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March 29, 2024, 12:52:22 PM

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I Was Wrong About The Witcher 3

Started by Jerzy Bondov, March 27, 2020, 09:54:49 AM

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Jerzy Bondov

I'm going to spoil stuff up to where I am (main story in Velen done, about to head to Novigrad) but please don't spoil stuff after that.

I don't know if I ever posted on here about it but I thought The Witcher 3 was boring shite. The combat was inelegant, all the characters were nob heads, you spent most of your time riding around on a horse looking for herbs, and if you weren't doing that you were looking through a badly designed menu trying to work out which ugly as fuck jacket to put on. Massively overrated boring old generic fantasy TOSS.

I watched The Witcher TV series and I enjoyed it and wanted more, but didn't really fancy the books. I've just finished reading all the Malazan books so I'm not in the mood for getting into a new fantasy series. Most of my equity is tied up in CEX vouchers so I was able to get The Witcher 3 on the Switch for 'free' and I just thought, fuck it, I'll bang it on easy mode and romp through it for the story.

But now I'm absolutely fucking gripped by this amazing game. It's brilliant. I love Geralt, I love lopping off heads, I love riding around on my horse looking for herbs, I love collecting leather straps so I can get an ugly as fuck new jacket. The quests are varied and interesting. Some of them are like great little short stories and they make the little villages seem like living communities.

It's not a generic fantasy world. It's not just medieval Europe with some monsters. Well, it sort of is, but the monsters aren't just plonked in there. The way the monsters are related to and interact with the human characters is genuinely compelling and surprising. The whole Bloody Baron storyline was a great example. He's this fat cunt who kills people. He asks you to find his wife and daughter who have 'disappeared'. In the course of this you uncover all these layers to his family, including that he's the grieving father of a stillborn child. But because he buried the baby without giving it a name, it's turned into a monster. You can go and chop it, or you can have him give it a name and a proper burial, and it turns into a ghost and helps you track down the wife. Should be a happy ending, but don't forget the reason she miscarried is because the Baron lamped her.

On an unrelated quest you meet an old woman in a swamp who is looking after children for the Crones, three scary looking deformed big women. One of them has a basket on her head. Proper mental. They're fattening up the children to have for dinner. I met a big heart under a tree and helped it turn into a horse so it could free the children. Then it turned out the old woman was the Baron's wife. We went to get her and she'd been turned into a fucked up monster as punishment for letting the kids escape. So that's on me. Managed to cure her but she died. Baron topped himself. Just a big messy nasty situation with no real winner or loser. Domestic drama colliding with grotesque monsters, and me in the middle, doing my best, swinging my sword, watching shit go wrong.

This game just sings on the Switch. I know it doesn't look as nice as it did on the PS4, which is how I played it the first time, but it doesn't matter. Characters in the distance move at a really low frame rate. The resolution and frame rate are constantly changing. Jaggies everywhere. All totally irrelevant. I can pick it up and spend ten minutes ambling around cutting down beasts, or I can properly dig in for a good interesting monster hunt.

Yes it has a map that fills up with question marks. Yes some of the voice acting isn't very good. Yes the combat isn't as good as Dark Souls. But it's absolutely fucking ace.

Glebe

[tag]HENRY CAVILL: Sorry for that hasty announcement folks, they've cancelled it.[/tag]

bgmnts

Witcher 3 is probably boring fantasy shite but I enjoyed it. Although after about hour 30 I just found myself going through the motions.

Bazooka

I started it about a year ago, left the first tutorial area and never picked it up again, purely on account of having a ridiculous backlog, but enough about my bowels.

Marner and Me

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on March 27, 2020, 09:54:49 AM
I'm going to spoil stuff up to where I am (main story in Velen done, about to head to Novigrad) but please don't spoil stuff after that.

I don't know if I ever posted on here about it but I thought The Witcher 3 was boring shite. The combat was inelegant, all the characters were nob heads, you spent most of your time riding around on a horse looking for herbs, and if you weren't doing that you were looking through a badly designed menu trying to work out which ugly as fuck jacket to put on. Massively overrated boring old generic fantasy TOSS.

I watched The Witcher TV series and I enjoyed it and wanted more, but didn't really fancy the books. I've just finished reading all the Malazan books so I'm not in the mood for getting into a new fantasy series. Most of my equity is tied up in CEX vouchers so I was able to get The Witcher 3 on the Switch for 'free' and I just thought, fuck it, I'll bang it on easy mode and romp through it for the story.

But now I'm absolutely fucking gripped by this amazing game. It's brilliant. I love Geralt, I love lopping off heads, I love riding around on my horse looking for herbs, I love collecting leather straps so I can get an ugly as fuck new jacket. The quests are varied and interesting. Some of them are like great little short stories and they make the little villages seem like living communities.

It's not a generic fantasy world. It's not just medieval Europe with some monsters. Well, it sort of is, but the monsters aren't just plonked in there. The way the monsters are related to and interact with the human characters is genuinely compelling and surprising. The whole Bloody Baron storyline was a great example. He's this fat cunt who kills people. He asks you to find his wife and daughter who have 'disappeared'. In the course of this you uncover all these layers to his family, including that he's the grieving father of a stillborn child. But because he buried the baby without giving it a name, it's turned into a monster. You can go and chop it, or you can have him give it a name and a proper burial, and it turns into a ghost and helps you track down the wife. Should be a happy ending, but don't forget the reason she miscarried is because the Baron lamped her.

