Good day CDPR.
After watching the gameplay I have some things to share. Disclaimer most of it might be speculation and cherry picking.
First of all I was super hyped after e3 and I kinda still am. However on my own example I question the decision to show the gameplay to the press first. I possibly watched every video breaking down the gameplay and there were no surprises left. Also I feel like a lot of journos described it like it's the second coming of Jesus, which overhyped me to the point of being a little disappointed by what i saw(it was still pretty cool).
Second, this actually feels like a vertical slice. Kinda looks overly scripted and condensed (which is the point of the vertical slice I guess) almost like it's Syndicate on ultra. But I get it, it's hard to present a game like this, I mean any presentation of witcher that is not 5 hours long wouldn't do it justice as well.
With that in mind I would try not to pass judgment on gameplay mechanics without being able to play it myself and the demo being heavily scripted.
The biggest offenders so far are animations. Look somawhat stiff. Which is kinda funny, since I know it's a massive rpg but my brain has a hard time to acknowledge that looking at set piece gameplay. Some animations are actually great, put pedestrians could use a lot of work. At the scene with the crossing they start to cross at the same time probably with the same leg and about the same speed. Doesn't feel natural. Also hard to tell what happens when you bump into them. Do you push them, get stuck or the game does assassins creed unity and let's you see their eyeballs? In dialog some animations feel wooden, the ones when people wave their hands and don't interact with stuff directly. In combat there's gore but not much punch. People loose their limbs but fall down like potato sacks. Give it a little push it really could use more oomph. Weapons feel OK, but I wasn't the one pulling the trigger, but one can never go wrong with making it feel better.
Car sections just felt weird. The car itself definitely feels on rails to the point I thought I saw the car turning before the wheel being turned or maybe the other way around. The lack of traffic doesn't help and just fells odd, but it's probably is not developed fully yet.
The moment you talk to a militech people you say you were alone they sweep the area and never mention Jackie, like it was an empty threat (or did I miss it? ).
I really liked the ui interaction from POV early Duke Nukem Forever trailers style, could do more, very immersive.
Don't constrain level design to corridors for battle arenas, a lot of environments felt pretty restrictive in terms of movement.
Environments look bad ass, also very good npc variety.
Would be a good ui feature to color code interactive npcs and quest givers given all of the npcs have a name above them which might made it confusing, you don't want to talk to nobodies. Intractable crates and objects looked pretty obscure, I don't think highlight aura is good but a way to indicate visually would be nice.
Generally I liked what I saw. You are my best boys and girls, love you all. Day 1 buy.
but i think dialogue system is good for a first person game. it's fluid with gamepaly and doesnt pull u out of the world like it did in witcher and it doesnt focus on charecter like fallout 4.
