The Witcher 3 Pre-Expansion Thread

[Alfons]

Since we were on the topic of moral ambiguity & choices and consequences a bit earlier, here are a couple that I have actually tested:

Spoiler

Main Quest: Whispering Hillock

At one stage in the Crones storyline, you meet a spirit trapped in a tree. The Crones tell you to destroy the spirit in order to stop it from killing their villager worshipers. You go to the spirit and it tells you that it was a druidess trapped there by the Crones and that it'd be willing to save the village children from being eaten by the Crones, were you to free it. Sounds awesome, right? In other RPGs this'd be your standard 'moral' choice given that the Crones have already proven themselves to be child-eating douches.

So the spirit has you dig up its bones as one of the conditions, at which time Geralt remarks, "ohwaitaminute, these aren't human bones." You get the option then to betray the spirit and kill it instead of going through with the freedom ritual.

Outcomes:

1. Free the spirit -- the children are freed by the spirit, but the other villagers are slaughtered by it, because it turns out the spirit is no druidess but an ancient being as malicious as the Crones themselves. The Crones punish Anna - that's the Barons' wife - for losing the children and she dies. The Baron then hangs himself.

2. Kill the spirit -- the children are eaten by the Crones. The villagers however are fine. The Crones don't punish Anna, who survives the ordeal and is later rescued by the Baron & his daughter in a side quest. The Baron takes his wife to be healed by a healer and says he's going to 'be a new man from now on.'

Spoiler

Side Quest: Towerful of Mice

To complete this quest, you have one of two options:

1. Be a trusting pleb and take the bones of the ghost girl to her lover. In that case, he dies after she reveals herself to be a Pesta - a pestilence wraith - and then laughs at you and flees. The curse of the tower is lifted but is set to appear elsewhere.

2. Take the lover to the ghost girl. In that case, he also dies, but they make up before he dies and both 'pass on.' The curse of the tower is lifted.

I actually prefer the second scenario. With the first one both option are shit so you don't get fucked as much whichever you choose. The first scenario actually made me think of spec ops the line out of all things. The only way to win is to not play. So take the quest and never finish it, everyone remains alive.

 

[Azarkon]

Since we were on the topic of moral ambiguity & choices and consequences a bit earlier, here are a couple that I have actually tested:

Spoiler

Main Quest: Whispering Hillock

At one stage in the Crones storyline, you meet a spirit trapped in a tree. The Crones tell you to destroy the spirit in order to stop it from killing their villager worshipers. You go to the spirit and it tells you that it was a druidess trapped there by the Crones and that it'd be willing to save the village children from being eaten by the Crones, were you to free it. Sounds awesome, right? In other RPGs this'd be your standard 'moral' choice given that the Crones have already proven themselves to be child-eating douches.

So the spirit has you dig up its bones as one of the conditions, at which time Geralt remarks, "ohwaitaminute, these aren't human bones." You get the option then to betray the spirit and kill it instead of going through with the freedom ritual.

Outcomes:

1. Free the spirit -- the children are freed by the spirit, but the other villagers are slaughtered by it, because it turns out the spirit is no druidess but an ancient being as malicious as the Crones themselves. The Crones punish Anna - that's the Barons' wife - for losing the children and she dies. The Baron then hangs himself.

2. Kill the spirit -- the children are eaten by the Crones. The villagers however are fine. The Crones don't punish Anna, who survives the ordeal and is later rescued by the Baron & his daughter in a side quest. The Baron takes his wife to be healed by a healer and says he's going to 'be a new man from now on.'

Spoiler

Side Quest: Towerful of Mice

To complete this quest, you have one of two options:

1. Be a trusting pleb and take the bones of the ghost girl to her lover. In that case, he dies after she reveals herself to be a Pesta - a pestilence wraith - and then laughs at you and flees. The curse of the tower is lifted but is set to appear elsewhere.

2. Take the lover to the ghost girl. In that case, he also dies, but they make up before he dies and both 'pass on.' The curse of the tower is lifted.

I actually prefer the second scenario. With the first one both option are shit so you don't get fucked as much whichever you choose. The first scenario actually made me think of spec ops the line out of all things. The only way to win is to not play. So take the quest and never finish it, everyone remains alive.

But then you get no booty

 

[Alfons]

But then you get no booty

Shit!

 

[Trash]

Putting down the slider to 30fps has allowed me to go pretty wild with the graphical options. Game looks splendid now. And I was honestly thinking I wouldn't be able to play it on my olde toaster.

Surprised at how well it plays with a gamepad. Tried it out as a bit of a laugh and was amazed at how fluid it plays. Then again, this is an action game... Only thing bothering me is the distance to the main character. Some FOV options would be nice.

 

[Zeriel]

That's probably because you're a European and not a retarded American

It sounds like German to me though.

Their culture and aesthetics and general theme seems strongly Holy Roman Empire, but the language is definitely more Welsh, to the point of being straight cribbing at parts.

(Apologies for necromancy.)

