[MP-Ryan]

With regard to the Witcher series... I am just now playing through it, having finished the original a few months ago and now nearing completion of the Roche playthrough in W2.  While W1, even after EE, felt very unpolished and not altogether coherent, it had little sparks of brilliance in the storytelling and characters.  Having moved onto the second game, it's like a completely different studio took it an ran with it.  While the combat is still clunky, it's a refreshing take on RPGs, where the core cast of characters are people you actually care about, the quests all feel like they drive narrative or character development (the lack of fetch quests is particularly wonderful), and the story doesn't feel like it gets derailed for sidequesting (something BioWare games are particularly prone to).  There is the odd difficulty with dialogue, but the characters/dialogue/plot is mature and doesn't shy away from that.  More importantly, while W1 had some "save the world" elements common to BioWare games, in W2 Geralt is a much more believable character; he is a Witcher who happens to be trapped in events of a much larger scale and provides some small measure of influence on them, rather than a Hero who is going to Save The World.  In particular, the regular occurrence of choices for which there is no good outcome, and frequently not even a "lesser of the evils" outcome, is incredibly refreshing.  Instead of morality being a simple black/white system, its a function of "pick in which direction you'd rather see the world go to ****." While that can be a bit irritating in the short term, when you think about it its quite brilliant compared to some of the competitors.  Geralt is a fish caught in a raging flood; while he can swim generally to one side or another, he's not escaping the general torrential movement downstream.

I'm really looking forward to W3 when I finish the Iorveth playthrough.

Where I think BioWare has managed to continue to eclipse CDPR is in blending RPG storytelling and combat.  ME1 had a painful uncompelling combat system; the evolution in ME2 and 3 made the game a joy to play in actual combat as well, and while W2 is more intense and immersive in combat than W1, it's still pretty clunky.  Andromeda looks like its going to improve on ME3 again.

[Mikes]

Where I think BioWare has managed to continue to eclipse CDPR is in blending RPG storytelling and combat.  ME1 had a painful uncompelling combat system; the evolution in ME2 and 3 made the game a joy to play in actual combat as well, and while W2 is more intense and immersive in combat than W1, it's still pretty clunky.  Andromeda looks like its going to improve on ME3 again.

You will be happy to know that combat also evolved quite a lot when going from W2 to W3. Arguably still with some rougher edges than other games, but all in all it finally has a quite polished and refined feel to it. Compared to W2 and W1 for sure.

The huge open world in W3 is what I found a double edged sword however. Main and Side quest are without question the best in the genre. But if you actually want to complete "everything" then you will/would spend a huge amount of time running around the map checking of mundane "points of interests". In that case W3 felt a bit more like a recent Bioware game actually - that is, if you didn't decide to just skip that stuff, which you can.

[Phantom Hoover]

The open world in TW3 was frankly vestigial, it added nothing to the game except some nice scenery. In Skyrim the presentation of the story and gameplay made it a fairly interesting experience to move around the landscape on foot on your way to things; TW3 essentially had a Mass Effect-type scope where the interesting part of the story was presented through cutscenes and the gameplay and world were a pacing mechanism between them. It would have been better served overall with a more linear presentation; it felt like utterly gamey bull**** using the fast-travel system to teleport and sprint between packets of cutscenes.

[Mikes]

The open world in TW3 was frankly vestigial, it added nothing to the game except some nice scenery. In Skyrim the presentation of the story and gameplay made it a fairly interesting experience to move around the landscape on foot on your way to things; TW3 essentially had a Mass Effect-type scope where the interesting part of the story was presented through cutscenes and the gameplay and world were a pacing mechanism between them. It would have been better served overall with a more linear presentation; it felt like utterly gamey bull**** using the fast-travel system to teleport and sprint between packets of cutscenes.

