The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Games
7370

Played it quite a bit more the last couple of days getting into the high teens with my character.

I am getting better in combat. I still suck mightily but I am having an easier time of it. There are tricks to certain monsters that you almost have to use, like using the trap sign with noonwraiths. They are seemingly unbeatable without that sign. But I am better and should not need a trainer. I still die though and have a terrible time with anyone sporting a shield. I am totally unable to time a preemptive strike and have to slowly beat them down until they are exhausted, try to move around to their rear and strike at that point. No doubt I am doing it wrong but have not bothered to look up how to better do it.

I still do not understand much of what is going on - an invasion, some baddies on a hunt, chasing my pseudo-daughter, etc. but it all sounds interesting. I keep meeting characters the game thinks I should know and I have no clue who they are. Others I meet and vaguely know but do not know whether I should like them or not. Unlike the Mass Effect series or other sequels, I seem to have retained very little about the story from Witcher 2 and nothing from the first game. This really hurts at times.

The world is not quite as interactive as I would like - too many placeholder NPCs who do nothing but create an illusion of a living city but it is massive. I thought Skyrim was huge. This must be 3 or 4 times larger. But in some ways it commits the sin that DA:I was truly guilty of, which is a large map but far too generic encounters. There are a host of “!” on the map but many turn out to be yet another nondescript bandit camp or ghoul nest. This is one area where Skyrim beats Witcher 3 hands down. Many of those areas in Skyrim told a story with detailed castles, caves or other great areas to explore. I have not found many of those in Witcher 3 with the best so far being the “pig cave”. So while I have not lost the motivation to hit the “!” areas, my expectations are fairly low. It is nice when I actually get something interesting like a troll who wants paint.

There are a few quests that are just are not good.

For instance the quest to help Triss escape Noivigrad. I am presented with a choice of saving someone named Oliver or a couple of other people. I have no idea who any of those people are. I might as well flip a coin for all the meaning this quest gives me. So I looked it up online and it turns out that the “best” way to solve that quest is to turn down Triss so both groups are saved. So that is what I did. It felt more like filler than anything else.

The characters are quite good. I like Geralt increasingly more and the others seem to be well rounded. Witcher 3 has not created the gut-wrenching moral situations that Bioware was great at but it is nice to see sometimes your best intentions turn sour. For instance I saved a guy at one spot and he turned into a bandit in another area. The road to hell is paved with good intentions as they say and that is fun to see.

I think I will skip some of Novigrad’s continent and move on to the next zone to progress the story. I have not had my “I love this” moment but I can see why this game is so highly regarded.

7371

You might get some benefit from using signs more in combat… specific signs help with specific enemies. Likewise bombs. Turning off the ?s on the map is recommended by many. If you let yourself stumble across that stuff it becomes more organic and less fillery.

7372

Seeing this thread bumped in recent weeks inspired me to jump back in and, HUZZAH, I finally completed the main game! So damn good. Now to jump into Hearts of Stone.

7373

Rejoice and pay homage! I can finally strike this from my backlog as I have completed the main game and the Hearts of Stone expansion. I do not have it in me to work on Blood and Wine so I think this is it.

Let me start by saying I thought this game was good. Not great, good. I think both Skyrim and DA:O are superior experiences - DA:O because the story & NPCs and Skyrim because of the world and quests. That does not mean W3 is bad. This is a well-crafted game and I can understand why some really love this game. I do not understand why some believe it to be the pinnacle of the RPG genre. I enjoyed it and if I had to give it a review score it would be something around an 85 - very good and borderline great but not quite the best in the genre. So when I am critical of it below please remember that my overall experience was good. It just was not great.

World & Exploration: The world of Witcher 3 is huge and beautiful. It is lovingly created with moving storm systems, some nice scenery at every turn, fully-realized cities and it feels far more coherent than any other RPG world. It also feels quite empty to me. I could run the countryside in W3 for hours and all I would ever stumble across was yet another pack of drowners, bandits or wolves. I had to get to the far edges of the map to find any truly interesting encounters. I feel that the W3 map is much like I felt in ES: Oblivion - a whole lot of nothing is out there.

