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New The Witcher 3 Gameplay

Phased

Member
People are being way too snobby about the graphics. The game looks totally fine.

That said, they didn't show a lot of combat, and the combat they did show still has that horrible Magic/Sign system where you need to pause the action to switch your Sign, which was such a huge turnoff for me in the last games. I ended up mostly sticking to the Sign that gave you a Shield since switching it out was such a pain in the butt mid-combat.

Would it be hard to be able to bind different Sign's to different buttons/keys? It's so counter intuitive compared to how fluid they try and make the animations and combat look.
 

Exentryk

Member
That said, they didn't show a lot of combat, and the combat they did show still has that horrible Magic/Sign system where you need to pause the action to switch your Sign, which was such a huge turnoff for me in the last games. I ended up mostly sticking to the Sign that gave you a Shield since switching it out was such a pain in the butt mid-combat.

Would it be hard to be able to bind different Sign's to different buttons/keys? It's so counter intuitive compared to how fluid they try and make the animations and combat look.

Mapping the signs to buttons would be a great implementation, and would make the combat even more fluid.

Like:
R2+Triangle = Air spell
R2+Square = Igni spell
...
...
R2 (double tap) = 5th spell (or make some other button combination).

I wonder if they'll let us use custom buttons on the PS4? I doubt it.
 
I think it's just the outfit, but the running animation looks terrible in this video. Looks like he has a stick up his ass.

Yeah, perhaps it's just the big outfit.
Running is fine, imho.

People are being way too snobby about the graphics. The game looks totally fine.

That said, they didn't show a lot of combat, and the combat they did show still has that horrible Magic/Sign system where you need to pause the action to switch your Sign, which was such a huge turnoff for me in the last games. I ended up mostly sticking to the Sign that gave you a Shield since switching it out was such a pain in the butt mid-combat.

Would it be hard to be able to bind different Sign's to different buttons/keys? It's so counter intuitive compared to how fluid they try and make the animations and combat look.

Yeah, found myself do that as well in TW2.
I mainly use Quen, and Aard sometimes for boss battles. It's such a hassle to switch between the signs in battle.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After another look at the video, I really got this DA:I vibe in TW3.
 

tcrunch

Member
Mapping the signs to buttons would be a great implementation, and would make the combat even more fluid.

Like:
R2+Triangle = Air spell
R2+Square = Igni spell
...
...
R2 (double tap) = 5th spell (or make some other button combination).

I wonder if they'll let us use custom buttons on the PS4? I doubt it.

It seems like it should just use one trigger to flip spells and one to fire. Like L1 switch, L2 fire. Then for the other bits just take a souls approach and R1 for light, R2 for heavy, items on the down d-pad and item use on square (or go even more Souls and put spell switching on the up d-pad). In fact when I played Witcher 2 on PC I used XInput to pretend my DS3 was an xbox controller, then remapped the keys. The only issue was due to the heavy editing also involved in one of the INIs to get it to work, none of the button prompts were ever correct. I think they all showed question marks or something.
 

Exentryk

Member
It seems like it should just use one trigger to flip spells and one to fire. Like L1 switch, L2 fire. Then for the other bits just take a souls approach and R1 for light, R2 for heavy, items on the down d-pad and item use on square (or go even more Souls and put spell switching on the up d-pad). In fact when I played Witcher 2 on PC I used XInput to pretend my DS3 was an xbox controller, then XPadder to remap most of the keys Souls-style. The only issue was due to the heavy editing also involved in one of the INIs to get it to work, none of the button prompts were ever correct. I think they all showed question marks or something.

Having it cycle through with a button isn't bad, but is secondary to an instantaneous casting provided by mapped buttons. Cycling through the spells means one has to remember what spell they are currently on, and how many times they have to press the button to get to desired spell. If you're going to waste time figuring that out, you might as well have the radial menu.

That's why I feel dedicated mapped buttons to spells would be amazing. Switch from instant Aard, to Sword swipe, to Igni. Glorious!

