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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  Gaming  |  Topic: Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Witcher 3: Wild Hunt  (Read 127491 times)
Khaldun
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Reply #455 on: July 07, 2017, 05:23:23 AM

I really ended up liking the combat after I got used to it. I still don't like the version of it in Witcher 2.

There is a setting that minimizes combat and maximizes story that I'd recommend.
Phildo
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Reply #456 on: July 07, 2017, 06:56:20 AM

I agree with Khaldun.  Coming to this after playing Witcher 2 makes it feel so much better by comparison.  I mentioned in the other thread that I was trying out a Signs build lately and it's a lot smoother than a dodge-roll heavy fast attack build.  Less dodging, more wrecking everything with Igni and exploding Quen.
Falconeer
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Reply #457 on: July 09, 2017, 09:21:17 AM

Never mind. After playing for 20 minutes and seeing how many references I was missing from the previous games I purchased Witcher 1 and decided to start from that.

Khaldun
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Reply #458 on: July 09, 2017, 03:28:48 PM

You'd almost be better off reading the re-issued translations of the books, which are pretty good. Witcher 1 is a pretty dire game at times.
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Reply #459 on: July 10, 2017, 12:02:10 AM

The combat in 1 is disgusting, but at super easy should be not too bothersome. Also, alchemy is not needed at that difficulty level. So far, I am loving the way the story is delivered so no regrets.

Job601
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Reply #460 on: August 01, 2017, 03:33:08 PM

So I just finished my first playthrough of this game, although I haven't gotten to the expansions yet, and I have lots of thoughts about it.  It's easy to see why this game has gotten so much praise from fans and from the media. The game's reach is within its grasp, and it feels like the fully realized version of the game they've been trying to make for a decade.The writing is overall very good, probably better than the novels it's based on (although I've only read them in translation.)   The way the game produces rich characterization is much more polished than recent bioware games, which tend to develop their characters by having a lot of conversation options designed to reveal a character's opinions by tricking you. This game is much more subtle.  The narrative is also ambitious:  the vision of fatherhood and responsibility is perhaps not very sophisticated, but it's an unusually mature theme for a game to be built around, and the structure of the game really works to produce emotional intensity in the Geralt-Ciri relationship.  I got the good ending, but the game tricked me into thinking I had the bad ending, and I found myself genuinely upset.

 There's a good sense of pacing and lots of little details that make the game less frustrating than it had to be: there's almost always a conversation option to instantly teleport to where you need to be if the process of getting there wouldn't be intrinsically interesting. They also finally found a balance between looks and gameplay for combat, where the predecessors were almost unplayable.  That said, the level design and art-style, while visually appealing, are a disaster for gameplay.  Movement through space is always difficult, riding your horse is a nightmare of stopping and starting because of tiny obstacles, and I still can't find my way around Novigrad after spending dozens of hours there.  I've read comments that the the game would be better without a minimap, and I agree that you spend way too much time following the GPS directions, but the whole world would have to be rebuilt for that to be possible. The Witcher 3 is a more sophisticated game than its obvious competitor for best open-world game of all time, Breath of the Wild, in terms of narrative, but Zelda is way ahead in its ability to create a coherent aesthetic experience.  Witcher 3 feels like the apex of a particular kind of video-game, but its still very video gamey and expects its player to have a lot of experience with the systems and expectations of its genre.

While the game is very successful at creating a world filled with justified and unjustified violence without feeling exploitative, I'm uncomfortable with the use of casual violence and bullying by the player.  There are lots of conversation options in which Geralt threatens to punch or intimidate people who haven't done anything except their jobs, and sometimes you can't do anything else. You frequently kill innocent henchmen while allowing their boss to live, and nobody ever cares. In general there's a macho aesthetic, one which feels intrinsically Eastern European, that makes me uncomfortable with the game's power fantasy. The writers largely avoid being degrading towards women and are clearly invested in an assault on prejudice and racism, but their vision of masculinity is filled with machismo and one-upmanship.  The game's philosophy of making you choose between the lesser of two evil philosophies falls apart in Skellige, the land of vikings and moral clarity, perhaps largely because in Skellige people punch each other more and kill each other less.  The game seems to be saying that if there were a little more casual violence between individuals there would be less systematic violence done by the state, a worldview which I associate with the unreflective right (perhaps explaining this game's popularity with the 4chan crowd.)   I guess what I'm trying to say is that Putin would probably like this game and that makes me wary of it..
Khaldun
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Reply #461 on: August 01, 2017, 07:15:33 PM

I agree on some of the experiences of moving through the world--Novigrad in particular doesn't feel like an organically coherent environment, compared to some of the rural areas.