Yet the Witcher series always managed to bring the whole world alive through it's story and characters, while Skyrim mostly comes across as a Themepark with little depth to it's stories, more like an MMO without multiplayer, than an engaging singleplayer game. My take anyways. What W3s open world did manage, at least to me, is to bring a sense of scale and presence to locations that was in some cases just breathtaking. Coming up through the countryside and seeing Novigrad for example. Just loved seeing how different places known from the books were recreated in the game. As far as fast travel options in a single player game? To me that's convenience, but hardly breaks immersion. If you don't like it, don't use it? /shrugs

I would agree however that a large part of the open world could be seen as "flab" in W3 ... the more important point however is the quality of the meat that W3 brings to the table and that is where most other modern games can't even beging to compare. Except some of those old school style story focused RPGs, at least as far as "story" is concerned. (Thinking of PoE, Shadowrun Dragonfall, Tyranny possibly, although I haven't finished that last one yet, etc.) But open world mainstream games like Skyrim? If anything Skyrim serves as an example of how shallow and meaningless a very well crafted game can feel if all it does is focusing on an open world with simplistic short stories and cardboard characters.

[Phantom Hoover]

Yet the Witcher series always managed to bring the whole world alive through it's story and characters, while Skyrim mostly comes across as a Themepark with little depth to it's stories, more like an MMO without multiplayer, than an engaging singleplayer game.

They're different games. They focus on different things. My number 1 complaint about TW3 is its worthless fanboys who feel the need to validate their enjoyment of it by ****ting on every other game ever made.

[Mikes]

Yet the Witcher series always managed to bring the whole world alive through it's story and characters, while Skyrim mostly comes across as a Themepark with little depth to it's stories, more like an MMO without multiplayer, than an engaging singleplayer game.

They're different games. They focus on different things. My number 1 complaint about TW3 is its worthless fanboys who feel the need to validate their enjoyment of it by ****ting on every other game ever made.

Going for a new record for the number of common flaws in arguments in a single sentence, eh? ;-)

[SkycladGuardian]

The huge open world in W3 is what I found a double edged sword however. Main and Side quest are without question the best in the genre. But if you actually want to complete "everything" then you will/would spend a huge amount of time running around the map checking of mundane "points of interests". In that case W3 felt a bit more like a recent Bioware game actually - that is, if you didn't decide to just skip that stuff, which you can.

The game should be played with "Undiscovered Points of Interest displayed on main map" switched off, otherwise the map will be cluttered with question marks of the Assassin's Creed type. Horrible. Unfortunately, they are on by default.
Turning off the mini map can also help to encourage exploration and prevent you simply running from quest mark to quest mark.
Finally, I found the game to be more enjoyable by not using fast travel (unless it is needed to go from one large area to another).

An open world will always provide pacing problems for a story driven game. Especially if the main story is about finding someone ASAP who are in grave danger and in need of help. It kind of breaks the immersion when you are spending dozens of hours playing Gwent and hunting Nekkers, while Ciri is pursued by the Wild Hunt. However, the side content of W3 is mostly pure fun and top notch.

[Phantom Hoover]

it's kind of funny because witcher 3's 'quest journal with a world map' gameplay design is much much much more like an MMO than Skyrim's ultra-freeform ~simulationist design

[Scotty]

Yet the Witcher series always managed to bring the whole world alive through it's story and characters, while Skyrim mostly comes across as a Themepark with little depth to it's stories, more like an MMO without multiplayer, than an engaging singleplayer game.

They're different games. They focus on different things. My number 1 complaint about TW3 is its worthless fanboys who feel the need to validate their enjoyment of it by ****ting on every other game ever made.

Going for a new record for the number of common flaws in arguments in a single sentence, eh? ;-)

Even if he is, you could stand to stop being such an ass about it.

[SkycladGuardian]

I had the feeling CDPR wanted to make the game as accessible to newcomers (to the series and to the genre) as possible. But with all icons turned on, the map feels like the brochure of a theme park, and you figure out which way to take in order to visit as many attractions in as little time as possible.
Thankfully, the UI is pretty customizable by default and even more so by mods.

[Mikes]

Yet the Witcher series always managed to bring the whole world alive through it's story and characters, while Skyrim mostly comes across as a Themepark with little depth to it's stories, more like an MMO without multiplayer, than an engaging singleplayer game.

