The Witcher 3 Pre-Expansion Thread

[Gerrard]

At least they aren't wearing glass armor, right?

 

[Perkel]

Lol
Now I know why everyone is raving about that Bloody Baron quest

This is great but this isn't why people rave about that quest.
Depending how you make choices in game this is why people rave about Red Baron questline SPOILERS naturally:

Spoiler

This hit the hardest. This is one of the best examples of character building in gaming imo. You start to talk with him and everything you assume at first point is being subverted. Sure he was piece of shit but as you understand him those things weren't that easy to categorize and that "piece of shit" category started to be really mudy.
Then once his character grows on you, developers present you with his end that forces you to give your own piece of opinion on him based not by first look but what happened.

He is hanging there and you realize that after all he wasn't just piece of shit. He was dude who made wrong choices in life and everything spiraled into shit after his original sin (killing his wife boyfriend)

 

[Paul_cz]

As fantastic as the Blood Baron quest is, I find it almost a bit overhyped. Or rather, unnecesarily overshadowing the rest of the game, which is also filled with great quests. Towerful of Mice, Lord of Undvik, Carnal Sins, Last Wish, Possession..even a tiny fetch quest like Black Pearl left big impression. Hell it has been a year since I finished the game and I still remember even names of the many quests. And of course Hearts of Stone might have even surpassed the main game. Hopefully Blood and Wine will follow suit.

 

[WhiteGuts]

I liked the cheese-filled dungeon. You reward for going through it is a sword called "Emmentaler".

 

[Orma]

Steam is downloading 2.4gb. Probably blood and wine pre-load right?

Spoiler

can't be just a patch?

 

[WhiteGuts]

It's the patch, most likely.

 

[Perkel]

Blood and wine is like 12+ GB

 

[Orma]

 

[Perkel]

Downloaded patch.

- you can now switch off autocentering camera yay!
- overall ui is much more sleek than before and changes are everywhere not only in Inventory menu.
- potions, bombs, oils also have their own tab now that is not cluttered with shit. Same with food any any other category that has some use in game.
- you don't need mods anymore to zoom out map a lot
- maps ui has now sleek selection of things you want like shops and etc.

So tommorow expansion and with this pach it feels a bit like EE edition people wanted.

 

[NotAGolfer]

As fantastic as the Blood Baron quest is, I find it almost a bit overhyped. Or rather, unnecesarily overshadowing the rest of the game, which is also filled with great quests. Towerful of Mice, Lord of Undvik, Carnal Sins, Last Wish, Possession..even a tiny fetch quest like Black Pearl left big impression. Hell it has been a year since I finished the game and I still remember even names of the many quests. And of course Hearts of Stone might have even surpassed the main game. Hopefully Blood and Wine will follow suit.

Great, I think I'm about to completely reverse my opinion of this game. First attempt left me underwhelmed because I expected the usual CRPG carrot on a stick gameplay of levelups and grinding and started to explore every POI and completely looted villages etc. Things like the artificial enemy and item levels are really off-putting if you do that so I disliked it. Combat is good for what it is and the high number of unique end-boss like monsters even elevates it to being good at times.

But this has to be played for the stories and the stories alone. And I think every other open world CRPG developer out there should watch closely and try to learn from these masterfully embedded and interwoven high quality quests.
Bethesda for example should finally wake up and just fire their complete writing department.

 

[Carrion]

Yeah, the inventory changes are pretty nice. It's still not perfect, but it's hard to make an inventory system that doesn't become some sort of a mess after you've picked up one hundred thousand items. At least you can find what you're looking for a bit quicker than before with little to no scrolling. I like that on the alchemy screen it only shows the formulae for the potions that you haven't made yet, which similarly makes it much quicker to use, but I wish they had done something to the crafting UI as well, like a filter that allows you to hide all that low-level stuff that you're never going to craft anyway.

A weird thing was that the patch bumped my Geralt to level 39 (despite having done everything in both the main game and all the DLCs I was only level 38 with still some ways to go). I'm not sure if it was intended, but I don't mind since that just means that I get to finally equip all that stuff I picked up in HoS.

 

[Gerrard]

This patch added 1,6GB to the game folder, what the fuck?

 

[Perkel]

As fantastic as the Blood Baron quest is, I find it almost a bit overhyped. Or rather, unnecesarily overshadowing the rest of the game, which is also filled with great quests. Towerful of Mice, Lord of Undvik, Carnal Sins, Last Wish, Possession..even a tiny fetch quest like Black Pearl left big impression. Hell it has been a year since I finished the game and I still remember even names of the many quests. And of course Hearts of Stone might have even surpassed the main game. Hopefully Blood and Wine will follow suit.

More like most of reviewers and people got only to Bloody Baron thus this is why they only speak of it. Especially since there are shitload of quest you can simply never do if you follow only main quest line.

For example i didn't do almost anything in Skellige aside from main quest. Saved this for my replay when B&W will come out. Same with HoS. I will be doing full playtrough with HoS and B&W

 

[Perkel]

This patch added 1,6GB to the game folder, what the fuck?

Probably added and deleted few things. So overall from 2.8 Gb only 1,6GB is actually increased.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Lol
Now I know why everyone is raving about that Bloody Baron quest

This is great but this isn't why people rave about that quest.
Depending how you make choices in game this is why people rave about Red Baron questline SPOILERS naturally:

Spoiler

This hit the hardest. This is one of the best examples of character building in gaming imo. You start to talk with him and everything you assume at first point is being subverted. Sure he was piece of shit but as you understand him those things weren't that easy to categorize and that "piece of shit" category started to be really mudy.
Then once his character grows on you, developers present you with his end that forces you to give your own piece of opinion on him based not by first look but what happened.

He is hanging there and you realize that after all he wasn't just piece of shit. He was dude who made wrong choices in life and everything spiraled into shit after his original sin (killing his wife boyfriend)

Damn, I opened that spoiler. My loss though.
The guy grew on me too, and I hope that I can somehow prevent this ending you got there.

A big part of what makes this quest great for me is how it changes up gameplay and lets you do unusual stuff like

Spoiler

finding a sneaky way inside the castle,
escorting the "princess" back home ,
freeing some guy and a few horseys from a burning stable,
watching a creepy monster straight out of an 80s horror flick and then escorting it to its resting place, now and then interrupted by a little combat and Axii calming,
following a flying baby ghost
and probably more, am not done with the quest chain.

I like that sort of variety in my games, too many games are one trick ponies.

 

[Perkel]

As fantastic as the Blood Baron quest is, I find it almost a bit overhyped. Or rather, unnecesarily overshadowing the rest of the game, which is also filled with great quests. Towerful of Mice, Lord of Undvik, Carnal Sins, Last Wish, Possession..even a tiny fetch quest like Black Pearl left big impression. Hell it has been a year since I finished the game and I still remember even names of the many quests. And of course Hearts of Stone might have even surpassed the main game. Hopefully Blood and Wine will follow suit.

Great, I think I'm about to completely reverse my opinion of this game. First attempt left me underwhelmed because I expected the usual CRPG carrot on a stick gameplay of levelups and grinding and started to explore every POI and completely looted villages etc. Things like the artificial enemy and item levels are really off-putting if you do that so I disliked it. Combat is good for what it is and the high number of unique end-boss like monsters even elevates it to being good at times.

But this has to be played for the stories and the stories alone. And I think every other open world CRPG developer out there should watch closely and try to learn from these masterfully embedded and interwoven high quality quests.
Bethesda for example should finally wake up and just fire their complete writing department.

Switch off Undiscovered Points of Interest. Seriously. This is the worst thing CDPR did to game. There is huge difference between finding something on your own instead of following marker on map.

 

[oldmanpaco]

I didn't even know you could turn those off. Good to know.

 

[Perkel]

I didn't even know you could turn those off. Good to know.

That is like the first thing i did when i started to play. IT changes completely exploration for game.

BTW patch adds ability to switch off that annoying as fuck fish eye effect when you are using witcher senses !

edit: Patch feels like mod compilation of best QoL changes from nexus.

 

[NotAGolfer]

BTW patch adds ability to switch off that annoying as fuck fish eye effect when you are using witcher senses !

 

[Paul_cz]

As fantastic as the Blood Baron quest is, I find it almost a bit overhyped. Or rather, unnecesarily overshadowing the rest of the game, which is also filled with great quests. Towerful of Mice, Lord of Undvik, Carnal Sins, Last Wish, Possession..even a tiny fetch quest like Black Pearl left big impression. Hell it has been a year since I finished the game and I still remember even names of the many quests. And of course Hearts of Stone might have even surpassed the main game. Hopefully Blood and Wine will follow suit.

Great, I think I'm about to completely reverse my opinion of this game. First attempt left me underwhelmed because I expected the usual CRPG carrot on a stick gameplay of levelups and grinding and started to explore every POI and completely looted villages etc. Things like the artificial enemy and item levels are really off-putting if you do that so I disliked it. Combat is good for what it is and the high number of unique end-boss like monsters even elevates it to being good at times.

But this has to be played for the stories and the stories alone. And I think every other open world CRPG developer out there should watch closely and try to learn from these masterfully embedded and interwoven high quality quests.
Bethesda for example should finally wake up and just fire their complete writing department.

Yeeees. TW3 absolutely excels at stories, writing and quest design. It is not perfect, I have some gripes with the main questline, but overall it is better than pretty much any AAA game since New Vegas (and at least on the same level as NV).
Bethesda really needs to replace their writing and design staff, but they never will since they are all one big happy family that does not much care about quality.

And yes as Perkel says - disabling the point of interest question marks makes the game better. It should have been disabled by default.

 

[Perkel]

PoI should be NG+ feature.

 

[bonescraper]

As fantastic as the Blood Baron quest is, I find it almost a bit overhyped. Or rather, unnecesarily overshadowing the rest of the game, which is also filled with great quests. Towerful of Mice, Lord of Undvik, Carnal Sins, Last Wish, Possession..even a tiny fetch quest like Black Pearl left big impression. Hell it has been a year since I finished the game and I still remember even names of the many quests. And of course Hearts of Stone might have even surpassed the main game. Hopefully Blood and Wine will follow suit.

Fun Fact: Towefrul of Mice is based on this legend http://www.thekf.org/kf/events/children/polish-english_comics/Popiel_book.pdf

 

[Perkel]

heh they made cats hiss and run away from Geralt.
Looks like they fixed lore omission.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Is that why geralt was looking at that cat funny when he found the barons daughter?

 

[bonescraper]

Ok, i really like the new UI. It finally looks clear and is really intuitive to use.

BTW, did they change how the water looks? I remember it looking more oily and i think the surface was flatter (i'm talking about rivers and small bodies of water). When i loaded the game today, my water detail slider was set to low, and i had everything set to uber before.

Also, men. Now that i have a new graphics card and bigger screen, i want to replay this game from start to finish. So, is NG+ worth it? Specifically, will it provide challenge, or will my level 40 Geralt be completely OP from the start?