I've been arguing the past week that this game at it's core is the same as the Witcher 3. Everything is switched up, but the gameplay loop and mechanics are similar.
That was a defense of the game in its current state but it's clear that when designing a dense first person open world game it wasn't clear how many things need to be changed to move from building Novigrad to Watson. You are not watching Vs story play out like Geralts, you are V, and if you want immersion the world has to be more than pretty.
For starters
1) If all food and drinks have the same stats, then there is no point wasting the food stalls/restutants by not allowing you to simply have a dialogue option to order relevant food, and/or drinks, maybe have an animation or at least a sound, then the stat boost. Leave the peanuts and canned drinks to convenience stalls and vending machines. No one is going to a food vendor just to go to an inventory screen, to buy an item they probably have plenty of, just to have to go back into their inventory to eat/drink said stuff. It's lazy, it's cheap, and given the attention of detail to the look of the world it's a reminder that it's just a game with numbers moving around.
2) Clothes vendors similarly can have all the fun intro lines in the world, but clothing stores have a similar issue. I won't address clothing in general, but if you walk into a store, it's probably to buy clothes that vendor would sell. Like food stats, all clothes are the same beyond the level so why you choose to walk into a store is almost entirely about how you want to look. Like food, levelled clothes are in abundance as loot drops. So there needs to be a way to preview stuff, the story needs to have a vast array of a specific style available so you can walk out head to toe in a certain fashion.
3) NPC/Police/Car AI , I have nothing to say that hasn't already been said.
4) Junk dealers actually have a purpose if crafting is your goal, so I can't complain, they don't really sell junk. That said with the crafting perk that auto dismantles junk, it makes any other store pointless, since every purchase just get disassembled.
There are plenty of UI, control, and QOL gripes I could make but they've been covered. This game isn't too far off from a masterpiece in immersion, but recycled mechanics that were passable in the W3 world do not belong in any game world that wants to be considered "immersive".
That was a defense of the game in its current state but it's clear that when designing a dense first person open world game it wasn't clear how many things need to be changed to move from building Novigrad to Watson. You are not watching Vs story play out like Geralts, you are V, and if you want immersion the world has to be more than pretty.
For starters
1) If all food and drinks have the same stats, then there is no point wasting the food stalls/restutants by not allowing you to simply have a dialogue option to order relevant food, and/or drinks, maybe have an animation or at least a sound, then the stat boost. Leave the peanuts and canned drinks to convenience stalls and vending machines. No one is going to a food vendor just to go to an inventory screen, to buy an item they probably have plenty of, just to have to go back into their inventory to eat/drink said stuff. It's lazy, it's cheap, and given the attention of detail to the look of the world it's a reminder that it's just a game with numbers moving around.
2) Clothes vendors similarly can have all the fun intro lines in the world, but clothing stores have a similar issue. I won't address clothing in general, but if you walk into a store, it's probably to buy clothes that vendor would sell. Like food stats, all clothes are the same beyond the level so why you choose to walk into a store is almost entirely about how you want to look. Like food, levelled clothes are in abundance as loot drops. So there needs to be a way to preview stuff, the story needs to have a vast array of a specific style available so you can walk out head to toe in a certain fashion.
3) NPC/Police/Car AI , I have nothing to say that hasn't already been said.
4) Junk dealers actually have a purpose if crafting is your goal, so I can't complain, they don't really sell junk. That said with the crafting perk that auto dismantles junk, it makes any other store pointless, since every purchase just get disassembled.
There are plenty of UI, control, and QOL gripes I could make but they've been covered. This game isn't too far off from a masterpiece in immersion, but recycled mechanics that were passable in the W3 world do not belong in any game world that wants to be considered "immersive".
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