They're different games. They focus on different things. My number 1 complaint about TW3 is its worthless fanboys who feel the need to validate their enjoyment of it by ****ting on every other game ever made.

Going for a new record for the number of common flaws in arguments in a single sentence, eh? ;-)

Even if he is, you could stand to stop being such an ass about it.

Well for what it's worth, my intention was to point out how much the discussion's tone had degraded, not to degrade it even further.

[0rph3u5]

The open world in TW3 was frankly vestigial, it added nothing to the game except some nice scenery. In Skyrim the presentation of the story and gameplay made it a fairly interesting experience to move around the landscape on foot on your way to things; TW3 essentially had a Mass Effect-type scope where the interesting part of the story was presented through cutscenes and the gameplay and world were a pacing mechanism between them. It would have been better served overall with a more linear presentation; it felt like utterly gamey bull**** using the fast-travel system to teleport and sprint between packets of cutscenes.

Then you have not been doing enough "sequence breaking" (meaning, running aroung and questing where the story didn't lead you) - Witcher 3 lets you do that in its open world to large extend and than manages to catch it so that it doesn't feel like you are doing it at all (granted that's not true for all quests) - the here interconnectivity between side and main quest is pretty cool to witness

Other games either forbid you from doing that (e.g Dragon Age or sidestep it by disconnectioncontent (e.g. Skyrim) ... neither appraoch is better than the others but interconnectivity meant much work went into it that didn't had to

[Col.Hornet]

...

Ah yeah ...

Well, you are wrong The concepts in the games basically start where the books end. That's the only "flaw" that you can really find here, that the games build on the books, instead of retelling everything that was said in the books. If you go out on a limb then you could call the games fan fiction of the books, but that would be pushing it considering how good they are as well. However you can actually tell with the first game that they probably didn't expect to make a trilogy. And the first game is definitely also the weakest as far as the "gaming" elements go and does have some dubious mechanics and content. The transition between the games felt a bit forced there to me.

Still that is all nitpicking. If you take the work as a whole it is nothing short of brilliant. (arguably with some flab here and there, but if that is reason to declare ****tyness nowadays then we're all adrift in a sea of ****tyness with no land in sight.)

Fun fact. In theory games are indeed a "fanfic" continuation of the books as the author stated clearly that they are something completely different, out of his vision. In fact, Sapkowski is a relic of the past generation who doesn't care about video games. When CDPR made contact with him and told him that they want to make a Witcher game, he agreed and coordinated some writing and collected a fee. However, this was only a single payment not a permanent contract, as the old man absolutely did not believe that a video game will succeed and preferred one solid amount of money instead of risky shares. First Witcher wasn't a worldwide success so the decision seemed a good one at the start. But after the third game kicked in...man must have got mad.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.393325-Witcher-Writer-Doesnt-Feel-Like-a-Co-Author-of-the-Game

[SkycladGuardian]

Umm, I just wanted to apologize for causing this thread to get so terribly derailed 

To get (somehow) back on topic, I didn't get what Luis Dias meant with this picture:

Maybe someone might be so kind as to explain it to me 

[Phantom Hoover]

Note which end of the gun she is pointing at the enemy.

[Firesteel]

Even if I'm giving Bioware the benefit of the doubt and it's supposed to be one of those "I trust you here's my weapon" moments, that grip and hand position look ridiculous.

[Phantom Hoover]

"If you don't show your trust by taking my weapon I swear to god I will shoot myself in the face!"

[Luis Dias]

She's shooting a remnant drone behind Ryder, so yeah. Oh, it's in the cinematic trailer too, it's not some hidden bug.

Meanwhile, manlet Ryder is having tons of fun being compared to Shepard in the internets.



"Daddy I wanna be the next Shepard!"
"Ok son look we've talked about this..."
"BUT I WANNA"

[The E]

The amount of salt over Bioware's character models is astonishing.

(On the other hand, if "Man!Ryder is too small" is the worst offence ME:A commits, well, I'd say it's fine)

[Torchwood]

"I'm Commander Shepard, and I'm the tallest man in the citadel!"