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New The Witcher 3 Gameplay

O

ocean

Banned
Never played a Witcher game. I'm loving the concept and atmosphere, but I'm getting a Dragon Age: Inquisition vibe. I was also hyped for DA and ended up completing it but was highly disappointed.

Is this game also full of fetch quests and collect-a-thons? I Don't like having to do dozens of identical "pick up 25 ______" or "go kill 5 ______" missions :/
 
Denton

Denton

Member
ocean said:
Is this game also full of fetch quests and collect-a-thons? I Don't like having to do dozens of identical "pick up 25 ______" or "go kill 5 ______" missions :/
Click to expand...

No and No. The devs are very specifically against this kind of bullshit collectible checklist design.
 
N

Nordicus

Member
ocean said:
Is this game also full of fetch quests and collect-a-thons? I Don't like having to do dozens of identical "pick up 25 ______" or "go kill 5 ______" missions :/
Click to expand...
In Witcher 1 there were a bunch of these, but in 2 there was just one explicit one that I remember, and that was a parody quest.

A man asks you to collect a bunch of Harpy feathers, then a bunch more, then a little bit more. After you've collected all the feathers and meet the guy after a while, you see he's basically made a "fursuit" out of the feathers and is playing a harpy fantasy by himself
 
Denton

Denton

Member
ocean said:
Your answer just got those devs another preorder :) thanks!
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You won't regret it :)
They very specifically said that they dislike how in Assassin's Creed you open the map and there are hundreds of icons with "activities" and you cross them off the list like doing chores. CDP does this stuff differently, vowing it into the world and enveloping each quest with its own narrative.

Also here is a nice hands on article:
http://www.gamesradar.com/9-times-i...ero-witcher-3-wild-hunts-impressive-prologue/

This made me laugh, even as someone who enjoys Dragon Age:

CD Projekt knows how to do grown-up fantasy. There isn't a bright green tear in the sky above hero Geralt of Rivia signalling an impending doom.
Click to expand...
 
O

ocean

Banned
Nordicus said:
In Witcher 1 there were a bunch of these, but in 2 there was just one explicit one that I remember, and that was a parody quest.

A man asks you to collect a bunch of Harpy feathers, then a bunch more, then a little bit more. After you've collected all the feathers and meet the guy after a while, you see he's basically made a "fursuit" out of the feathers and is playing a harpy fantasy by himself
Click to expand...
Haha that actually sounds great. My issue with DA:I is that the fetch and collect quests felt so damn inconsequential.

It was like go collect 50 Iron. Afterwards...nothing. Literally no in-game consequence to your actions. Coming from Bioware, I expected different. In Mass Effect, quests affected your relationship with other characters, your readiness for the final mission.

I don't know. I guess I like plot-driven missions better than random generic filler missions that are absolutely identical mechanically.
 
Isendurl

Isendurl

Member
ocean said:
Never played a Witcher game. I'm loving the concept and atmosphere, but I'm getting a Dragon Age: Inquisition vibe. I was also hyped for DA and ended up completing it but was highly disappointed.

Is this game also full of fetch quests and collect-a-thons? I Don't like having to do dozens of identical "pick up 25 ______" or "go kill 5 ______" missions :/
Click to expand...

The cool thing about how we design quests is that you would think that there would be a team for main-quest and a team for side-quest, but that is totally not the case. We spend equal amount of time and effort on making the side-quests as we do making the main-quests, they get the same treatment, they are not lower or anything. That also applies to quests that are much smaller than you average side-quest, we have them on all scales. So, none of them feel repetitive. If you think about it, its not like we came up with a huge world and then decided that we needed to fill it with content and half way through decided that that we are really done now, but we still have this part of the world left and we need to fill it.

No, basically, what happened was that we made the story and the quest and everything, and that basically dictated the size of the world. So, the size that we have in the game is really out of necessity, this is how large we wanted it to be. So, you shouldn’t find a lot of repetition, but what you do find is something different, while it may sound like a weakness, it really is a strength. You may find quests that do start out as something you may recognize from other games, like where you go ‘oh yeah, this is a typical fetch quest, I have to find this guy’s hidden treasure’, but when you do it, it kind of takes this twist and something absolutely different happens. At the end of it you may get to make some morally ambivalent choices, where you are unclear as to how it manifests.
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From this interview
Haha that actually sounds great.
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Yeah that quest is pretty funny btw this is result. :)
 
G

Gurgelhals

Member
The thing is, I wonder whether CDPR has really managed to fill the world with enough interesting quests and other things to do for it not to seem empty / boring. I know they dislike AC / DA:I-style fetch quests and fillers and they've made it abundantly clear that they're not going to do them, so I'm trusting them on that end.