The question of Geralt's casual violence is complicated. Essentially the game wants to say about its setting that: a) this is a world suffused in violence, but most of it petty and interpersonal. e.g., not a world where the powerful keep the powerless under boot heel, but where even the relatively powerless do unpleasant but not transcendently awful things to each other. But also it's a landscape disordered by war, where banditry and a kind of lawlessness reign. This explains something of Geralt's complicated attitude towards threats and killing. I find he's pretty consistent in the writing: banditry justifies a harsh response; violence between gentry or townsfolk or kinfolk requires him sometimes (usually reluctantly) to take a side but he's often restrained in how he acts. Violence by the powerful towards the powerless forces him either to accept it or allows him to restrain it, with little in between. He's essentially a cousin to the Man with No Name in spaghetti Westerns--not necessarily noble, but also not willing to just accept the status quo and ignore everything he's seeing. The setting is unwilling to allow him to be Petey Pureheart, because anyone who acts like that is faking it for sinister reasons. It's not willing to let him be a complete sadist or monster, because he's a specific character with a specific morality.

The source material is part of what makes this complicated--it's sometimes a very clever postmodern-inspired subversion of existing European fairy tales and folklore, but it's also sometimes an original vision that rises above pastiche and subversion.
Job601
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Reply #462 on: August 02, 2017, 07:12:54 PM

Your comparison to westerns makes a ton of sense, and the way the games in particular have portrayed the daily grind of being a witcher is reminiscent of Western heroes.  The hero comes in and provides the cathartic violence that's needed to save the day.  He can't stick around afterwards, but the people don't really want him to anyway.  I think I didn't see the connection because the plot structures of the stories borrow more from Conan-style sword and sorcery and the games and novels from epic fantasy.  I'm convinced by your argument that there's a direct connection between the state of the world and Geralt's bullying behavior as part of his limited capacity to act in response to it. On the other hand, I think the Witcher 3 errs on the side of letting the player as Geralt have his cake and eat it too, like in the silly quest where he lectures a set of monsters on how just and fair he is in his treatment of them, gets to be morally superior and obviously in the right, and still gets to feel like a badass by killing the werewolf who just won't listen.
Khaldun
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Reply #463 on: August 02, 2017, 07:25:57 PM

For sure. But that's straight out of the books--Geralt is kind of a weird witcher, most of them just wade right in and kill the fuck out of the monsters, even Vesemir, who is otherwise kind of fake-gruff but heart-of-gold.

What Geralt in the books usually wants to know is: is this monster sapient, is it capable of restraining its hungers, desires and needs? A few monsters--mostly higher vampires, succubi, a few others--fit the bill and he will generally spend some time reasoning with them or assessing them. If it's a monster that's closer to a force of nature--something that can't help but do what it does--he doesn't hesitate. But most of those kinds of monsters in the Witcher setting are the consequence of human misdeeds--they're ghosts or spirits whose predation was set in motion by an injustice done to them. So often Geralt wants to know how it happened, and only partly because that's part of the way he discovers what kind of monster he's dealing with and the specific countermeasures he has to employ. It's also because he usually wants to at least have everyone know how it happened and who is responsible. He's almost trying to educate peasants and villagers about how not to have monster problems.

He also typically makes a big show, again *very much* in the model of the Man in Black or other spaghetti western heroes, of giving the greedy and stupid every chance to not piss him off or put him in a situation where he's got to kill them. That doesn't apply to redshirt bandits and guards as much, but even there, a pretty classic set-up in the games and books is Geralt showing up in a bar and really, really trying not to kill the local thugs but ending up having to.

