Option to disable Monster Names & health bars displaying above their heads?
I'd like to ask for this now, rather than wait for the game to release and possibly have the option not be there - which I would find unsatisfying.
When wandering woods at night, and coming across a werewolf, I would not like to see a bright-red health bar and the title Werewolf appear floating above its head - and experiencing that would take me right out of the sense of realism to the environment, and intensity of the experience. I prefer to not know the health of my opponent while I am attacking them, and I certainly don't need an MMO-style headline of what type of creature I'm fighting being displayed on my monitor, like Geralt has some LED military visor from the future showing him references from a lexicon database on some server.
Witcher 3 is looking great, but there's way too much screen noise in most of the released media - too many layers of superfluous data and world-hacking information that just doesn't seem right for exploring and existing in a medieval natural beauty.
How much is needed? It seems to me like the choice of design in W3 is a style-based choice, and not a practicality and need-based design. Number / bar / title noise is not a favourable design direction, in my opinion and preference, and I hope to feel, while playing Witcher 3, as if I'm there in the natural world, and not behind a digital screen that's layered with meta-data filler.
I've been told there's option to disable much of the HUD data, but what exactly can be disabled, and how things function when it is disabled, I'm still wishing to know:
- Will NPC names appear only when highlighting them with the mouse while near to them?
- Will Geralt's status bars fade and disappear while not in combat, and maybe only briefly appear in combat when hit or stamina is exerted?
- Can daytime stat and indicator be disabled independently from the other elements on the screen?
If you could, 3DPR, please give understanding to us regarding the configurability and operation of customizing and hiding HUD elements.
At any rate, when playing a game about hunting monsters, with so much work put into crafting a moody, detail-dense world with believable environments, all that serious sentiment is undercut when floating titles for beasts running out of the woods not only remind you you're playing a game, but also give away the opponent location and identity, taking away player sensation, puzzle-solving, tactics and battle calculations, and immersion. I want to rely on my learning, capability, and judgment, and not on on-screen meta-data serving as a handicap indicator for how to handle my battles.