However, writing and implementing quests that are actually interesting is very expensive in comparison. So I just don't know whether one could realistically expect them to fulfill their promises on that matter. It just sounds a bit too good to be true considering that the map is supposed to be huge. I mean, even Witcher 2 with its fairly small areas wasn't exactly overflowing with sidequests. So maybe the game world won't be as big as they're making it out to be. Or there's just going to be one quest per town / location on average. But at least I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt at the moment.
 
E

erawsd

Member
Gurgelhals said:
The thing is, I wonder whether CDPR has really managed to fill the world with enough interesting quests and other things to do for it not to seem empty / boring. I know they dislike AC / DA:I-style fetch quests and fillers and they've made it abundantly clear that they're not going to do them, so I'm trusting them on that end.

However, writing and implementing quests that are actually interesting is very expensive in comparison. So I just don't know whether one could realistically expect them to fulfill their promises on that matter. It just sounds a bit too good to be true considering that the map is supposed to be huge. I mean, even Witcher 2 with its fairly small areas wasn't exactly overflowing with sidequests. So maybe the game world won't be as big as they're making it out to be. Or there's just going to be one quest per town / location on average. But at least I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt at the moment.
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It sounds like the game will still have a form of fetch/collection quests. They'll just be dressed up in narrative and rewards so that they dont feel as rote as the stuff in DA:I or AC.


One thing they seem to be doing is dragging out the quests, which I dont think is a bad thing. Unlike DA:I where its go here>kill/collect this and then you abruptly get a "quest complete" message. Based on what we've seen and heard, the Witcher asks you to go here>investigate with Witcher senses>collect item>go back to town>interrogate npcs>go to monster lair>prepare ritual>kill monster>conclude story with cutscene. The elements are still there but they build and culminate into something that seems more meaningful. Theres also an interview where they say that it they ask the player to collect x amount of creature parts it would be for an awesome piece of armor or something that makes the pay off well worth the effort. Theres ~150 Gwent cards to collect but they are all tied into a card minigame, so it may be fun to put together a great deck. Compare that to the shards in DA:I where I had no idea what they were for until half way through the game.
 
M

misho8723

Banned
Every, every RPG game has fetch quests - my favorite game and RPG game is Vampire Bloodlines - it has quests with are fetch quests.. Planetscape Torment - yes, it has fetch quests too.. Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, Fallout games, Deus Ex games, System Shock games, etc..

I don't see problem with them.. it is, how you can make them interesting..
Boring fetch quests - Oblivion, Skyrim, DAI, Fallout 3, etc..
Good fetch quests - Witcher 2, Vampire Bloodlines, Planetscape Torment, Fallout 1/2/New Vegas, etc..
 
G

Gurgelhals

Member
misho8723 said:
Every, every RPG game has fetch quests - my favorite game and RPG game is Vampire Bloodlines - it has quests with are fetch quests.. Planetscape Torment - yes, it has fetch quests too.. Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, Fallout games, Deus Ex games, System Shock games, etc..

I don't see problem with them.. it is, how you can make them interesting..
Boring fetch quests - Oblivion, Skyrim, DAI, Fallout 3, etc..
Good fetch quests - Witcher 2, Vampire Bloodlines, Planetscape Torment, Fallout 1/2/New Vegas, etc..
Click to expand...

I agree that fetch quests aren't necessarily bad. It's just that the Bethesda-style RPGs have really given them a bad name over the past few years. Having recently played through The Witcher 2 again, I actually think that the developers really did well with their "generic" monster hunting quests by giving them a twist instead of just having you kill x amount of monsters - i.e. having to research how to destroy their nests first and crafting the necessary bombs or traps. Small things like these can really make a big difference (tbh, coming directly from the inanity that was DA:I, these things had me stumped for a moment; I mean, the game actually required me to buy books on these monsters and read the corresponding codex entries in order to gain the information necessary to solve the quest. Unbelievable!).

Ultimately, it probably depends on the opinion the developers have of their customers. If they think that they are total morons, then you're getting the worst type of these quests (i.e. kindergarten-level garbage such as "kill x of y" and "just go to where the arrow on the minimap conveniently points you"). If they, however, have a slightly better opinion, there are bound to be more interesting quests. It's just unfortunate that high profile RPGs have, in the past few years, almost exclusively fallen into the former camp.
 
V

Vulcano's assistant

Banned
H

Hypron

Member
Glass said:
Playing the Witcher 1 right now for the first time since completing it a looong time ago, and just realised the people in this trailer are his fellow Witchers from Kaer Morhen. Not sure what the story is for Witcher 3 but great to see characters from the first return (never completed 2 so maybe they turned up there too).
Click to expand...

You can even see Letho's arm :p
 
struggler_guts

struggler_guts

Member
Oooh I'm so hyped for this!!

Can't wait to play it in 2018 after I eventually get around to beating the first two. I know I don't need to but if this is gonnah be as amazing as it looks, I want to have all the feels!
 
