The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[Rico_Jones]

I just can’t imagine sitting at work working knowing I have Witcher 3 ready to be played at home. It will be torture.

You’ll just have to quit your job. It’s the only ethical thing to do.

By this logic, Skyrim is not an open world. Loading screens everywhere!

Heh, I was thinking the same thing – Skyrim has a loading screen every time you go through a door. ;)

[liminal]

Gamespot’s Kevin VanOrd answered these questions for me on Twitter minutes after I messaged him. I’ve posted his responses below as raw text to to maximize legibility.

Has CD Projekt revealed anything about how Witcher 3 will handle Geralt unsheathing weapons and swinging them around in town? What about grabbing items that belong to NPCs? Witcher 2 barely acknowledges either of these actions, which isn’t going to cut it in the open world of the sequel.

You can’t swing without an enemy, but people will react to combat, and guards will fine you if they catch you stealing.

Has anything been said about how the story meshes with the open world? I’m specifically concerned about dissonance between the pacing of open world exploration and questing and urgency in the main story. This is a problem with pretty much every open world game I’ve ever played.

It does a pretty good job of keeping you going in the most urgent sequences. However, there are instances in which characters patiently wait for you while you do other stuff. It’s actually lampshaded a few times, which is good at least: the characters sometimes notice your lack of timeliness.

[Timex]

Are there really only two loading times in the game? When traveling to those separate regions?

Honestly, I had expected way more… So I’m totally happy with that.

[HumanTon]

Heh, I was thinking the same thing – Skyrim has a loading screen every time you go through a door. ;)

For that matter, Red Dead blocked off Mexico and Blackwater at the start, and then had elaborate cut scenes/loading screens when you transitioned. It’s not like there’s some universally-agreed upon definition of what a “real” open world is.

[rhamorim]

I say live and let live, you need a south pole AND a north pole and for the north we have BleedTheFreak.

I laughed. :)

Also, I’m firmly in the BleedTheFreak side. While I’ll be disappointed every now and then, I’ll usually enjoy games for what they are (warts and all) and sometimes for that they try to be (and fail).

[triggercut]

Gamespot’s Kevin VanOrd answered these questions for me on Twitter minutes after I messaged him. I’ve posted his responses below as raw text to to maximize legibility.

Thanks for posting those responses. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t even thought about those questions until you mentioned them, but now I can see the importance of handling those situations.

[rhamorim]

You can’t swing without an enemy, but people will react to combat, and guards will fine you if they catch you stealing.

I can’t even begin to describe how happy I am to see those words.

[Paul_cze]

Are there really only two loading times in the game? When traveling to those separate regions?

Honestly, I had expected way more… So I’m totally happy with that.

There is a loading when fast traveling, and when leaving a region. (Skellige Isles is one region, Novigrad and No Mans Land is another, Kaer Morhen is another, White Orchard is another)
But regions are not separated because of technical reasons. They are separated because they are far away geographically from each other and CDP wanted to avoid creating potato landscape.

[triggercut]

Are there really only two loading times in the game? When traveling to those separate regions?

Honestly, I had expected way more… So I’m totally happy with that.

Oh, I’d expect more than that, realistically. The lack of loading screens I think is more of a feature for traveling overland and visiting villages especially. In Skyrim, every shop or house you entered was it’s own little self-contained world shoebox. You couldn’t really see anything but smears out of the windows of a house in Skyrim, because there actually wasn’t anything to see out there. Mods like windows on the world tried to fix it, but everything had to be hand-rendered in.

In Wild Hunt, I gather that the buildings exist as organic pieces of the world. Which, given just the pathfinding requirements to do that at all well seems like an accomplishment.

[robc04]

If you read it then you’d know that the comparison he makes to Skyrim isn’t limited to the split in areas.

But reading honesty from you who are ready to jump at my throat at a first hint of criticism about an hyped game? It’s like being back in kindergarten.

Grow up.

Since Skyrim has loading screens at buildings / dungeons, does that make it something other than an open world game?

[Telefrog]

I heard that if there’s even one loading screen, a game cannot be considered “open-world” now.

[triggercut]

Brave claim. I’d still retain some skepticism…

[Telefrog]

I’m sure it will be “better” with the patch. I still expect some stutters.

[Telefrog]

CDPR dev on a torrent site trying to get people to buy the game.

[Moore]

Brave claim. I’d still retain some skepticism…

Well, I hope so, I really wanted this day one, now I’ll give them a month or so and see if they can at least maintain 30fps (or give me a checkbox for 720p, I’d check that little fucker everytime if it meant smooth gameplay for one of these silly new gen games that can’t keep 30fps.)

[lordkosc]

Why doesn’t the PS4 use the dynamic resolution thingy?

[TurinTur]

Mmmm.

[JMR]

CDPR dev on a torrent site trying to get people to buy the game.

W3 for 32 bucks?

[rhamorim]

Why doesn’t the PS4 use the dynamic resolution thingy?

Maybe it’s a XBone thing, supported on the OS/driver level?

[rhamorim]

Mmmm.

GIF dithering kind of ruined that one. Though some people will actually claim the dithering is in the game itself. Downgrade! ;)