I have to say that one of the schticks from the books that I absolutely love in Witcher 3 that wasn't as effectively done in 1 and 2 is the way Geralt investigates monster infestations or killings in the more detailed quests. It's pretty great, and significantly original in the fantasy genre.
Sir T
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Reply #464 on: August 20, 2017, 02:15:54 PM

I keep looking at the 50 dollar price of this thing and hesitating as that is a lot of money for me.  Heartbreak

It does not help that I didnt finish the first witcher, but stu=opped when I got to the first city. Twice. I ams rolled me eyes atthe constant crowds of women throwing themselves at him.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2017, 02:18:27 PM by Sir T »

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Gimfain
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Reply #465 on: August 21, 2017, 12:26:49 AM

I keep looking at the 50 dollar price of this thing and hesitating as that is a lot of money for me.  Heartbreak

It does not help that I didnt finish the first witcher, but stu=opped when I got to the first city. Twice. I ams rolled me eyes atthe constant crowds of women throwing themselves at him.
The base game is $30 and you can probably grab it for $15-$20 on gog/steam sales.

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Father mike
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Reply #466 on: August 21, 2017, 04:10:17 PM

The base game is $30 and you can probably grab it for $15-$20 on gog/steam sales.

I just bought the super-duper, all-included version in the July Steam sale for $24.

I would like to thank Vladimir Putin for ensuring that every member of the NPR news staff has had to say "Pussy Riot" on the air multiple times.
disKret
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Reply #467 on: October 05, 2018, 02:45:41 PM

Andrzej has woke up from his drunk sleep. Now wanting 60 kk PLN from CD Project RED.
At first he was offered % from sales, but didn't think it will work - he asked for around 10k USD. Now pissed. I don't think I can provide any English link  Ohhhhh, I see.
Trippy
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Reply #468 on: October 05, 2018, 03:07:12 PM

schild
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Reply #469 on: October 05, 2018, 03:16:49 PM

Sucks to suck.
HaemishM
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Reply #470 on: October 05, 2018, 04:35:31 PM

Never, NEVER give away a percentage of profits if it's offered and ALWAYS ask for that shit, even if it means less upfront money. Way too many unscrupulous motherfuckers who will make stupid bank off of you for something you didn't think would make a lick of money.

Severian
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Reply #471 on: October 05, 2018, 04:40:16 PM

On the other hand, Brandon Sanderson in response seriously considers giving them the rights to his Mistborn series for free.
Khaldun
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Reply #472 on: October 05, 2018, 04:53:02 PM

One gets the feeling that he's not a very nice guy, honestly. And a bit stupid. Whatever he's getting in residuals from the new publications of the books is 100% due to CD Projekt. He'd be an obscure author in Polish only otherwise.
HaemishM
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Reply #473 on: October 05, 2018, 05:22:15 PM

On the other hand, Brandon Sanderson in response seriously considers giving them the rights to his Mistborn series for free.

That would be fuckstupid if he gave them the rights and didn't ask for royalties or a percentage of the profits. The rights alone should never get sold without any thought to how much money can be made from the property. I've looked at this from multiple angles and have decided that if you have someone wanting to merchandise your IP, you better extract the most residual income you can out of the deal because whoever you are dealing with is sure as fuck thinking about their long-term extraction potential.

Falconeer
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Reply #474 on: October 06, 2018, 07:27:44 AM

Doesn't he get some money from the Netflix deal too?

Lucas
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Further proof that Italians have suspect taste in games.


Reply #475 on: October 06, 2018, 07:32:07 AM

Doesn't he get some money from the Netflix deal too?

Yep, he will (TV series is entirely based on the books, and books alone); but that doesn't stop him from being Mr. ForeverGrumpy towards CD Projekt. In past interviews he somewhat recognized he messed up when striking the original deal with them; now it seems quite a personal thing that goes beyond business.

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Ginaz
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Reply #476 on: October 06, 2018, 05:09:07 PM

Doesn't he get some money from the Netflix deal too?

And the only reason he's getting that deal is because of the games.  So fuck that guy.  I hope Netflix fucked him on their deal, too.
lamaros
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Reply #477 on: October 07, 2018, 08:48:57 PM

Nothing wrong with not getting royalties for a deal. Many many many times it's better to get money up front.

Issue was not being a limited use license for just that one project.
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