Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

The Witcher 3 Pre-Expansion Thread

Commissar Draco

Codexia Comrade Colonel Commissar
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2011
Messages
20,872
Location
Привислинский край
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
What about LGBT ? DA:I was clearly defending the rights of the LGBT community but all I see in Witcher 3 is macho attitude, boobs and straight sex.

There is one Homo and pair of lesbos in Twicher 2 and you have option to see both:

Dead/blinded with homo pedophile ending with his cut balls in mouth. Take that Biowhore. :troll:
 

cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
18,959
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
And then some M$ lawyers in the back raised their eyebrows so back to the marketspeak we go:

We don't agree there is a downgrade but it's our opinion, and gamers' feeling can be different.

Well game did improve massively in certain areas like renderer and characters. This is why he says that.
Problem is that other parts were downgraded like various assets polycount and complete lack of tesselation

Not a GFX expert but I feel something terrible has been done to the shaders. That's the most obvious change. And vegetation. Grass and foliage in this game feels outdated somehow. It's masked by all those weather effects (which look pretty lame if you concentrate, like some computer imps waving around cardboard props) but I can't shake the feeling even last-gen Witcher 2 had better vegetation (or at least comparable).

Apart from that, and the stupid oversaturated colours, as per usual with CDPR, the downgraded textures themselves still look very nice. And the face animations are probably the best in the business. Even AssCreed Unity, the best looking nu-gen game so far, can't hold a candle to W3 in this respect.

Will wait till next month till the proper action game is released....... Batman Arkham Knight d1p :smug:

Fuck off this thread and don't come back.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

Administrator
Staff Member
Joined
Apr 4, 2009
Messages
8,603
Location
Deutschland
What about LGBT ? DA:I was clearly defending the rights of the LGBT community but all I see in Witcher 3 is macho attitude, boobs and straight sex.

There is one Homo and pair of lesbos in Twicher 2 and you have option to see both:

Dead/blinded with homo pedophile ending with his cut balls in mouth. Take that Biowhore. :troll:

 

deranged

Cipher
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
513
Location
Governed by clowns
There is one Homo and pair of lesbos in Twicher 2 and you have option to see both:

Dead/blinded with homo pedophile ending with his cut balls in mouth. Take that Biowhore. :troll:

So only ONE homosexual NPC in a hundred+ hour game ? What kind of statement is that ? And I doubt Geralt can enjoy taking it up the butt like the inquisitor did with the Bull. Also where is the rage from feminazi gamers ?
 

Markman

da Blitz master
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2002
Messages
3,737
Location
Sthlm, Swe
Serpent in the Staglands Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Watched a bit of Liriks stream yesterday and saw that there are synergies with abilities and mutagens.
Abilities are colored and if you put a red mutagen(lets say +5% to damage) next to a red ability you'll get a +10% bonus instead.
 

Cyberarmy

Love fool
Patron
Joined
Feb 7, 2013
Messages
8,670
Location
Smyrna - Scalanouva
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Watched a bit of Liriks stream yesterday and saw that there are synergies with abilities and mutagens.
Abilities are colored and if you put a red mutagen(lets say +5% to damage) next to a red ability you'll get a +10% bonus instead.

If you use all the same colour on the same column like the mutagen that bonus goes nuts. Lowest red mutagen gives %20 attack bonus with 3 red talents.
 

Cyberarmy

Love fool
Patron
Joined
Feb 7, 2013
Messages
8,670
Location
Smyrna - Scalanouva
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Can you exchange/upgrade the mutagen?


Yup, 3 low tier mutagens can be upgraded to an upper tier and you can change them on the run as you like.
There are also some special monster mutagens from monsters that you need for powerful potions. One of them triggers quen when your health is low for example.
 