For reference, this seems to be the current control scheme:
Left Stick - Movement, Steer Horse, Steer Boat, [Press] Call Horse
R2 - Cast Sign
R1 - Quick Access item
L2 - Witcher Senses, Parry/Riposte
Triangle - Strong Attack
Right Stick - Camera Movement, [Press] Change Quest Objective, [Press] Lock On Target
D-Pad - [Up] Potion 1, [Down] Potion 2,
Draw/Sheathe Steel Sword ,
Draw/Sheathe Silver Sword
Circle - Surface / Climb / Dodge / Jump, [Hold] Roll / Dismount
Square - Fast Attack, Dive, Stop/Reverse Boat
L1 - Quick Access Menu
Touchpad - Game Menu
Options - Pause Menu
X - Interact, Swim Fast, Run/Sprint, Canter/Gallop, Accelerate Boat​
 

tcrunch

Member
Having it cycle through with a button isn't bad, but is secondary to an instantaneous casting provided by mapped buttons. Cycling through the spells means one has to remember what spell they are currently on, and how many times they have to press the button to get to desired spell. If you're going to waste time figuring that out, you might as well have the radial menu.

That's why I feel dedicated mapped buttons to spells would be amazing. Switch from instant Aard, to Sword swipe, to Igni. Glorious!

I never thought about it that way. You're right!

For reference, this seems to be the current control scheme:

iffy sounding menu controls

:( But why do I need multiple potion buttons. Are potions no longer taken during meditation? Not that meditation was exciting or anything but at least it allocated a lot of busy submenus out of combat situations.
 
Just saw the trailer and it looked mighty fine for an open-world RPG, and that was just the youtube footage, compression and all. Haven't seen the 3 GB footage yet, probably looked even better.

Then again I don't know much about graphics tech, so whatever, but I do know this... the music sounds like sex in my ear.

And... and... and.. the atmosphere of the game... Man, can't wait for May!
 

malfcn

Member
VNvJUGb.gif


I think I want it.
 

Daverid

Member
Man watching the 1080p60 video on youtube kinda bums me out about the downgrade. The world feels so static now and the draw distance is really bad (it's my biggest pet peeve in open world games). I've seen more activity in NPCs in Skyrim then in this video, almost all the NPCs stayed in one spot standing there.

I got the game already on preorder so I hope it has a good story and lives up to the books but man its not the game they first showed off.

Static in comparison to what? What Gameplay Demo did you see that it is downgraded from? NPC's have full routines and day/night cycles... So yes, you might see guards just standing still doing nothing for 15 seconds, because that's what they're meant to do at that point, but find them later and they might be drinking in the tavern, or walking about their home or whatever.
The comparison to Skyrim is laughable frankly. Even the Geese in this fotoage had more attitude and better animations than the majority of random NPC's in Skyrim.

Draw Distance is still massive, and on-par with other open world games. Especially when fighting the Ekhidna's, you can't look at that sequence and actually try to tell me that's a "really bad" draw distance. The large chunks of Tree pop-in at the edge of the draw distance however was pretty disappointing to see, hopefully that's something they can touch up before release.
 

tcrunch

Member
how did you know. gif saved, just in case.

I just found that scene to be amusing. :<

Looking at it now it kind of looks like the guy is just a random modern-age person in a red sweater making out with that uh, Mother-Gothel-post-events-of-Tangled.
 
Ya. The high quility footage looks amazing. That compressed footage looks like crap in comparison. I love the NPC's in this. So much better than DA or an ES game. The draw distance, the wind in the trees, the overall atmosphere of this game really strikes a chord with me. The lighting and shadows looks great.. I'm in love with the music. The detail in the armour is impressive too. I don't think I will be playing much else after this come out for quite a while.

Will be getting this on day one for sure.

And who is this asshole that hates beards? I hope I get to fight that guy.
 
finally downloaded the footage. it looks great. love the music and art. ill probably get sucked into this game like i did with Skyrim and be a shut in for a few weekends lol.
 

IKizzLE

Member
Finally watched the downloaded footage.

The animations were fine to me. The graphics didn't look as good as earlier stuff but still looked good nonetheless. The pop-in were distracting however.
 
who's going to play this with polski audio? english voices sound good, though and i imagine it'd be more diverse in terms of accents.

also, why does geralt have an american accent?
 
For an ambitious RPG the graphics are more than nice enough. Just hoping the combat is better than Witcher 2 and that the world is not populated with fetch quests.
 

POPEGTR

Neo Member
Just wait when they release trailer with all the AA tech like Nvidia HairTech and Uber Sampeling turned on. Shown gameplay doesnt have these.
 

