The Witcher 3 on the cover of next month's Edge magazine

[Cheylus]

If by more content you mean you can loot chests filled with randomly generated garbage and by NPC backgrounds you mean they took an arrow to the knee then sure, Skyrim has all that. What it doesn't have is cohesion, consistency, acknowledgment of your decisions, good writing... you get the point.

As much as I dislike TW3 being compared to Skyrim, it might draw attention. Question is: will the TES crowd appreciate a game like The Witcher?

There is simply more content in Skyrim that there will be in TW3. I wasn't talking about quality here. As I said before, I currently have a 80 hours playthrough of Skyrim pending and I didn't do half of the quests nor the DLCs. It was not my first playthrough: I didn't lose my time in random ("radiant") quests and meaningless exploration.
For TW3, 80/100 hours of content (probably less for experienced players) in a 44km² game don't look that promising to me. I am worried about empty places (and fast travel).
I'm not glad they already compared the game to another game released three years before TW3 on another generation of platform.
HOWEVER cohesion, consistency, acknowledgment of my decisions, good writing. THAT is appetizing. Why don't they start by that? There is a whole crowd asking for this type of game (look at Project Eternity, Wasteland, Torment).

 

[username_3604093]

This time don't even think about telling that TW3 didn't have enough hype when its released.

But seriuosly Bigger than Skyrim sound kinda silly. I already imagine other companies saying something like faster than Nvidia or more powerful than Intel

In this case it's totally understandable. The state of that game when bethesda released it was ridiculous. Even those "patches"..
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w3tArdWqRM[/media]

 

[username_2635215]

Looks like a mutated elk

I guess the creature is a relative of the Bullvore from The Witcher 2

 

[daddy300]

Killer Elks? creepy

 

[blackgriffin]

if someone can put a link to the full article, pic's and all

 

[cmdr_silverbolt]

What "bigger than Skyrim" means is that the gameworld is physically greater, as in there's more of it, than that of Skyrim.

 

[Agent_Blue]

When attempting to introduce a franchise to a larger audience it might help to put it into context by referencing the closest title they will be acquainted with. Besides, the pull quote 'Bigger than Skyrim' was likely Edge's own editorial take.

I quite fancy the quasi-elk.

Anyway, since, supposedly, the new screens are on DX11, can someone comment on how different they look compared to the first batch?

 

[Mohasz]

Okay, this whole "Bigger than Skyrim" hogwash (even if it's true) is pretty immature, whatever...
Also, Geralt looks really old and tired on that cover, reminds me of the original cover of TW2.
Otherwise all the things we've heard so far sound promising, let's hope the "Witcher senses" mechanic won't be too dumb.

 

[volsung]

Honestly Geralt does not look THAT old in that cover. We're too used to botox Hollywood faces, but normal people have wrinkles! The white hair and the beard make him "look" older, but his skin is not that of an "old" person. We all know he has white hair, so let's ignore that feature of his appearance. And by the way, Geralt *îs* supposed to be old for human standards.

Let's get over the teenage elven hero mentality.

 

[Mohasz]

I know, I do not want a "teenage elven hero". Geralt in TW2 was not like that.
The quality of the image is not very good so it might be the reason why he looks so old (edit: well, not even old since he is supposed to be old, more like weak) to me. We'll see.

 

[Agent_Blue]

Geralt looks old yet Geralt looks powerful.
A master.


Any clarification on the Witcher Senses?

 

[vivaxardas2015]

CDPR, I implore you, get rid of "bigger than Skyrim"! I remember Gothic 3 being hailed as "Oblivion killer" when it was in development. The same was with Two Worlds (1). Brings back bad memories, and a sense of dread and foreboding.

If TW3 is a masterpiece (and I hope it will be), it will definitely get great sales on its own merits. Skyrim itself wasn't hailed as bigger than anything, just a game it was. CDPR as a company is well-known enough, not some new up-start who may feel a need to hide behind some overblown ads. But if TW3 fails to attract a wider audience, this "bigger than Skyrim" would be sneered at for a long time, and would actually harm sales. Stressing strong points of TW3 without any dick-sizing contest with Bethesda would be way better.