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
Patron
Joined
Nov 23, 2014
Messages
17,106
Location
At large
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Not a GFX expert but I feel something terrible has been done to the shaders. That's the most obvious change. And vegetation. Grass and foliage in this game feels outdated somehow. It's masked by all those weather effects (which look pretty lame if you concentrate, like some computer imps waving around cardboard props) but I can't shake the feeling even last-gen Witcher 2 had better vegetation (or at least comparable).
The grass doesn't seem to have self-shadowing, like you could enable in skyrim for example. This makes it look unnaturally bright, also, the texture itself isn't very sharp. I hope it's something they'll improve upon but it's not all that annoying for me. Once they optimize it further and new drivers come out, I'm sure things will change. Not that the game is ugly, but knowing the half-finished state they release games now, I guess there are already many known fixes that they can apply regarding optimization.

Meanwhile, I discovered that completely turning off hair physics raises my fps by about 30, and the hair even looks better than with hairworks on. It's up to personal preference but I think the choice is between Very much realistic animation/unrealistic look when not in movement and Better static look/somewhat less realistic animation, and with 30 fps on top. :)

Apart from that, and the stupid oversaturated colours, as per usual with CDPR, the downgraded textures themselves still look very nice. And the face animations are probably the best in the business. Even AssCreed Unity, the best looking nu-gen game so far, can't hold a candle to W3 in this respect.
I also think I should look for some postprocessor settings for more realistic colors but have been putting it off because I'm too lazy to do the searching and tuning. Do you have a link to something that's good for you?

BTW, I switched to English audio for a bit, just to hear Charles Dance, and did I feel sorry for guys who listen to Geralt in English. Now I see what people mean about the "edgy teen-idol type protagonist". It sounded like a maximum-cheesy mongrel of Garrett/Batman/JC Denton. The actor is just trying soo hard he sounds like a parody imo. The french voice is miles better. :)
 

cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
18,959
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
I also think I should look for some postprocessor settings for more realistic colors but have been putting it off because I'm too lazy to do the searching and tuning. Do you have a link to something that's good for you?

I'm using this:

https://sfx.thelazy.net/games/preset/3699/

The install took me about 20 minutes, it takes a few steps. But it's no rocket science either. And the result is much easier on the eyes.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
24,069
ffs i cant take it anymore. another quest with fucking follow trails with witchers sense and before that i had to find a goat and herd him to his owner using a fucking bell/witchers sense.
fuck this shit. uninstal.exe:negative:

all those fucking paid shills claiming in reviews that every side quest is unique:x its not you fucktards:x its DAI level of shitty meaningless collectibles :x
Play Yakuza 3 and 4. When you don't feel like beating up some punks, you can go play golf.
 

Merlkir

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,216
The hunter who asks you to help him with stray dogs is gay, it's one of the first NPCs you meet. FFS...

(meaning, do you guys even play this game?)
 

DosBuster

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
1,861
Location
God's Dumpster
Codex USB, 2014
The hunter who asks you to help him with stray dogs is gay, it's one of the first NPCs you meet. FFS...

(meaning, do you guys even play this game?)

Not sure if that's a complaint or whatever, but, it should be mentioned that the character in particular does not try and fuck you in the arse so it's already better than BioWare.
 

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
People who are saying it's good need to qualify their reviews saying whether or not they liked W2... so I know to disregard their opinions.

If you don't like witcher 2, don't like assassin creed/skyrim kind of gameplay, what are you doing here ? You expect some sort of miracle ? At midnight the popamole will turn out to be a turn based tactical rpg , like in faery tales:!
got a bunch of brofists from obvious fanboys, but be honest and mention that assassin's creed was playable. you could actually control your character with your controls.
 

Markman

da Blitz master
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2002
Messages
3,737
Location
Sthlm, Swe
Serpent in the Staglands Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong
In Assassin's creed its all preanimated, its the master of the Awesome button(tm). But it does feel better than Witcher.
Geralt moves like he has ADHD when you want to move him a little bit.
 
Last edited:

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
How the hell do you change lock on target?

