The Witcher 3 Catch-All

In which CDPR smack-talks Bethesda, and why their open world is so much better: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featur...

Monster hunting: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featur...

It's more of an investigation than just picking up a quest off a notice board.

beanman101283 wrote:
hubbinsd wrote:

I played about 10 hours of W1 before getting frustrated with the pacing & repetition. I'm currently about 20 hours into W2 and still loving it, despite many of the lame bolted-on mechanics early in the game (e.g., pointless, one-off QTEs). Looking forward to this one...

There's an option to turn off the 1-time QTEs. They're still there for the fist fights, but they're easy and repeatable.

Wait what? I just put 5 hours into it and the QTE's are annoying the hell out of me. What mechanic replaces them?

EvilDead wrote:
beanman101283 wrote:
hubbinsd wrote:

I played about 10 hours of W1 before getting frustrated with the pacing & repetition. I'm currently about 20 hours into W2 and still loving it, despite many of the lame bolted-on mechanics early in the game (e.g., pointless, one-off QTEs). Looking forward to this one...

There's an option to turn off the 1-time QTEs. They're still there for the fist fights, but they're easy and repeatable.

Wait what? I just put 5 hours into it and the QTE's are annoying the hell out of me. What mechanic replaces them?

I think they just.. don't happen. Since I'm playing the game for the first time with them off, I can't compare to having them on. But it's just a toggle in the menu.

beanman101283 wrote:
EvilDead wrote:
beanman101283 wrote:
hubbinsd wrote:

I played about 10 hours of W1 before getting frustrated with the pacing & repetition. I'm currently about 20 hours into W2 and still loving it, despite many of the lame bolted-on mechanics early in the game (e.g., pointless, one-off QTEs). Looking forward to this one...

There's an option to turn off the 1-time QTEs. They're still there for the fist fights, but they're easy and repeatable.

Wait what? I just put 5 hours into it and the QTE's are annoying the hell out of me. What mechanic replaces them?

I think they just.. don't happen. Since I'm playing the game for the first time with them off, I can't compare to having them on. But it's just a toggle in the menu.

Yep, you're correct. Unfortunately they still exist for the fist fights though.

EvilDead wrote:
beanman101283 wrote:
EvilDead wrote:
beanman101283 wrote:
hubbinsd wrote:

I played about 10 hours of W1 before getting frustrated with the pacing & repetition. I'm currently about 20 hours into W2 and still loving it, despite many of the lame bolted-on mechanics early in the game (e.g., pointless, one-off QTEs). Looking forward to this one...

There's an option to turn off the 1-time QTEs. They're still there for the fist fights, but they're easy and repeatable.

Wait what? I just put 5 hours into it and the QTE's are annoying the hell out of me. What mechanic replaces them?

I think they just.. don't happen. Since I'm playing the game for the first time with them off, I can't compare to having them on. But it's just a toggle in the menu.

Yep, you're correct. Unfortunately they still exist for the fist fights though.

Yeah, but they're really easy, whether using keyboard or controller. They appear in quadrants of the screen for WASD or ABXY so you just need to move your finger in the right direction.

Some interesting details: http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/28/witc...

...an average play-through will take you 50 hours, ending up on one of 36 world states, leading to one of three hour-long epilogue chapters at the end.

Locational damage in combat sounds interesting, as does civilians reporting you for trying to take everything that's not nailed down.

Scratched wrote:

as does civilians reporting you for trying to take everything that's not nailed down.

This was a weird incongruity in the Witcher 2 - you had this deep world that allowed you to just walk into everyone's homes and steal all their stuff. That said I got to like it because it's a proven fact that if it's takeable in the game, gamers will take it regardless of consequences... so just letting it happen always seemed like a subversive nod to our general sensibilities.

past imbiginjapan wrote:

Actually the fact that you can steal everything in plain sight is interesting - in a world where so much is "gritty" and "realistic" it doesn't quite fit in. But then again I feel like it was one of the few concessions to the player that the devs made. They know most players are going to go through everyone's pockets anyway, so why make them go through the motions of picking the lock, waiting for the NPC to turn their back, etc.? Just get on with the petty theft, already. Witchers need lots of twine!

I always enjoyed how Gothic games handled personal property. I never understood why other RPGs haven't adopted that model.

