The Skyrim effect

[byghostlight]

Chalk and cheese. One wants you to be whoever you want to be and has the man character as a blank/impersonal slate on which a story is projected but Witcher is a personal tale in an epic world. You are playing THAT character and well if you don't like him *shrugs* tuff.

I love playing RPG and always have my set type of characters to create, this game has reminded me how impersonal those games can be. I havent been this wrapped up in a gaming world in yeas.

 

[Duncaaaaaan]

Skyrim (or rather it's modding community) has been going strong for 4 years now, because of the flexibility and customizeability of the game, and while I never really cared about it, since I don't like it as a RPG, I would love for TW3 to have such a long life span. So, yea, TW3 is not Skyrim, but it could take a look at some of the stuff it did to stay relevant for so long.

You;re wrong though... Skyrim was a sandbox game. You go around exploring every inch, grinding, finding glitches, grinding some more, start again as a different race to experiment, the main quest is some afterthought that takes a few hours to complete. The whole point of Skyrim is that it is sandbox, you do what you want when you want.

The witcher 3 is a huge story with side quests that branch off of it, that is set in a few areas that just so happen to be sandbox areas. Rather than the story/gameplay revolving around the open sandbox, the open sandbox revolves around the story.

 

[Merism]

Skyrim = Walk into castle. Find king/prince/royalty, murder said royalty. Drag corpse to fountain, steal corpse's clothing. Sell clothing to local innkeeper. Steal from innkeeper. Murder innkeeper. Throw innkeeper into fountain. Drag royalty's corpse back to castle, leave on desk near royalty's family member. Casually chat with family member. Steal from family member. Murder family member.

I can't say Skyrim is something I'd ever want the Witcher to be like. I got so frustrated with the game's 'enter every cave/ruin/place with a door and kill everything' that I just gave up on it. Still, it's funny to do atrocious things like I mentioned above.

That said I do get a little frustrated with the Witcher 3's occasional 'deviation' from its own world, where high level bandits can beat a witcher to death with wooden clubs, while their rags and blubber deflect my razor sharp meteorite-forged-steel sword. I suppose it keeps players in the right areas while still being able to be considered an open world. Obviously, you can return to areas once you are more powerful and experience them however you want but it does seem to have that 'invisible fence' effect of keeping wandering players on the right path