 

[zeroprometheus]

More complaints/oversights/cudos
- books should be marked as read

+ i like the theft system Gtaesque in the sense that you get no penalties if you can elude the authorities

- Auto sheathing in the middle of a fight...cannot be disabled

- the witcher sense is an annoying design choice but even more annoying is the need to wait for objects to be highlighted instead of the ping like sonar of past games

- fall damage... srsly WTF. Geralt is either suffering from a severe bone disease Or the developers thought losing half life from a 6 foot jump i could have done in real life at the age of 5 was realistic

- the action log is ok but during combat it's useless when letters and numbers disappear as soon as they pop up

- like others have said, and I'm astonished CDPR did this after making three games, object selection should ALWAYS be camera dependent in 3rd person. Half the game is looting and even with the adjust pc controls for 1.03 trying to loot is needlesly tiresome.

 

[Gerrard]

Putting down the slider to 30fps has allowed me to go pretty wild with the graphical options. Game looks splendid now. And I was honestly thinking I wouldn't be able to play it on my olde toaster.

Surprised at how well it plays with a gamepad. Tried it out as a bit of a laugh and was amazed at how fluid it plays. Then again, this is an action game... Only thing bothering me is the distance to the main character. Some FOV options would be nice.

I don't know how you can play at 30FPS, it only magnifies the sluggishness of the controls.

More complaints/oversights/cudos
- books should be marked as read

Don't worry, they'll add that in a patch.

For the 3rd time.

 

[cvv]

I've been struggling with this for a while - is it just me or is the game too gloomy? I mean lighting-wise? I've been just fiddling with brightness/contrast/gamma for half hour but no matter what I do I can't make the damn thing look natural. Even on sunny midday everything is sort of...darkish. I lowered saturation which helped with the trademark CDPR nuclear colours but damn, the lighting in this game is straining muh eyes for some reason. Never experienced that with any other game.

 

[Zeriel]

I feel the opposite, I wouldn't say the game is too bright but basically all areas that aren't dark caves underground are the same bland, well-lit style. Night time has some cool effects, but it is the same brightness as day time, could stand to be a bit darker for ambience.

 

[Gerrard]

I think the blood splatter is a bit ridiculous.

Bardzo, kurwa, śmieszne.

 

[Zeriel]

Nice fatsuit, m8.

 

[abnaxus]

Fight through twenty drowners to reach ruined tower in middle of some shit swamp. Find chest. Loot butter knife.

GOTY.

 

[Zeriel]

Fight through twenty drowners to reach ruined tower in middle of some shit swamp. Find chest. Loot butter knife.

GOTY.

Fight through twenty drowners, lift a curse. Gain 100 XP.

Go talk to Baron about his waifu's wine selection. Gain 1,000 XP.

GOTY, all years.

 

[Metro]

So sounds like stuff other than the main quest is mostly MMO type busy work.

 

[Zeriel]

Not really, at all. The XP rewards are just shit. The content is fine, and there's often plenty of treasure that's worth finding. They probably were just terrified of people hitting max level from doing all the sidequests in an area if they had XP parity with main quest. Far Cry is a bit of an example of what happens if they don't put in hard restrictions, in 4 I was maxed out before I was halfway through the game.

 

[Comrade Goby]

Gwent is love, gwent is life

 

[Azarkon]

In the heydays of BG 2, Bioware slapped a 'get 50,000 $ from side quests bitches' criteria for progressing with the main quest, which basically made side quests prerequisites to the main quest, and all was fine. Today, however, developers have this rule where players who don't want to bother with side-quests ought to never touch them, so the exp provided by Witcher 3's main quest are with respect to you never having to touch a side quest, ergo all side quests have to give shit exp so that you're not level 30 when the content is tuned for level 6.

Don't understand it myself. Make side quests optional when they're bad and you want to hide them ala DAI. In Witcher 3's case, given the time and effort you spent making quality side quests, what's the harm in requiring the player to finish a decent chunk of them to progress the main story? You have level requirements. Use them.

 

[Metro]

As I said, that's one way to avoid level scaling -- take away your ability to level outside of the main quest. So while the game may be open world, character progression is fixed to the linear story.

 

[abnaxus]

Spoiler

 

[Monkeysattva]

I mean, the side-quest are sort of good, some of them some of the time. But they get pretty boring pretty fast. Maybe I should just gtfo out of Velen. My brain is addled by peasants and cannibals that can perfect-parry a trained swordsman monster-killer, like they see the matrix or some shit. Like Geralt is f*cking agent Smith.

 

[Alfons]

Spoiler

Sometimes you just see something on the dex that puts a tear in your eye and a smile on your face. Thank you sir.

 

[Doktor Best]

I dont know but ive done plenty of sidequest netting me 100-300 exp each which adds up in quite a lot. Also people complaining about not being thrown epic lootz at every 30 seconds. There is so much bullshit whining in this thread, yet everyone is playing the game all day long

 

[TedNugent]

I'll just leave this here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/36namy/psa_nvidia_tanking_witcher_3_performance_on/

Not unexpected at all, of course.

Absolutely love it when people trash on AMD. Whether you like AMD's mediocre performance, monopolies will fuck you.

Enjoy your hairworks, faggots.

 

[zeroprometheus]

Is my screen dirty or is there a dirty camera lens effect?

 

[Gerrard]

So there is no level scaling (apparently). Instead you just cannot hurt high level monsters because fuck you.

I went into a cave that turned out to be a level 33 quest with a crabspider (at level 4), I had no problems killing the young ones (so obviously spawned monsters ARE level scaled), but I did no damage against the boss, because my imaginary number is not high enough.

And there's a bear witcher school now too?

:potato: