The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt revealed

[Dresden]

The third installment in The Witcher series has officially been revealed. Boasting Cyberpunk 2077's REDengine 3, the game will be a fully open world "larger than Skyrim and 30 times larger than Assassins of Kings." Personally, I've been an enormous fan of this series since it's induction and this is great news. I've always dreamed of an open world Witcher title.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...an-skyrim-30-times-the-size-of-the-witcher-2/

 

[orangpelupa]

they relesed impresseive screenshots.

but i dont know why, but the vegetation looks "weird" or "out of place".

in here, the charcter that looks out of place

EDIT:
maybe because the shadow?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Great news indeed

 

[John Reynolds]

20% larger than Skyrim, eh? Not sure how I feel about an open-world Witcher game when one of the great elements of the previous installations was the story. So deciding to compete against the Elder Scrolls games, which have paltry storytelling, is a bit mystifying to me. I'd much rather a smaller, even more linear, game with a tighter, more focused narrative. But we'll see what CDp can do, maybe we'll get the best of both design approaches.

 

[Dresden]

Eurogamer has some screenshots:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-06-screenshots-of-next-gen-rpg-the-witcher-3

After doing some reading, there's a few things I learned:

- This will be the "final" Witcher game. Details of this remain cryptic, it seems like it'll be the last hoorah of Geralt of Rivia, but the series itself will continue.

- CDPR claims it will be the largest open world RPG to date. Horses will be vital and you'll even be able to use sailboats.

- QTE's will not appear in TW3. Apparently, CDPR is revamping the combat system entirely.


A few things I'd really be interested in seeing would be an extensive crafting/gathering system. If the world is anything like CDPR boasts it will be, I don't see why they wouldn't implement some sort of gathering system which would lend itself to a crafting system. Assassins of Kings took the first foray into a crafting system, hopefully the third installment will expand upon it. Also, mini games. The first Witcher game had me hooked on dice poker for a lot longer than I'd be comfortable admitting. And the fights were always pretty fun, too. Hopefully, they'll not only include previous mini games, but add more.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

20% larger than Skyrim, eh? Not sure how I feel about an open-world Witcher game when one of the great elements of the previous installations was the story. So deciding to compete against the Elder Scrolls games, which have paltry storytelling, is a bit mystifying to me. I'd much rather a smaller, even more linear, game with a tighter, more focused narrative. But we'll see what CDp can do, maybe we'll get the best of both design approaches.

The narrative should still be based on Andrzej Sapkowski's stories, and the gameplay should still have the Witcher's thrilling trademark of forcing the player to make choices without knowing beforehand which alternative is "good", "gray" or "bad", so at least there's that.


The problem with the Elder Scrolls titles is that there are practically no "narrative companions", NPCs that will stick to the player no matter what, giving it enough time to build characters and relationships.
For example, Fallout 3 proved that characters can be developed in an open world game with the main character's father.. but it's too bad they only did so for such a short time in the game.
Nonetheless, Bethesda Game Studios seems to be too sterile in everything regarding relationships and romance, so maybe that has more to do with the developers than the genre anyway. Marriage in Skyrim is downright embarassing. They should learn a thing or two from Bioware in that regard.

For example, the Assassin's Creed series are open-world games and have a (mostly) decent story to tell, even though they aren't RPGs.

 

[Malo]

Isn't Daggerfall technically the largest open world RPG to date?

 

[I.S.T.]

Yes, but everyone forgets it because it was both released ages ago, and because it relied on procedural generation for its content a lot.

 

[AlNom]

dat grass

 

[John Reynolds]

This thread makes me want to replay Witcher 2, which I did last year. But I've never gone full alchemy-build with Geralt.

I also wonder if my GTX 670 could handle its "uber" mode.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Isn't Daggerfall technically the largest open world RPG to date?

Second largest. The Elder Scrolls: Arena (first in the serious) is technically the largest to date. But Daggerfall itself is sufficiently large that it'd be no shame to consider it the largest.

