ending (Ciri survived and will be empress). It would be a waste of Ciri’s talent to be a simple witcher, so of course my Geralt brought her to her biological father to prepare her for her life after the Wild Hunt.
The thing about letting your daughter choosing her own path is very very liberal/western. Some other culture may think it is perfectly fair for the father to dictate what his daughter can do (fair in the sense that when the time comes Ciri will be equally entitled to dictate what her son or daughter will do.)
The main story about the Wild Hunt is a bit meh. End of the world and the struggle that entails? AGAIN? All the politics bores me because I have no stake one way or another. And there is another semi-viking culture focused on pillaging. What a surprise. But the racism allegory and the father/daughter narrative made the story bearable.
The open world, especially the urban area, is far more realistic than Skyrim. It is basically impossible to imagine e.g. Whiterun in Skyrim is a city, with so few people around, but the cities in Witcher 3 just looked right. And the colour palette of the world is beautiful, as beautiful as Skyrim. And the contract system gives you lots and lots of things to do.
Bad
All the question marks around the map is a drag. It took away the wonder of wandering. Don’t tell me there are stuff to explore! Let me find them at my own leisure. Skyrim or Fallout 4 is much better in that regard.
And the voice acting is below par. In terms of graphics, art direction, and gameplay it is great, but I feel like the voice acting and direction could be so much better. The accent for one is all over the place. In Dragon Age they have this nice mirroring with the real world. People from Orlai speak English with a French accent. Dwarves have American accent. People in the east and north have BBC accent. And so on. Here with Witcher 3 only Nilfgaardian sounds distinctively German, others are all over the place. Triss and Dandelion are especially dire IMO. Many of the lesser NPCs sound almost indistinguishable from one another.
Nudity/Flesh:
Special mention to all the gratuitous breasts and a lack of any dick shot. Keira is the worst, Yennefer is the best/most tasteful. Even Ciri showed a bit too much flesh. She certainly doesn’t dress like someone prepared to do physical fighting wearing NO armour.
Now on to DLCs.
PS: Gwent. Can’t get enough of that.
Before you start the DLC, just a quick note to say you can turn these off.
Ah thanks, will turn it off for Heart of Stone.
One more thing, the Witcher contracts reminded me of Western, where a gun for hire solves problem for common folks, or get cheated by them.
I thought the voice acting was good, but Triss and Dandelion did sound a bit strange compared to The Witcher 2.
I actually like the question marks, because I don’t want to miss things. I can see the appeal if I planned to play the game over and over and find new things each time, but I’m more of a ‘planned tourist’ type - gotta see all the sights in one trip!
Continuing my recent spate of catching up on 2015 games I never played at the time, I’ve been getting into this. It really is quite superb and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. That is all.
Re. the combat, about which one sees a fair amount of bitching from tryhards: yes, in terms of mechanics it’s not terribly deep or challenging, but it’s … serviceable … and the animations are very fluid and it feels nice and badass. I can see myself getting bored with it in the not too distant future though, and I’m already looking forward to trying modded alternatives. The Enhanced Edition mod combat looks good, and there are some nice Wasteland Ghost mods for the game too, including her own overhaul, some of which is incorporated into TEE (she’s one of the team that did the Long War mod for XCOM). Modding is quite a bit more painful than Skyrim, and a lot of the mods on Nexus are out of date, but there’s still a healthy number of decent mods that are functioning with the last version of the game, enough to have some fun playing about with.
Anyway, highly addictive, highly recommended.