Quick impressions.
Okay. So, I am running The Witcher 3 at ultra settings, with hairworks and HBAO+. I'm averaging 45FPS with a single GTX 980. My CPU is an i5-2500K OC'ed to 4.5Ghz. First off, the graphics. They look really good for a game this size, I can see where they "scaled" back on some things, most notably the foilage, however it still looks really good. The water is the best looking water I have ever seen in a video game, and to get it looking so gorgeous in a game that is this big is incredible! The facial animations and textures of armors and weapons look outstanding! Some things have lower res textures, but that's to be expected, such as random mugs. Walls look great too! The only thing is that the quality of the textures of armors seems to diminish a bit while not in a cut scene, but I chalk this up to the position of the camera and the fact that I am playing on a 24 inch monitor and have somewhat poor eyesight. Overall I would say the graphics are great! There will mods to further enhance them in due time, not to mention CDPR will release more options too. Oh, and the lighting is well done. The sunrise and sunsets are beautiful!
What I am really excited about is the combat! It was never the strongest suit in The Witcher series, and while it was fun, it wasn't exciting. This time CDPR has nailed it, I think! The combat is exciting, it is intense, and you really have to take an approach to it in the manner of timing your strikes, dodges, parries, etc...especially signs! I'm used to The Witcher 2, where you can spam signs compared to this game. I really could not be happier with how the combat turned out. Combat is very fluid, and it is never broken. Geralt dances around his enemies making it seem easy and I'm playing on Blood and Broken Bones. However, Geralt can only take a few hits and that's it! Sometimes I have misjudged an enemy and leave myself open, one heavy slash and I'm down. Which is nice and how I like my combat. Bloody fantastic!
The story...well I haven't gotten far at all, probably as far as we've seen from most streams and I've got to say I wish I hadn't of watched any of those streams, as it lessened the impact of the story so far in. Although so far it is good. This was just more or less a quick impression of the games mechanics and graphics. I'm about to dive back into this game and I don't think I'll resurface for a long, long time.
So, it goes without saying: Thank-you CDPR! You've got a golden game here!
Okay. So, I am running The Witcher 3 at ultra settings, with hairworks and HBAO+. I'm averaging 45FPS with a single GTX 980. My CPU is an i5-2500K OC'ed to 4.5Ghz. First off, the graphics. They look really good for a game this size, I can see where they "scaled" back on some things, most notably the foilage, however it still looks really good. The water is the best looking water I have ever seen in a video game, and to get it looking so gorgeous in a game that is this big is incredible! The facial animations and textures of armors and weapons look outstanding! Some things have lower res textures, but that's to be expected, such as random mugs. Walls look great too! The only thing is that the quality of the textures of armors seems to diminish a bit while not in a cut scene, but I chalk this up to the position of the camera and the fact that I am playing on a 24 inch monitor and have somewhat poor eyesight. Overall I would say the graphics are great! There will mods to further enhance them in due time, not to mention CDPR will release more options too. Oh, and the lighting is well done. The sunrise and sunsets are beautiful!
What I am really excited about is the combat! It was never the strongest suit in The Witcher series, and while it was fun, it wasn't exciting. This time CDPR has nailed it, I think! The combat is exciting, it is intense, and you really have to take an approach to it in the manner of timing your strikes, dodges, parries, etc...especially signs! I'm used to The Witcher 2, where you can spam signs compared to this game. I really could not be happier with how the combat turned out. Combat is very fluid, and it is never broken. Geralt dances around his enemies making it seem easy and I'm playing on Blood and Broken Bones. However, Geralt can only take a few hits and that's it! Sometimes I have misjudged an enemy and leave myself open, one heavy slash and I'm down. Which is nice and how I like my combat. Bloody fantastic!
The story...well I haven't gotten far at all, probably as far as we've seen from most streams and I've got to say I wish I hadn't of watched any of those streams, as it lessened the impact of the story so far in. Although so far it is good. This was just more or less a quick impression of the games mechanics and graphics. I'm about to dive back into this game and I don't think I'll resurface for a long, long time.
So, it goes without saying: Thank-you CDPR! You've got a golden game here!