On an unrelated quest you meet an old woman in a swamp who is looking after children for the Crones, three scary looking deformed big women. One of them has a basket on her head. Proper mental. They're fattening up the children to have for dinner. I met a big heart under a tree and helped it turn into a horse so it could free the children. Then it turned out the old woman was the Baron's wife. We went to get her and she'd been turned into a fucked up monster as punishment for letting the kids escape. So that's on me. Managed to cure her but she died. Baron topped himself. Just a big messy nasty situation with no real winner or loser. Domestic drama colliding with grotesque monsters, and me in the middle, doing my best, swinging my sword, watching shit go wrong.

This game just sings on the Switch. I know it doesn't look as nice as it did on the PS4, which is how I played it the first time, but it doesn't matter. Characters in the distance move at a really low frame rate. The resolution and frame rate are constantly changing. Jaggies everywhere. All totally irrelevant. I can pick it up and spend ten minutes ambling around cutting down beasts, or I can properly dig in for a good interesting monster hunt.

Yes it has a map that fills up with question marks. Yes some of the voice acting isn't very good. Yes the combat isn't as good as Dark Souls. But it's absolutely fucking ace.
I tricked that tree, didn't trust it one bit.

Jerzy Bondov

But then you let the Crones cook the kiddies! Heartless


Zetetic

I've checked and I'm still right that it's a much better game with the levelling mechanics obliterated.[nb]Even though I'm now sucking down the junk-food of AssCreed: Odyssey without complaint. But then its stories are overwhelmingly much duller and stupider, and exploration is quite different.[/nb]

Jerzy Bondov

There's satisfaction to be had in getting a nicer jacket. I'm probably about 50/50 for being compelled to continue by the stories and by the promise of a jacket.

The Crumb

I'm afraid as a spoiler back to you, that was by far the best story thread in the game for me, and you're now in for a dreary city slog filled with legacy characters.

Golden E. Pump

The Hearts of Stone expansion was, for me, the best story thread in the game. Both DLCs are amazing.

evilcommiedictator

That quest is the dealbreaker for everyone - you either get bored before that, in that case, it's not the game for you, or get enthralled by a couple of twists, which is telling that in today's world, writers have enough trouble putting one twist into a plot.
The game is much, much better modded, auto-gathering plants and auto-applying oils actually made my build playable, otherwise I don't know why you'd bother

Inspector Norse

After you've figured out the combat and levelling system you don't need to bother with oils and shit really. Just stay a level or two ahead all the time. With plants I just randomly hit A when the prompts come up when I'm running around in the wilderness, then eventually go into the Alchemy section and make some stuff that I end up not really using much anyway.

Inspector Norse

Quote from: Zetetic on March 27, 2020, 12:44:32 PM
I'm now sucking down the junk-food of AssCreed: Odyssey without complaint. But then its stories are overwhelmingly much duller and stupider, and exploration is quite different.

I just started playing that too and yeah, it's a much more enticing gameworld but I'm not really paying much attention to the plot.

Witcher 3 lacks the wow factor that the landscapes of a Skyrim or RDR2 had - there are some nice vistas in Skellige - but that suits it, it's much more about the characters and plotting, and the muddy, scrubby medieval world of dull villages and confusing towns is pretty convincing and adds to the atmosphere. It helps places like Novigrad feel much more real and alive than your usual overdesigned fairytale fantasy cities.

druss

Best game of the 2010s. Playing it again on Death March makes it even more fun, adds a proper sense of danger to the world where a couple of wrong moves can kill you, whilst not being unfairly punishing and rewarding you by taking your time, using oils etc. Can't get enough of it.

Jerzy Bondov

I've pretty much finished with Novigrad for now and made a start on Skellige. It does stretch credibility a bit that basically everyone you meet in Novigrad seems to be from the previous games. There are some cool quests in there but I'd agree it's not as interesting as Velen. I did really like the serial killer quest though; I found that really interesting and the solution caught me out.

Early impressions of Skellige are really good. The shift to a more Nordic-styled setting has given it a bit of a shot in the arm. I really like Yennefer as a character as well so it's good to see more of her. What am I now like 50 hours into this thing and still enjoying it.

brat-sampson

Plus Skellige has like the best music. I'm not going to qualify that in anyway.

Jerzy Bondov

I just want to say I'm still playing this fucker

mobias

I'm looking forward to seeing what the all singing all dancing new version of it is going to look like with ray tracing and all the rest of it. I'm guessing CDPR would rather go back to the comfort zone of their past glories after the Cyberpunk debacle.

Chollis

Will it just purely be a graphical update? Cos it still looks pretty fucking good on my machine with everything whacked up to Ultra

mobias

Quote from: Chollis on May 01, 2021, 12:45:18 PM
Will it just purely be a graphical update? Cos it still looks pretty fucking good on my machine with everything whacked up to Ultra

I'm not sure what else they'll throw in there. Have you mucked about with any of the really advanced graphics mods out there? You can really get it looking incredible. Sadly I lost my Witcher 3 when I had to do a clean install of Windows a few months back but I had a great combination of visual enhancements. I had it on a par with RDR2. Even prettier in some ways.

There a lot of really great gameplay mods out there too. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more popular ones were brought over to the new official version.