N

NavyPharaoh

Member
Gurgelhals said:
I agree that fetch quests aren't necessarily bad. It's just that the Bethesda-style RPGs have really given them a bad name over the past few years. Having recently played through The Witcher 2 again, I actually think that the developers really did well with their "generic" monster hunting quests by giving them a twist instead of just having you kill x amount of monsters - i.e. having to research how to destroy their nests first and crafting the necessary bombs or traps. Small things like these can really make a big difference (tbh, coming directly from the inanity that was DA:I, these things had me stumped for a moment; I mean, the game actually required me to buy books on these monsters and read the corresponding codex entries in order to gain the information necessary to solve the quest. Unbelievable!).

Ultimately, it probably depends on the opinion the developers have of their customers. If they think that they are total morons, then you're getting the worst type of these quests (i.e. kindergarten-level garbage such as "kill x of y" and "just go to where the arrow on the minimap conveniently points you"). If they, however, have a slightly better opinion, there are bound to be more interesting quests. It's just unfortunate that high profile RPGs have, in the past few years, almost exclusively fallen into the former camp.
Click to expand...

This is one of the major reasons I got into the Witcher series. That level of detail immerses you into the world even more.
 
S

Savitar

Member
SuperSonic1305 said:
Does Sapkowski have any say on the story of the games? Has he ever spoken on what he thinks about them?
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Yup.

Basically he doesn't acknowledge the games stories as having any weight on what happens in his novels stories continuities. Nor does he seem very fussy about the games at all.
 
Gamezone

Gamezone

Gold Member
Will it be possible to transfer the choices from Witcher 2 on Xbox 360 over to Xbox One? I know they said it will be possible on the PC version.
 
T

Tigress

Member
Gamezone said:
Will it be possible to transfer the choices from Witcher 2 on Xbox 360 over to Xbox One? I know they said it will be possible on the PC version.
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Not from what I understand. From what I understand the only game save that will transfer is PC to PC (I think originally they were claiming xbox 360 to One but I guess they found that it was too complicated).

You will be able to answer some questions on to what choices you made and it will transfer that knowledge over.
 
D

Dragon1893

Member
Nordicus said:
In Witcher 1 there were a bunch of these, but in 2 there was just one explicit one that I remember, and that was a parody quest.

A man asks you to collect a bunch of Harpy feathers, then a bunch more, then a little bit more. After you've collected all the feathers and meet the guy after a while, you see he's basically made a "fursuit" out of the feathers and is playing a harpy fantasy by himself
Click to expand...

Yeah, that was awesome and really shows their stance regarding that type of quest design.
 
S

ScepticMatt

Member
Turkoop said:
Did anyone know that Witcher 3 will have big areas like DAI and not an open world like in Skyrim ?
Click to expand...
auunp3nmums.jpg

2 massive open world maps, each bigger than Skyrim.
 
M

mumbles365

Banned
ironcreed said:
And to me, that is just nuts. The game is going to be massive.
Click to expand...


I certainly hope there is a lot of density for that vastness in terms of deep, meaningful quests, interesting caves with good loot, people to talk to and intersting places to explore, otherwise it'll end up like Dragon Age Inquisition where despite having big, beautiful worlds, the places themselves were barren of anything meaningful.
 
N

Nzyme32

Member
The Dutch Slayer said:
wow that is huge difference the right now I think looks so much better
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It bugs me a lot that this is the general opinion on GAF, that increased saturation and bloom make everything look better, when in this case it is just TOD changing the lighting while the other images time of day is considered worse looking.

So glad there are games that are not pandering to a constant high bloom and over saturation look, and challenge that like the vanishing of Ethan carter, that fully show off that a more natural look can be beautiful
 
O

Oodar

Neo Member
LonelyGreyWolf said:
Aww.

Want to buy a PS4 for this game, but not sure when's a good time to buy one.
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When it has some games worth playing that aren't also on PC.

My PS4 is basically a Netflix/Amazon Prime/iPlayer machine at the moment. Heavily regretting purchasing one, even more so as I got caught up in the hype for Destiny and bought the white bundle just for that game.
 
D

Dragon1893

Member
Sorry for the OT but I'm almost done with the witcher community thread and I need someone to supply me with some graphics stuff, mainly banners. If anyone would be kind enough to help please shoot me a PM.
 
G

Gattsu25

Banned
Painguy said:
I'm sure it will be fun, but the game world just seems dead to me and the horse animation is REALLY bugging me.
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The only game that had horse animations that bugged me was Dragon Age Inquisition. It was so bad I never rode horses, period.

What about the horse animations bugs you in this game?

Denton said:
CDP posted full uncompressed version under the youtube video in description, I am just downloading it.

http://bit.ly/15LNjQT

3GB.
Click to expand...
Thanks for looking out for us!



Blimblim said:
Since the broll is basically the same thing as the youtube video, I've mirrored it on Gamersyde. It's remuxed to mp4, but otherwise the video and audio are untouched.
http://www.gamersyde.com/news_gameplay_of_the_witcher_3-16213_en.html
Click to expand...
Even better!!
 
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