Skyrim was smaller but still sprawling. While less realistic, it had far better vistas and far more interesting things to see and do. There was always some interesting cave, tower or dungeon to explore and each one told a story. I always wanted to find out what was around the next corner in Skyrim. I stopped looking in Witcher 3.

One other thing that was Oblivion-like in W3 was the level scaling of mobs. I understand that this has to be a part of any RPG but I found it to be asinine in W3. It makes no sense that wolves on the west side of the continent are level 4 while wolves on the right side are level 30. There is far too much of that kind of thing and it really takes a player out of the otherwise grounded world of W3.

People & Personalities: Again there are areas here in which W3 really shines. I give it massive praise for having adults who seem to actually seem to be adults. I know the characters in W3 far better than I knew anyone in Skyrim. For instance I knew why Dandelion and his Priscilla liked each other. I wish I could keep up with the cavalcade of different faces and people being referenced from other games. Who is Phillipa? Why do I care that she is blind? Why did she get blinded? I do not know and I think that hurts the overall experience.

Moreover, it was hard to care about them. There are exceptions of course. I was angry when Priscilla was attacked. I liked any interaction with Ciri. Yen was my love interest and I enjoyed the scenes with her. I was not even sad when the other witcher died. I think it was in large part because I did not adventure with them or see them enough. I felt much closer to the fewer NPCs in DA:O than I did to anyone here. I think that is a side effect of running solo much of the time and I prefer party-based RPGs. So kudos to well-written, adult characters but points off for there being too many of them and not being able to share adventures with them. I was not supposed to care about the NPCs in Skyrim. They were there to further the plot and I understood that. In W3 I am supposed to care about these folks but I am simply not emotionally vested.

Quests and Monsters. This is where I feel W3 is not up to the standards of the best RPGs. There are far, far too many fed-ex/kill quests that mean absolutely nothing to the story. I like side quests and I like the idea of contracts but there are so many “?” on the map and the vast majority mean absolutely nothing. I had a hard time following the plot (for instance I still do not know why the Wild Hunt exists) and there were few quests that registered anything at all on an emotional level. I finally just stopped exploring in Skellige because I was not uncovering anything that was worthwhile to do.

There are exceptions of course. Priscilla’s torturer quest was a highlight. The incident in the palace in Skellige was sweet. There are of course others. But I found none as emotionally wrenching as the main quests in DA:O or as fun or interesting as the Dragonborn or Dark Brotherhood series in Skyrim. The quest series that came the closest was the one from Heart of Stone (especially at the mansion with Iris Von Everec and anything with O’Dimm in it. That showed me how good the quests in W3 could be - simply fantastic in this case - and it is a shame that most of the other quests do not even attempt this level of involvement. I feel that the quantity over quality approach hurts the overall experience.

Combat and Character Progression. I have previously said I do not like the combat in W3 and while it became easier I never truly became proficient at it. I simply do not like the system. I vastly preferred DA:O’s party based approach or the variety of approaches that Skyrim has to offer (I love Skyrim stealth archery combat). W3 offers a more strategic approach than Skyrim and I understand why some people would like that. I simply never became comfortable with it or the controls.

The character progression skills in Witcher 3 offers a few approaches that a player can take to combat and that is always nice. But Skryim had far more skills that could be leveled which offers more choice. DA:O offers more defined roles within a party-based system. W3’s character progression always felt weak and under-utilized. Gear seems to be far more important than skills in W3. But then again I suck at combat so it is no surprise that the character progression also seems weak in comparison. I expect that in this area I am in the extreme minority.

Tl;dr summary. I can see why some people consider this to be a great game. I think it a good game but it failed to grip me emotionally and the numerous filler quests combined with my struggles in combat detracted from my overall experience. I do not plan on playing the last expansion but do not regret my time with it.