Sotha_Sil

Member
Looks great. This has been my most anticipated AAA game for a long time now, and the gap between it and other AAAs only seems to grow with time.
 
CDPR has never had amazing or even great animations in their games, so that's expected at least. I think people need to temper their expectations a bit in regards to the graphics since it's an open world game.
 

loganclaws

Plane Escape Torment
Game looks amazing, all those naysayers in here need to take a reality check and re-evaluate their life's priorities.
 

HeelPower

Member
CDPR has never had amazing or even great animations in their games, so that's expected at least. I think people need to temper their expectations a bit in regards to the graphics since it's an open world game.

while I agree with this, I think TW3 has improved dramatically in the animation department all while blowing up in scale.

Its a fantastic achievement by CDPR.
 

VinFTW

Member
Am I missing something? Do I need to get my eyes checked?

This looks better than UC4 as it currently stands AND its a massive open world RPG.

If this is Xbox One footage then color me impressed
shocked

Looks great, day 1 (probably on PS4).
 

Mifec

Member
Am I missing something? Do I need to get my eyes checked?

This looks better than UC4 as it currently stands AND its a massive open world RPG.

If this is Xbox One footage then color me impressed
shocked

Looks great, day 1 (probably on PS4).

It's PC on high without any of the nVidia stuff.
 
The only animations that seemed a bit stiff to me was when Geralt was just running around the open world and sliding down the terrain. Maybe it looked more awkward too cause he was wearing that longer tunic/armor?

Game still looked great, even if it does seem like something is missing from the visuals that are even in that trailer at the end of the video. Something seems different, the lighting maybe?
 

Exentryk

Member
Thinking more about this:

Circle - Surface / Climb / Dodge / Jump, [Hold] Roll / Dismount

Wouldn't holding Circle to Roll make the movement somewhat less immediate? It'd feel sluggish if it gets implemented in this way. Like you see a griffon come at you, and you hold the button, but by the time the button reacts, the griffon has already hit you.

A better way to implement it may be to use another key, like L2+Circle for instant rolls.

(Holding L2 for block seems fine though, as a quick tap lets you parry)
 

WarAdept

Member
Please let me use spells in a meaningful manner Witcher 3.

Witcher 2 had me specialize in the entire magic tree only to basically spam Quen and melee because it was more efficient than laying down traps or using Ignis.
 

Mifec

Member
That said, they didn't show a lot of combat, and the combat they did show still has that horrible Magic/Sign system where you need to pause the action to switch your Sign, which was such a huge turnoff for me in the last games. I ended up mostly sticking to the Sign that gave you a Shield since switching it out was such a pain in the butt mid-combat.

You didn't have to do it in W2 if I recall correctly.
 
you know how crysis 3 high settings and very high + settings seem to look the same in stills, but when you switch it in game you start to notice that nice subtle radiosity to the lighting. I think that what the old trailers had in more amount, hopefully you can still increase the setting to that.
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
CDPR has never had amazing or even great animations in their games, so that's expected at least. I think people need to temper their expectations a bit in regards to the graphics since it's an open world game.

Honestly most western RPG developers haven't had great animations at all.

Mostly it's because the sheer amount of stuff you can do in the worlds of games like Skyrim and Mass Effect dictate an abnormally huge number of player actions, so they have to make animations more or less procedural with heavy reuse of a few canned animations. CDPR admitted that basically none of the dialogue is hand-animated or mocapped, it's just an automatic system, and looks surprisingly good given that. That's why I said it's not all that fair to compare Witcher 3's animations to the likes of Metal Gear or even a JRPG like Final Fantasy.
 
Only thing that bothered me was when he dove underwater, the ENTIRE screen got blurry, not a really close DoF blur, just blurred the whole damn screen...

Other than that, game is looking great!
 
you know how crysis 3 high settings and very high + settings seem to look the same in stills, but when you switch it in game you start to notice that nice subtle radiosity to the lighting. I think that what the old trailers had in more amount, hopefully you can still increase the setting to that.

There was no radiosoty on very high, it was just color grading, which you could add at a 1 or 2 fps hit with a console command. The performance hit of very high was due to sun shafts and horribly unoptimized lod.
 
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