The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[Carlie]

I hate dogs.

 

[Russell]

So I thought that this was Xbox/PC exclusive as the last 2 were and I've only seen this advertised on Xbox. Turns out it's on PS4 as well.

Dear Sony,

If you people to buy games for your console, fucking advertise them!

~Russell

I'll be ordering this today. So first impressions: what its like?

 

[Hisako]

Advertising exclusivity is par for the course this generation Sony paid exclusivity rights to advertise Destiny so a shit-ton of people didn't even realise it was on the Xbox One. I'd assume it was the same case here.

I bought a GTX 980 yesterday, so I sent a ticket to Gigabyte and I should be able to cash in on that free The Witcher 3 and Batman: Arkham Knight bundle. Pretty excited, as so far Inquisition is the only decently pretty-looking game in my library to actually cause it to flex some muscle

 

[Ami]

It was the same for Dragon Age: Inquisition. Money talks.

 

[Cthulhu]

I'm actually starting to think that, thanks to the xbawx and ps4 having sorta similar (read: PC-like) hardware, crossplatform games and/or console exclusivity is all about whichever party pays the most now - and that number must've gone up quite a bit since paid console exclusives became a thing. I guess paying for console-specific versions is cheaper than buying off console exclusivity nowadays.

There's a sorta interesting story about the Witcher 1 and a console port; apparently, they'd have to rebuild the whole game in a different engine to make it work for consoles. Makes sense, given that CD Projekt made their own PC engine without really bothering with consoles initially. The 2nd was ported to the 360, probably because it's closest to PC hardware (but I know nothing). The 3rd is a crossplatform title for the previously mentioned reason of consoles having PC hardware.

 

[Carlie]

Because I like exploring and checking all the undiscovered locations I ran into a wyvern next with their level as ???. I immediately proceeded to run for my life but one of the wyvern was a real asshole and kept chasing me for a few minutes. And then Roach threw me off and bailed, fun times. Still managed to escape with about 2% of my health.

 

[Joe]

I'm 50 hours into this game, completed about 1% of all the sidequests/content and can't see the end of the main story either.

How fucking big is this game.

 

[Carlie]

We have been playing this basically non-stop for 9 days and we're still not pass chapter one. There's still 2 more chapters to go, my god.

 

[Cthulhu]

I just discovered why I stopped playing the Witcher 2 last time; it seems to take a nose-dive after chapter 1. Might just be me, but suddenly, new characters, confusing story plot twists about stuff that as far as I know weren't going on earlier, drab and depressing environment, etc. Oh and it felt really long; the first chapter is chock-full of stuff to do and even the sidequests (kill some queen spiders y0) seemed to be huge in terms of how long you take to clear them out.

 

[Ami]

Maybe it's just because I've been ill this week, but I've had no absolute drive to play the game lately. I've spent about an hour or two so far and have forgotten about it. If Carlie someone could give me an incentive to get playing again, I might look into a weekend binge.

 

[Cthulhu]

It's because you've got gaming ADD and you know it,

 

[Ami]

Idk, this might be the case if I were unemployed because I'd see myself getting bored easily and switching games on a regular basis.

 

[Carlie]

Finally made it to chapter 2 and it seems it and 3 are much shorter than one.

 

[ForceStealer]

I just discovered why I stopped playing the Witcher 2 last time; it seems to take a nose-dive after chapter 1. Might just be me, but suddenly, new characters, confusing story plot twists about stuff that as far as I know weren't going on earlier, drab and depressing environment, etc. Oh and it felt really long; the first chapter is chock-full of stuff to do and even the sidequests (kill some queen spiders y0) seemed to be huge in terms of how long you take to clear them out.

This happened to me in 2 as well. With everyone going crazy about 3 I'd like to give 2 another shot, but last time I had the same thing. Just ran out of steam in Chapter 2.

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah. I played again last night and I'm getting a grasp on the story again, but TBF, when I started replaying the game - probably two or three years after my first attempt - I couldn't even remember there was a chapter 2. I think I stopped playing when I ended up in some army camp after this bit (iirc this chapter ends with fighting in the mist with draugrs and shit).

However, it's still a good game overall - character/outfit designs, combat, music, dialogs (!) are all very well done. The game itself and the story progression and such just needed a lot of polish and smoothing out IMO. I get the feeling they spent most of their development time on chapter one and its environments, then realized they still had another 2/3rds of the game to make and kinda rushed through the rest.

 

[Joe]

70 hours and main story complete. My god what a ride, loved it.

Time to go and find all the question marks littering my map because I'm really bad at doing sidequests apparently.

 

[null]

Honestly I think it's safe to just skip Witcher 2 at this point. All the important plot points that carry over into Witcher 3 fit in one sentence, and the player has the standard opportunity to simulate major decisions from Witcher 2. No need to waste 20+ hours if you're worried about missing something.

If the lore starts to pile up too high, or you feel like you're supposed to know who the fuck Ciri, Yennefer and Dudu are, skimming Sword of Destiny would be more informative (and way faster) than playing Witcher 2 anyway. It's easily the best of the Witcher series. Not suggesting anyone has time for a stack of books, but some of them are actually pretty good and they really do make the games better.

 

[ForceStealer]

I've wondered, how do the game and books relate? Do they follow them? Are they sort of midquels? Are alternate stories? Simply inspiration?

 

[null]

The books written by Andrzej Sapkowski came first (late 80's and 90's) and are the true canon. The games pick up very shortly after the last book ended. What happened in between is a bit nutty because of the ambiguous way the books ended, and the creativity needed to rationalize Geralt reappearing from thin air.

Anyway, Sapkowski signed off on the games but still doesn't consider them to be canon. So I guess we can think of them as extended universe. Having said that, the games are extremely faithful adaptions and follow the books to the letter. Geralt can be out of character sometimes but that's usually because of player choice. (He gets around in the books but he's not THAT big of a slut.)

 

[Cthulhu]

So are you saying that it's actually the players being total sluts?

 

[Joe]

Whereas Witcher 1 & 2 could have easily been standalone, The Witcher 3 falls back on a lot of book references and book-specific characters. Slight explanations are given where they are absolutely necessary but I found myself reading up on a lot of book-related shenanigans to get the full story.

The only thing I can say is Witcher 2 was a direct sequel to Witcher 1. Witcher 3 is both a sequel to Witcher 2 and the book series. People coming into it from either the games or the books are going to be a tad clueless unless they've experienced both.

 

[Carlie]

I finished!

 

[Ami]

Have fun going through everything else that you haven't done yet.

 

[Seph]

I've been playing the shit out of this and I've barely scratched the surface. Never played the previous games, but this was getting too much good buzz for me to ignore. I also picked up the first book in Sapkowski's series, and it's pretty fucking brilliant.

 

[Carlie]

Let me tell you the game is massive, it's gonna take you at least 2 weeks to finish.

Also you should definitely try the second game.