7374

I like the Witcher 3 far more than Skyrim (I really dislike Skyrim) and I enjoyed it more than DA:O, but I agree with a lot of your assessments, specially this part.

A lot of the ? are tied to quests or landmarks you are going to want to explore anyway and those that are not are pretty meaningless. Using Ubisoft-style icon overload in the map does sell the amount of content the game has straight away, but it makes for a worse, less mysterious experience. Deactivating the ? (but not necessarily the icons once you have discovered something) would have made for a better game, I think.

7375

Yeah, it’s a shame the quests in The Witcher 3 don’t have the depth and detail of Skyrim. That’s one area that’s been particularly cited by fans and critics alike as a shortcoming.

7376

I think the advice a bunch of folks upthread gave me was really solid - disregard, or even turn off, the question marks. That’s counterintuitive for someone like me, who likes to really squeeze a game dry, but with a game like The Witcher 3 that’s a quick way to burning out. But as folks told me, you’re going to hit a bunch of those question marks throughout the course of the questlines playing the game, and then you can always loop back around to catch the ones that are left (that’s my plan, anyway).

7377

It avoids not just burning out, but the impression that Granath got that most of the side quests in the game suck. If the question marks are off, then all the side quests in the game come from the job boards in various towns, and a lot of them are really good. There’s the occasional simple fed-ex quest or ten, but they’re a minority in an otherwise massive game.

However, if you have the question marks turned on, and you’re just going from one meaningless hotspot to the next, it gives a very different impression of the world and the quests within. I just wanted to thank Granath for putting that to the test for us.

7378

I lol’d

7379

It sounds like you figured this out too late. At some point in the game you simply need to stop exploring, turn the combat difficulty down, and finish off the main quests.

It’s similar to The Elder Scrolls where they dump so many random items like rusty swords and cheese wheels that it forces you to overcome your RPG addiction to pick everything up. The Witcher 3 forces you to overcome your compulsion to vacuum the entire map. Eventually you get sick of it and free yourself from the need to do so. Then you can enjoy the game.

7380

I feel pretty sure my sarcasm meter is going off right now…

7381

I’m about to finally play this. Is it worth playing vanilla or starting with mods? If so, which ones?

7382

You can go without mods, I think. I would take the advice we try to impress on everyone: turn the map markers off, and find stuff organically by exploring!

7383

Yes Chappers, I agree with that advice. Start the game, and do the White Orchard area. Don’t turn off the map markers yet. They’re useful in speeding through the White Orchard area and discovering everything there. But once you’ve moved on from the White Orchard map, turn off the undiscovered hotspots, or whatever they’re called.

7384

Funny seeing this thread pop up when the news that’s making the rounds is this:

tl;dr - CDPR offered Sapkowski royalties in their original offer for The Witcher license. He thought the game would bomb or never be made, so he opted for about $9500 up front instead.

“I was stupid enough to sell them rights to the whole bunch,” he says. “They offered me a percentage of their profits. I said, ‘No, there will be no profit at all - give me all my money right now! The whole amount.’ It was stupid. I was stupid enough to leave everything in their hands because I didn’t believe in their success. But who could foresee their success? I couldn’t.”

Now he’s demanding at least 6% of the game profits, or about $16 million.

7385

I have no idea how civil jurisprudence in Poland works, but this seems like Mr. Sapkowski is suing to try to get a settlement because it’s hard to find any merits in his claim.

7386

Hopefully they included a no take-backs clause!

7387

I love having Paul highlighted on reddit so I can see him pop up on threads like the Sapkowski story!

7388

Aren’t they doing a TV show now? Surely he’s getting something for that, which would have been unlikely without the success of TW3.

7389

Yes, and he’s got a credit on it as creative consultant, and the series is explicitly based on his books, and not the game.

But you’re right: there is no way in hell they make a series about his books without CDPR’s games.