Is it true that CDPR underwent a major organizational shift during and following The Witcher 3?

[lukaszek]

I think it's telling that in Skyrim you'll typically find the PoI organically before it appears on your map

most pois are caves that you find on map long before you will spot it. Same for important ones like dragons on mountain peaks.

Actual typical 'exploration' in skyrim is riding a horse along the road and poi markers popping around you.

Witcher system would be much better if you had to get information from local tavern as opposed to quick grab from notice board. Or during gwent.

Many witcher pois can be expected just when looking at the map(like smaller settlements for example). Skyrim doesnt have that, only largest cities are something more than just poi marker

 

[RRRrrr]

I feel like people are overanalyzing this. They tried to make a GTA-clone in the TW3 engine, while trying to please console retards and the masses in general. It was bound to fail. But let's not act like the main story didn't have some solid stuff in it. The whole thing about having one person in the body of another was cool. For example, it made me wonder if I would fuck my exes if they were in the body of a hot woman. Spoiler alert, I fucked them in their original ugly bodies, of course I would fuck them if they transfered into something serviceable. But again, it was a nice perspective.

 

[racofer]

witcher 3 point of interest: another formulaic item on your open world checklist to complete and mark off that has nothing to do with anything related to the rest of the game whatsoever. Without these, the game is overall improved.

idk how people have trouble understanding the concept of 'ubisoft formula', but you probably shouldn't be calling other people retards if you can't grasp this

While that's true, and Witcher 3 follows the same open warld! failed design of nearly all modern games riddled with points of interest across their mostly empty maps, it at least delivered well-written fetch/side quests that tie to the game world in a satisfying manner. Had TW3 used the hub-based approach of TW2 with the same level of writing for its quests and characters, I believe CDPR could have squeezed a shitload of more relevant quests and progression than what TW3 did, which was not small to begin with. Without the quality writing and characters, TW3 falls apart, and it would be a worse game than Skyrim on most accounts. To imagine how much worse TW3 would be without its narrative, simply look at Cyberpunk, which is overall worse than TW3 when it comes to writing and quests. Not only that, but Cyberpunk relies even more on its open warld! activities, being riddled with disconnected fetch quests and points of interest "exploration", being an overall worst game for that.

skyrim point of interest: a cave you can optionally explore, probably has quests or some loot. Without these, skyrim falls apart.

The thing is, Bethesda games are sold purely on open-world exploration. Skyrim, despite it's abysmal decline compared to some of its predecessors, manages to do open world better than every other game that came after it, which were all inspired by Skyrim's profits success. Bethesda's plots are meh, their characters are meher, and their quests are ok-ish at best. While most other games managed to surpass these aspects easily, these are not the key features of open world games, and nobody has yet beaten Bethesda on this, despite being a pretty low bar to overcome.

I guess the Bethesda formula is just so loose that nobody managed to yet comprehend how to at least replicate it.

 

[thesecret1]

I suspect it's because they realized during playtesting that players were skipping past these places.

Given that half the POIs are just a random place in an otherwise uninteresting, generic patch of land that looks the same as everything else, I'd be surprised if players managed to actually find them without the map marker...

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

The whole thing about having one person in the body of another was cool. For example, it made me wonder if I would fuck my exes if they were in the body of a hot woman. Spoiler alert, I fucked them in their original ugly bodies, of course I would fuck them if they transfered into something serviceable. But again, it was a nice perspective.

This right here. This is the quality content I keep coming back to the codex for. Literally lol'ed. More than once.

 

[ropetight]

CDPR was always trendy fashion company trying to amaze the young and amuse the old, so I don't know how much Old Guards story is plausible.

Witcher 1 was not some cRPG wet dream - they tried to emulate KotoR and other BioWare games from that period.
Witcher 2 was plagued with god-awful QuickTime events that were popular at that time from God and Gears (of War, of course).
Witcher 3 tried to emulate Skyrim - but CDPR added better story, cinematic cutscenes and especially better dialogues, so game looked more crafted and less generic while removing half of the role playing and exploring.

All CDPR games had punching-above-their-weight-class production values.
Graphics were always top-tier for the time - if you compare looks of first Witcher and NWN2 (same engine), Witcher looked more realistic, cinematic and flashy.
Of course, NWN2 was much more cRPG than Witcher, but that just illustrates where CDPR focus was.



Witcher intros and cinematics at the time were second only to the Blizzard - lots of solid renderings and sound engineering went into intros.
Soundtracks were good too - I still remember Vader song for the first Witcher; unusual at that time.


Since Witcher games were based on the books, it made sense to have only one PC - which made their development of the systems much easier and stories tighter.
When they were making Cyberpunk, it looked logical that since they were porting tabletop RPG that the game will be more cRPG, Deus EX at least.
Instead, they went with emulating GTA and whatever UbiSoft was making that year - which was terrible decision, when you see how much money, manpower and experience RockStar and UbiSoft have.
That decision could be made after couple of years of making prototypes, and not only once - C2077 looks like it went through couple complete rewrites.

TL;DR - they rided the trends, and the trends rided them in the end.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Witcher 1 was not some cRPG wet dream - they tried to emulate KotoR and other BioWare games from that period.

They weren't very similar at all beyond some basic engine functionalities, I'm not sure how you got this.

 

[ropetight]

Witcher 1 was not some cRPG wet dream - they tried to emulate KotoR and other BioWare games from that period.

They weren't very similar at all beyond some basic engine functionalities, I'm not sure how you got this.

They were completely different - Obisidan made cRPG, and CDPR made 3rd person action game with RPG elements.
They were released in consecutive years, and CDPR focused more on story and production than RPG elements.

That is why the story of once proud RPG maker Old Guards CDPR is not believable to me.

 

[blessed king of longing]

shit thread