Oh wow, those screenshots are ridiculous. I can't wait.

Scratched wrote:

civilians reporting you for trying to take everything that's not nailed down.

In a Witcher game! The conjunction of spheres is indeed at hand.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Oh wow, those screenshots are ridiculous. I can't wait.

CDP is probably going to force a bunch of people to upgrade their rigs in the next year or two for this and/or CP2077.

shoptroll wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Oh wow, those screenshots are ridiculous. I can't wait.

CDP is probably going to force a bunch of people to upgrade their rigs in the next year or two for this and/or CP2077.

Are they really upgrading or pushing the engine that much? TW2 ran great on medium-end hardware. I suspect that it will run just fine at medium settings on a GTX 460 or above. The screenshots look about as good as TW2. It's the environments and art design that amaze me.

I just hope that people don't have to skip it because they're hardware can't run it. If it's like TW2, that shouldn't be the case.

I'm going to have to finally do my second run of TW2 methinks.

Those screenshots look terrible..simply awful..

Spoiler:

want now!

Maybe I'm crazy but I think TW2 looks better than that.
On the other hand I always thought it was a game that looked way better in motion than in screenshots.

Supposedly these are early screens from a souped up T2 render engine.. the real T3 engine isnt finished yet...

TheGameguru wrote:

Supposedly these are early screens from a souped up T2 render engine.. the real T3 engine isnt finished yet...

So they are putting in a big engine update. I do remember reading something about that now that I think about it. Cool.

I will upgrade my PC for this game if necessary. I really hope they are able to nail the trick of incorporating a strong narrative into an open world. I've yet to play a game that pulls it off, but I have faith that they can do it. I'm such a fan that I've even watched the whole Polish TV series with crappy English subtitles. Cannot wait.

conejote wrote:

I'm such a fan that I've even watched the whole Polish TV series with crappy English subtitles.

Haaa ha. I watched a clip and decided -- NO!

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
conejote wrote:

I'm such a fan that I've even watched the whole Polish TV series with crappy English subtitles.

Haaa ha. I watched a clip and decided -- NO! :)

Hahaha....it's not terrible, but it's not great either. Some of Sapkowski's short stories actually fit pretty well into hour long episodes. The series takes the same approach as some of the books, which is to present vignettes from various points in his life, rather than having an overarching storyline.

CDPR had another hidden message in the E3 trailer: http://i.imgur.com/keXMHsO.png

Which leads to http://thewitcher.com/killingmonsters/

Speculation on the "Something big?", I'm guessing it's just the CGI intro.

I love the enthusiasm these guys clearly have for making their games. It's heartwarming, and makes me want to support them even more (not that I was for a moment even considering not getting this at launch).

Edit: I don't know if this trailer has been posted yet, but damn it looks beautiful.

Man I will hate to see the specs required to make this game purr at 60fps+. My 670 GTX started crying while I was watching that video.

Can't wait for it! The more open world thing is going to be very interesting. I hope it can capture the feel of Skyrim at times where you just enjoy wandering around checking stuff out.

Gumbie wrote:

Man I will hate to see the specs required to make this game purr at 60fps+. My 670 GTX started crying while I was watching that video.

I can't imagine it's that different to TW2. It certainly won't be like the jump between TW1 and TW2.

Scratched wrote:
Gumbie wrote:

Man I will hate to see the specs required to make this game purr at 60fps+. My 670 GTX started crying while I was watching that video.

I can't imagine it's that different to TW2. It certainly won't be like the jump between TW1 and TW2.

Yeah, I agree with this. Your 670 will be just fine so long as you ignore that ubersampling setting and are at 1920x1080.

Yeah, TW2 follows the same rules as most other games, there's usually a very small amount of setting that are out of proportion in terms of the graphics you gain versus the performance it costs to put them up full. The biggest problem is that you need to restart the game if you want to tweak those settings. For Uber sampling they even put it in red with a warning, although that acts as a red flag to a bull for some people.

The other aspect for TW2 is that the art style stays intact even on low, which they needed when they toned it down for the 360.

What DX11 brings to the TW3 table:

It's going to be an interesting time now because the lower bar is being raised, that they can put the tech in at the base level rather than using a decade old DX9 with maybe some DX11 options on top as an alternate version.

Did I mention beautiful?