Will The Witcher 3 be a learned lesson or a glitch?

[stroopwafel]

What Witcher 3 does best compared to other games in the genre is attach an actually interesting piece of story to any quest no matter how menial. A quest could be completely run off the mill then suddenly takes twists and turns that keeps you engaged and entertained. As a result the world feels lived in and authentic. It's really the biggest strength of the game. Combat is adequate but not exactly the reason you play this game for. It's the world and the characters and actually interesting quests. Fallout 4 came out later that year and it just struck me how incredibly weak this game is in comparison. I absolutely loved my time with Witcher 3 but having a 20 minute cutscene behind every corner does mean you play this game mostly for it's story.

 

[Dornedas]

Please nobody learned how to make good open world games after Piranha Bytes showed them how to do it perfectly back in 2003. What makes you think that they will do so now?

But to be fair to everybody else, PB themselves have forgotten the lesson.

 

[meiam]

Frankly I don't think the worlds of GTA-like games are very interesting. You can travel about a city-sized map yet your actions mean nothing in the long term scope of the world. People don't know who you are, or what you are. Your actions during missions don't have any effect on the game world outside of radio news broadcasts, nothing you do ever has any lasting effect. You can go on a rampage and slaughter every police officer in the city, but once you escape or are caught, everything resets back to normal as if nothing ever happened. Because they are sandboxes and that's what makes them different animals entirely and hard to directly compare with each other.

How is that any different in TW3? You can kill the king of the country and nothing change. You can destroy the order of witch hunter terrorising the city and nothing change. You can end a civil war and nothing change. You can kill a dragon cutting off supply to city/war camp and nothing change. GTA world change temporarily to your action before going back to normal, TW3 world doesn't even do that.

As far as gameplay, no matter how you build up Geralt you have to rely on sword, its impossible to rely entirely on magic because you can only cast one spell every 5-10 sec (stamina regen), you can use potion but they only give you stats buff (ie make you better at using your sword), you can use grenade but they don't do nearly enough damage so that you're forced to constantly re-open the main menu to equip new grenade (good luck taking out any monster using only grenade, at higher difficulty I'm pretty sure you can't even carry enough grenade to fully kill a monster). You can use the crossbow, but its the very definition of shallow (shoot and that's it, no cover, no headshot, no dept.). The talent tree system just offer buff, there's hardly any talent that actually modify how you play, level 1 Geralt play 90% identical to level 30 one, you can't even change weapon. In ghost recon you can use sniper, rocket, mine, machine gun, shotgun and so on, you can use stealth, vehicle or recruit follower, you can kill all the enemy or just rush your objective, you can create distraction, you can use the environment to your advantages and so on. Almost none of that is possible in TW3.

I played the game on hardest difficulty for the first third (dropped down to 2nd hardest cause damage sponge is boring), I actually killed monster so high above my level that they had skull instead of level (Thank you terrible level distribution of quest/monster, really dropping a 30 level quest right next to level 5 monster, makes so much sense). The game is all about button mashing, that's the epitome of the gameplay. I placed all my point into magic initially, but using the hold down magic doesn't work since Geralt became super slow, and anyway the game then boil down to "hold down button" and circle strafe until an enemy hit you forcing you to redo it. The normal magic barely tickle the enemy and can't be used repeatedly, so you're better off just hitting the enemy. And because there's no stamina system the only thing stopping you from button mashing to victory is that enemy will just randomly counter your attack every 2-3 hit, so you just go attack, attack, dodge, rinse and repeat, that's the gameplay. From level 1 to level 30, using a the crappies sword in the world to using a legendary sword, from fighting a homeless thief to fighting a giant bug monster. Attack, attack, dodge.

 

[CritialGaming]

snip

Actually you can build a mage Geralt. Because you can spec and plan ahead to have potions that refill your casting ability instantly. Not to mention you combo your spells in such a way that you can actively take enemies out of the fight. Brain wash the leader to kill his men, light other dudes on fire, throw a grenade to light more dudes on fire. You can get pretty wild.

But you are right in that the Witcher isn't designed to use solely on magic. But by the same comparison you aren't intended to use just one weapon in Ghost recon. Yet in GR you certainly can get through the game just using an assualt rifle, or a silenced weapon, or whatever. Variety is put into a game to give the player options, if you choose not to use those options that is the fault of the player falling into a comfort zone isn't it?

Yes enemies will randomly counter your attacks in Witcher, because the human enemies have no other recourse. They had to find a way to make the mundane enemies a threat to a character who should be far more talented in combat than they are. But the monsters don't do that, (some do but most dont). Wolves evade and roll, baiting you to chase them if you button mash which causes the rest of the pack to pick you apart. Leshens, vanish only to reappear elsewhere and cast magic at your feet, or summon minions to distract you. Fiends blind you completely turning the screen 95% dark and making it impossible to fight safely. All of these enemies have to be fought differently, can the same be said for Ghost recon or GTA? No. In those games you simply put bullets in people and they fall over. Sure some enemies might be armored or in a truck or something, but that's why they give you explosives.

Just like the Witcher, GR gives you tools to handle the enemy types. Can you brute force enemies? Yes in both games you can surely simply overwhelm them if you choose. However where you are force to be very careful in TW3 when fighting a skull leveled enemy, I don't recall a single instance in GR where I ran into an area where the enemies couldn't be killed by my starting weapons.

But like I said before, I don't think comparing a shooter to TW3 is a fair comparison because those games are trying to do very different things. TW3 is a story, a lore filled world that your main goal is to simply experience. GR is a sandbox where you are given a bunch of things to make other things go Boom! and it's up to you to do whatever you want with it.

Staying to the original question of this topic. Does TW3 set a new bar for open world RPG's? Absolutely. Does it set any bar for open world sandboxes? No absolutely not. It's apples and oranges. Just because they are both fruits doesn't make them directly comparable.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

The Witcher 3 is a labor of love. You won't find too many devs/publishers creating their games with the same level of enthusiasm and creative freedom. So sadly, it's a "glitch".