Think it just always goes for the closest one, so just hit the button again.
No, it doesn't work that way. If you hit the button again you miss the focus. Can it be you can't change lock on target? :retarded:


As far as I tried you cant. I had the exact same problem, in W" you could tab through targets if you tab the button again here iit does nothing.

:what:

This is beyond retarded. Why the hell did they get rid of this option?
because you don't need it. duh! it's a point and click action game.
 
Joined
Mar 14, 2012
Messages
1,491
Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath
Just want to say that Witcher 3 is the best shit game I ever played. Really dig it. Defenetely it's videoskyrim of 2015. All hail to the kurwa!

At the same time I have a new answer for the eternal what's-an-rpg question.
Not Witcher 3
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
2,027
My few cents (wall of text, feel free to skip to nest post if you are impatient or not in the mood - like my gf in a while).
I’m in Blood Baron’s Castle (don’t know the English name) in Velen, so not that far into the game, but I try to explore rather thoroughly.

Let’s start with bad things:
Combat
.
No surprise here, some steps forward, some backwards form W2. Dodging seems to be better in most situations than rolling due to shorter distance, unless you want to escape from the enemy, then you can roll as long as you like. My biggest complaint goes to controls. Using keyboard and mouse can be very frustrating at times, as game seems to lag somewhat regarding input responses. I’ve found myself very often dodging in wrong direction, regardless of direction keys pressed, or saw Geralt plunging forward some time after pressing move forward key. The protagonist also seems to randomly change pace to walking during a fight, without the player locking some particular enemy.

Another flaw is the AI. Very often enemies just stand in a group, or run around in circles. Perhaps it should be AI’s routine to lure you to chase one enemy in a larger group, so the rest can encircle you, but it doesn’t work that well. It’s especially pronounced when fighting fast moving humanoids, like Drowners or Nekkers. I managed to eliminate one group just by standing nearby and spamming Igni, maybe there are some terrain feature blocking them?
AI also tend to block itself in corners.

Another complaint is the HP bloat. Higher level monsters are painful to fight, when your one slash barely reduces their health bar - I tried fighting that Vyvern on the lighthouse with lvl 4 character, at best I managed to reduce it to half health exploiting the AI, chopping always from the side or the rear, until some form of attack (I stand to close to the wings perhaps) slowly depleted my health.
Level capped equipment does nothing to alleviate the problem (I already have recipe for silver sword doing twice the damage as my current one, but it’s capped to level 7 so this Vyvern for example is a no go for me, until much later in the main quest) . I guess that the players have to accept that solution to direct player progress according to the wishes of the designers.

Alchemy.
Once you create a potion or oil, you will get immediately few items of that kind (e.g. 3 elixirs), which will automatically replenish as long as you have the necessary ingredient (like alcohol for elixirs) every time you meditate. Also, players can now use all that stuff during a fight, and if you combine this with the ability to manage your inventory during a fight, almost nothing stops one from using everything at the same time (toxicity can be reduced by elixirs as well).
I personally liked the necessity to prepare for the monster you would fight in W2, and the fact it took some time, it gave me a feeling of really stepping into the shoes of a witcher, the monster hunter; so naturally I think it is a step back. The elixirs now last a lot less as well.
On the other side, it can be seen as somewhat realistic because you cannot carry ridiculous number of elixirs with you (but you can carry almost infinite amount of alcohol bottles, so there’s that), and you are not able to spam petards, which are limited in the same way.

Inventory and loot.
There is one “sort “ button, but it doesn’t seem to sort items according to their weight or monetary value, just arrange them in a neat way. Mind you, you could sort your items that way in W2. Loot and itemization in general is as bad, as in W2. You can find broken rakes or broken paddles in small sacks, and ransacking seemingly rich interiors and decorative chests will leave you with “magical item” in the form of reinforced leather; on the opposite side of the spectrum you can find meteorite ore in poor villages. All this makes ransacking a necessity, since alchemical and crafting ingredients for better and more rare items are very expensive. And at the same time you get 20 gold pieces from a questgiver, while robbing his house can net you few times more ;)


Witcher senses.
They give you audio and visual cues for your surroundings, which feel nice and puts you in a brief “hunter mode”, but their implementation in investigations is truly cringe worthy.
While standing in a pool of blood you cannot examine it, or interact with it in any way, until you activate your witcher sense and trigger it as clue; upon which you will be prompted to “press E to examine” routine. You literally can’t progress the quest, drawing your own conclusions unless you activate witcher senses in predefined moments. Big penalty dick for CDP, as this hand holding is very disappointing.


Things that are okayish:
Signs.

The developers claim that they reduced Quen spamming, but I refrained from using it in W2 at all, so cannot really tell the difference. Yrden is AoE slow time spell now. The environments have some interactivity for sign users – you can now ignite conveniently placed flammable alcohol barrels, throw bees nests from the trees and blow some barriers and closed doors with Aard. Some of this is somewhat obvious and heavy handed, but overall it is a nice touch.

Dialogues.
So far they seem to be more superfluous and less witty written than in W2, but as I said, I’m not that far in the game. They don’t insult your intelligence but there is some amount of unnecessary exposition and summarizing what your conclusions should be in some conversations. But I treat White Orchard as a really long tutorial so I hope it will improve from now on.

Overall polish
(he he).
It’s ok, but ther are some bugs, which, - while not gamebraking, eventually are detrimental to the gameplay (missing objects in animations, NPC spawning when approaching locations at time of the day changes, mid-air spawning when fast travelling, characters clipping through objects and so on).


Quest design.
So far it’s okay, I hope that handholding form the prologue area will stop and allow the player to progress himself through the quests stages more. Generally it retains W2 level of writing, which was pretty good in my book. There are some fed-ex quests, but nothing in the vein of “bring 5 wolf skins”.
Other than that the moral ambiguity that you expect from witcher games still exists and is generally satisfying. So far I have not reach any far reaching consequences of my actions, but I hope they will be as pronounced as in previous installments of the series.

Voice acting.
So far it's decent and every dialogue is full voiced. Geralt in English version sounds like a grate ;)


The good (finally):
Graphics.

Downgrade (which is not a downgrade, but change of renderer, as we were explained today) aside, it looks very well. Sure, there are some low res textured, foliage being the biggest culprit; but the environments are crafted really well, and react superbly to weather and lighting changes. Road surface gets wet during the storm and reflects sunshine appearing shortly after, sunsets and sunrises are a beauty to behold, especially with intricate shadowplay on the verges of the forests. There is no shortage of scenic locations, as the devs surely realize where the game shines. Small complain goes to epileptic trees (which still look great).

The characters, their clothes and armament, their facial animations can be complimented as well. Aside from few clipping issues in cut-scenes the work done in this department is top notch.

Atmosphere.
As long as you expect relatively mature grimdark atmosphere, you will rarely be disappointed.
And by mature I don’t mean that there are tits and blood spatters with finishing moves. It’s just that the world creates oppressive atmosphere with always at least two viewpoints to every action and a circle of misery for common folk. For example in the White Orchard are, you slowly learn, that villagers managed to get free from their standard evil feudal lord, who in turn burnt their village. Then you learn that his rage was most likely provoked by one woman shit-talking his son. But you can also learn that his son was in fact gay, and that turned the lord into heavy drinking and neglecting his people, which caused the whole chain of events.
Another good bid you encounter is when you first travel to the Inn at the Crossroads (don’t know the it’s English name) shortly after arriving to Velen. You are greeted by man hiding their women and children or sending them away and other signs of some approaching menace. Then you enter the Inn, listen to some frightened folk and finally some armed men arrive, which you immediately recognize as evil wannabe bad-asses from their irregular armament which is a sign of bandits in any RPG and excessive cursing, so you know that they are bad people. But overall it serves as a nice introduction to the rules and social dynamics of the land you are visiting.
At times this overall negativity can make you outright laugh as being naïve and heavy handed and dark-fantasy typical; but I cannot help but generally applaud for creating mostly consistent and good atmosphere.