WRT - Daggerfall

Bethesda claims that the scale of the game is equal to twice the size of Great Britain:[3] around 487,000 square kilometers/ 188,000 sq miles. The game world features over 15,000 towns, cities, villages, and dungeons for the player's character to explore. According to Todd Howard, game director and executive producer for Bethesda, the game's sequel, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, is 0.01% the size of Daggerfall, but most of Daggerfall's terrain was randomly generated. Vvardenfell, the explorable part of Morrowind in the third game has 10 square miles (25.9 square kilometers).[4][5] The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has approximately 16 square miles (41.4 square kilometers) to explore.[6] In Daggerfall, there are 750,000+ non-player characters (NPCs) for the player to interact with, compared to the count of around 1,000 NPCs found in Morrowind and Oblivion. However, the geography and the characters in these later games are much more detailed.

Hence, my comments in the other thread that just like many early RPGs, a healthy dose of imagination is required in the player's mind to create their own adventures. And thus it's more of a simulation in my mind than a "game."

Regards,
SB

 

[Malo]

Yes, but everyone forgets it because it was both released ages ago, and because it relied on procedural generation for its content a lot.

Ah yes I forgot about that part. Procedural generation isn't really comparable then.

Some of those water shots have potential to be one of the better water systems we've seen in an RPG.

 

[Billy Idol]

This thread makes me want to replay Witcher 2, which I did last year. But I've never gone full alchemy-build with Geralt.

I also wonder if my GTX 670 could handle its "uber" mode.

I have a 670 and auto setting detect puts everything on high...without uber mode.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The Witcher 2 with uber-sampling is a no-go on a GTX660 Ti, so it shouldn't be much different on a GTX670 or even a GTX680.

However, the game looks stunning and fluid with 4xMSAA + 4x Super-sampling Transparency AA + FXAA forced through Inspector.
All this with in-game MLAA disabled, because the sharpening filter they enable with the in-game antialiasing makes it painful to look at in motion because of all the texture shimmering.

But this is just a personal opinion, though.

 

[suryad]

I can't wait for this. Though Witcher 2 had me all sorts of confused with the story line. Maybe i has small brain....

 

[Kyyla]

The wild hunt always struck me as a fascinating piece of Witcher mythology. The title certainly promises more exposition.

 

[Sigfried1977]

The narrative should still be based on Andrzej Sapkowski's stories, and the gameplay should still have the Witcher's thrilling trademark of forcing the player to make choices without knowing beforehand which alternative is "good", "gray" or "bad", so at least there's that.


The problem with the Elder Scrolls titles is that there are practically no "narrative companions", NPCs that will stick to the player no matter what, giving it enough time to build characters and relationships.
For example, Fallout 3 proved that characters can be developed in an open world game with the main character's father.. but it's too bad they only did so for such a short time in the game.
Nonetheless, Bethesda Game Studios seems to be too sterile in everything regarding relationships and romance, so maybe that has more to do with the developers than the genre anyway. Marriage in Skyrim is downright embarassing. They should learn a thing or two from Bioware in that regard.

For example, the Assassin's Creed series are open-world games and have a (mostly) decent story to tell, even though they aren't RPGs.

Even if the narrative is strong, the ability to wander off and do unrelated shit is still gonna ruin the pace and undermine any sense of urgency. If, on the other hand, the open world merely serves as an impressive but ultimately empty backgdrop (like in L.A. Noir or GTAIV), then why even bother with it in the first place.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Even if the narrative is strong, the ability to wander off and do unrelated shit is still gonna ruin the pace and undermine any sense of urgency. If, on the other hand, the open world merely serves as an impressive but ultimately empty backgdrop (like in L.A. Noir or GTAIV), then why even bother with it in the first place.

They can always enable timers during and in-between quests, which if not respected would make the player lose choices in the game or even lose the game entirely.

 

[suryad]

Even if the narrative is strong, the ability to wander off and do unrelated shit is still gonna ruin the pace and undermine any sense of urgency. If, on the other hand, the open world merely serves as an impressive but ultimately empty backgdrop (like in L.A. Noir or GTAIV), then why even bother with it in the first place.

My thinking is the game developers know what they are doing. They haven't disappointed us with the last two installments have they? God I want to replay the first Witcher all over again. Wish the books were all properly translated to English... My Polish sucks!

 

[Billy Idol]

By the way...the start up cgi movie in witcher2 is one of the best i've seen so far. One of the few i can watch over and over again. Hoping for another cool startup movie in w3!