 

[cmdr_silverbolt]

Okay, I understand why someone might not like Geralt's look- not everyone wants to role-play as an old man, and that's okay. Geralt's new look makes his age rather obvious, that's why he seems "old and tired".

I don't think it's fair to put down someone else's role-play preference; if someone wants to role-play as a teenage elven hero, then they should get to do that. Are we going to deny that teenagers are incapable of heroism?

Regardless, what we need to remember is that Geralt is not us, he's a character whose story we get to experience. Geralt doesn't have to be everything that we'd like him to be, imagine him as a person.

That said, he looks damn fine to me. Mmmhmm.

Oh, and I don't understand why "bigger than Skyrim" is so offensive. It's stating something factual: the world in TW3 is bigger than that in Skyrim.

I know it can be misconstrued as "more popular than Skyrim", but let's not misunderstand that.

 

[Baal_CZ]

Hey, can someone with an account on NeoGAF write there and ask for the scans of new screenshots? I can´t buy the magazine in my country and my body really need those screenshots!

 

[Agent_Blue]

I honestly fail to see the drama in pulling such comparisons.

Skyrim was the 5th instalment from a company which had published what?, 6 AAA RPGs, countless DLC packs, and could thus cash in on a much wider fan base. Skyrim's marketing budget will probably remain no match for CDProjekt, or so I would imagine. It would thus be somewhat disingenuous to believe TW3's commercial success could parallel Skyrim's on the grounds of its creative merits alone.

Bottom line, is there any reason to believe that pull quote is anything other than the product of Edge's own discretion? I understand CDP might have mentioned the fact casually or even premeditatedly, but the decision to turn it into a buzz phrase seems to me to have rested upon whom has the last word, the editor himself.

 

[vivaxardas2015]

I am pretty cynical, and do not really buy all this crap about artist's creativity and vision, but... I want TW3 to be a unique game, as unique as Planescape Torment, for example. If TW3 is truly unique, in terms of a waste reactive world, and a great complex story, with multiple paths, and meaningful consequences, it should be in its own category. All these comparisons, in my opinion, take away uniqueness. This "bigger than X" thing a lot of people would understand as "it is like X only bigger". Bigger in terms of what? Someone already said that Skyrim, and any sandbox, will be always bigger in terms of amount of content, and how many hours you can spend there. Thing is we want TW3 not to be like Skyrim, we do not want another sand-box, even a bigger one. We want a unique game that combines a huge open world and a complex story. And how big this world really is - who a f** cares? What does square millage have to do with quality of the world and a story? Just tell as about the game itself, and we'll appreciate it.

 

[Agent_Blue]

As evidenced by Skyrim's sales figures, lots of gamers do care about the size of the game world. I really don't see how one could make the claim the size of the game world is irrelevant. I agree it might not be the decisive factor, let alone the sole factor, but it certainly is not an irrelevant aspect.

What we're being promised here is the best of both worlds: we're getting an expansive world which is bigger than SKyrim but, unlike Skyrim, is also reactive, handcrafted and story-driven.

 

[KnightofPhoenix]

Geralt's looking nice! I dig the beard

Can't wait for more info! Also, reveal Emhyr already.

 

[vivaxardas2015]

Geralt's looking nice! I dig the beard

Can't wait for more info! Also, reveal Emhyr already.

I am not sure what Emhyr will be doing in Novigrad. It is still Northern territory, and we are not going to Nilfgaard proper, only to a disputed territory, and the islands. So I really doubt that Emhyr will be in the game. May be we can talk to him through megascope though. I want at least this.

 

[magnoos]

I love this mature looking version of Geralt.

He got old wonder if he needs some herbs or potions when he sleeps around.. If you know what I mean