Music and sounds.
No complaints here, I think the soundtrack suits the game perfectly and complements what game tries to achieve perfectly (slavic tones and whatnot). But as techincal side may be objectiviely measured, whether you like or not this type of music is a matter of personal preference (I recommend reducing music volume to 90% or less, or it might get on your nerves as too obtrusive).

World.
I have no big complaints here. The villages are sprinkled with standard, run of the mill NPCs (trader, blacksmith, some questgiver or two) with schedules based on time of day so there is some life illusion. I personally like that travelling distances are not that short and you don't encounter NPCs or trashmobs behind every corner and tree. The "treasures" are mundane and in most encounters you will face some group of common enemy type (wolfs in forests, drowners at swamps, ghuls near battlefields or cemeteries etc.). In my opinion this resembles the low key world of the books, but YMMV on this one, so for some players it can be a rather large downside. I prefered more structure W2, but semi-open world in W3 has it's own merits. Also, do yourself a favour and turn off marks on map.

Tl; dr. If you are bored at work and want to read other persons opinion feel free to read, quote and wittily bash this opinion piece to pieces.
My short opinion – the game is ok, with some areas improved and really impressive, and some downgraded and disappointing in comparison to W2 and W1, with atrocious controls on k&m.
 
Last edited:

Carrion

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 30, 2011
Messages
3,648
Location
Lost in Necropolis
The two-potion limit in the quick slots is starting to get annoying. Potions are replenished every time you rest, so the further you go on in the game, the more potions you'll have. Still, you only have slots for two different potions at a time while the rest remain unusable. Might work in the "equip the right potions for each fight" sense, except that you can change your potion setup anytime for free from the inventory, meaning that the whole limit is pointless and only means that you'll be jumping in and out of the inventory all the time, even in the middle of combat. It isn't helped by the fact that the potion durations are very short and most potions only have 1-3 uses per rest, meaning that the two chosen potions will probably run out very fast. It's the exact same thing for bombs as well. I can somehow get this shit on the consoles where managing something like half-a-dozen potions might be too cumbersome, but it's just unacceptable on the PC. It'd be alright if the inventory was unavailable during combat and the amount of quick slots depended on the armor like in TW1, though.

I'm also not a huge fan of the fact that using a sign drains your entire Vigor bar, at least early in the game. It does prevent sign spamming to some extent, but as a side effect it encourages you to just use the same sign all the time. There's have been some tough fights where I've wanted to use Yrden but have just stuck with Quen because using anything else would leave me unprotected for too long. The tougher the fight is, the more I find myself relying on Quen + roll like in TW2 to get out of trouble, although it hasn't always worked perfectly and it's often more effective to remain standing.

edit: Beowulf above apparently addressed some of this already.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
12,851
The Polish dub seems to be all over the place. In the first few hours you hear Geralt mispronounce "Wyzima" with hard "z". Is this your first time or something? How the fuck did that even get in the game? Did they record this shit at home? And everyone seems to have their own opinion on how to say "Emhyr".
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
2,027
The Polish dub seems to be all over the place. In the first few hours you hear Geralt mispronounce "Wyzima" with hard "z". Is this your first time or something? How the fuck did that even get in the game? Did they record this shit at home? And everyone seems to have their own opinion on how to say "Emhyr".

Yeah, this really stands out, I could understand that this slipped somehow with some minor characters in sidequests, but for the protagonist and the main story line? This is even more funny if you watched their promo on how to pronounce stuff correctly (done together with Gamespot, if I remember correctly).
 

Scroo

Female Quota Staff
Patron
Staff Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2010
Messages
1,865,340
Location
Too far away from the sea
Codex 2014 Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
Am I the only one bored by the side quests already? They usually break down to "go somewhere, use your witcher senses, kill something, get a shitty reward". And exploration in the game is next to zero, why have an open world game when you don't reward exploration? Just for the sake of having an open world game?
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom