Why is Novigrad so empty?

[Tuco]

Already named one, the cities in skyrim.

Which is hilarious on so many levels.

Not really.

Skyrim could not hold a candle to STALKER anyway.

I'm not even sure why some people think Skyrim is the king of the hill to beat here.
I mean, I think TW3 absolutely destroys it, but I wouldn't even need to bother with it.
There are several older, cheaper games that I would list as far better than Skyrim in offering a proper sense of place.

Gothic, Risen, Ultima.
They may not be as extensive when it comes to mere square kilometers, but they offer a lot of more meaningful interaction with NPCS, a better sense of scale that create the proper illusion of being part of an actual place rather than a cardboard scenario, etc.

 

[OliverDK]

First of I am impressed by Novigrad and Oxenfurt in general when it comes to "exteriors"; the streets, the layout, the diversity, the details and so on. Both are hugely impressive and BIG thumbs up for CDPR to create those marbles.

What I don't like is the implementation of enterable buildings however. Well some of them - not all.

Listen I can understand that game development is a huge task and in regards to Novigrad making every house enterable would just be a tremendous task in both resources and time. That is of course unless you would make every interior generic and similar and then there really isn't any point. So I wouldn't never ask for more houses to be enterable.

However what I don't understand is the priority in which houses CDPR have made enterable because as it is now they actually quickly end up as just generic and very similar pretty fast because for the most parts it is just the same 3 - 4 layouts reused with the only difference being that a few things have been moved around a bit. That's no fun - to me at least.

Furthermore there is no telling (which I have found at least) to separate which houses are enterable which means you have to run around to every door to check if it's enterable and I admit I have done just that. And to me in the end it just became tedious to see the same stuff over and over again.

Not to mention that there is really no interaction with the NPCs in the vast majorities of those enterable houses and as such those NPCs just become generic objects you don't care about as you loot their stuff. And frankly I didn't start out with the intention of looting the houses when I started out in the cities. I just wanted to immerse myself in the life of the people and admire the details. But in the end there was no other point than seeing them as loot holes.

Personally I would much have prefer (and that was what I had hoped for when I first found out and saw these cities) that the most interesting houses or POI in Novigrad and Oxenfurt would have been enterable. That they where teaming with "life" and interesting NPC I could converse with about various things happening in the city, the world or just in that NPCs life.

Examples of those buildings could the tall house near the fish market in Novigrad, the eternal fire tower on temple isle in Novigrad, some of the huge houses on the bridge to temple isle in Novigrad, A huge warehouse in Novigrad, the towers at the bridge into Oxenfurt, more of the military places and temples in both cities, more of the towers in both cities, more of the public buildings in both cities and so on. Those places would have made sense to enter and would have been fun to explorer.

Now I single out one to give an example of how I would have liked it: Take the tall houses near the fish market. That would have been a logical choice to be able to enter because it stands out among the rest and as a player it is something you notice and I can't talk how others feel but damm I want to explorer that building.

It would be so cool to explorer for the obvious reason of the incredible view of the city you could have from it; imaging as you go up floor by floor you can admire the view of the city from different angles and heights - watching the city teaming and puzzling with life at the streets below. Something like that does levels to immersion (for me at least).

Now we can get creative and you can make up your own story but I could imaging that such a huge building could be quite diverse with each floor being interesting in it's own rights by having it's own "story". For example the bottom floor could have beena couple of shops while the next few floors could have been offices of some sort - maybe a dentist or a doctor's practices or a town's officials office. Further up a few homes for a couple of wealthy families and maybe a few storage rooms for the shops and offices below. At the top you could have had a mage laboratory or a bar or a high class brothel and so on.

Finally you could have made it teaming with life and a had some interesting NPCs that offered interesting a deep conversation and maybe even a quest of two.

Give me that instead of generic houses that are just loot holes.

Disclaimer: Admittedly I have yet to complete the game so I cannot yet say whether some of the places I mention earlier will be enterable later in the game. Nevertheless to me it would have made so much more sense that the interesting houses, towers, poi had been enterable and all the generic homes had been "locked" off or you have met a get the f... out of my house when you opened the door.

 

[witchit]

The whole game is empty specially when you finish the story no high level boss or monsters oblivion was much better with tons of things you can do this game it's like is made for retarded people .

 

[Sainur]

I see people talking about how many houses you can or cannot enter and how many people you can or can't talk to, does it matter? Whenever you're in a city in real life do you go around asking every single human being what his story was, or go around and try to enter every building you come across? In a world which is actually way bigger than Skyrim, where there is so much to explore, why do you want to enter every building in a city?

Oh well, at least Novigrad feels like a proper city, and in TW3 you actually feel there is war and chaos. (unlike Skyrim's "civil war" lol, which was more like a couple of skirmishes, kill 10 NPCs and defeat the Jarl and baaaamm, the city is yours!)

---------- Updated at 10:57 AM ----------

There are way more than 3 houses you can enter in Novigrad. You clearly haven't explored enough yet. There are at the very least 20 houses you can enter in Novigrad. That's already 5 more than any city in Skyrim. There's probably even more than 20 houses you can enter in Novigrad, but I either forgot or haven't found them yet.

Besides, who randomly goes into other people's houses anyway? How does that add to realism or immersion? Do you just walk into everyone's house in real-life too?

As for the NPC cycles, with literally hundreds of NPCs in the city you're bound to have some that indeed don't do a whole lot, but none of them go through the same cycle every 15 seconds, that's just nonsense. All of them go to bed when nightfall comes, guards will patrol the street during nightfall. Some thieves and bandits snoop around during nightfall that aren't there during the day. And most NPCs actually do things you expect NPCs to do, such as carrying goods from one place to another, walk from their home to a shop and back, or visit the local pub.

Sure, in Skyrim you can break into locked doors. In the witcher you can't, because Geralt isn't a thief, he's a witcher. Breaking into houses would not make any sense in The Witcher, unless it's part of a quest.

Quality over quantity indeed. But sometimes quantity adds to the quality. This is most certainly the case in The Witcher 3. None of the cities in Skyrim actually felt like cities. The lore of Skyrim and the actual world of Skyrim didn't add up, which completely broke immersion for me. Solitude is supposed to be a giant trading metropolis according to the lore. In reality it's a very tiny place with only 20 houses give or take and a handful of NPCs. I was never convinced Solitude was the big city as described in the lore. Novigrad does feel like a big city, very much so. It's exactly as described in the lore. Same goes for Oxenfurt (though I expected Oxenfurt to be a bit bigger, but it's still leaps and bounds above any city in Skyrim).

And you're saying Skyrim doesn't have annoying characters that say the same shit every 15 seconds? Are you serious? The NPCs in Skyrim repeat their lines so insanely often than some of those lines have become memes!

"I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee!" - every single guard ever in Skyrim.

"Do you visit the cloud district often? Oh, what am I saying, ofcourse you don't." - Nazeem every single time you walk past him.

"Who are you looking at? I'm not afraid of you! Even if you are my elder!" - Brave every single time you walk past her.

I didn't even have to look up any of these lines, I know them all from the top of my head because I've heard them so insanely often in the +/- 170 hours I've spend in Skyrim.

You clearly haven't played Skyrim in a while and you're looking at your memories of the game through rose-colored glasses. All the little "flaws" The Witcher 3 suffers from, Skyrim suffers from as well and in many cases it's even worse in Skyrim.

The Witcher 3 has more quantity AND better quality than Skyrim.

Someone give this man a medal.

 

[Tuco]

The whole game is empty

Bullshit.

specially when you finish the story no high level boss or monsters

Yeah, it could use some addition in that sense. And more diverse creatures in general...

oblivion was much better with tons of things you can do this game it's like is made for retarded people .

...Aaand this is where you lost me completely.

 

[ScoiataelWarrior]

Bullshit.


Yeah, it could use some addition in that sense. And more diverse creatures in general...


...Aaand this is where you lost me completely.

In terms of settlements, Witcher 3 has quite a lot and its cities are very big. But in terms of caves, bandit camps, dungeons, etc. it's pretty empty.

 

[Tuco]

In terms of settlements, Witcher 3 has quite a lot and its cities are very big. But in terms of caves, bandit camps, dungeons, etc. it's pretty empty.

I actually think that even in that sense the game has a lot of cool, superbly designed and not-mandatory places to explore. I often found myself exploring areas and caves which weren't even remotely touched by main plot or side quests and I was constantly impressed by how well they were designed, both aesthetically and in terms of layout.
Morphologically it felt as convincing as the best stuff from Piranha Bytes (which I think are -ehr, used to be- the best people around in making believable scenaros), except with a much higher production value.


If anything, the real issue is that, with the underwhelming itemization/loot in this game, you have very little incentive/sense of reward in doing this optional exploration.
More semi-hidden, optional high level bosses and more well designed, gratifying treasures to find in these areas could to wonders for valorizing these areas.

 

[keryyn]

First of I am impressed by Novigrad and Oxenfurt in general when it comes to "exteriors"; the streets, the layout, the diversity, the details and so on. Both are hugely impressive and BIG thumbs up for CDPR to create those marbles. ...

... Finally you could have made it teaming with life and a had some interesting NPCs that offered interesting a deep conversation and maybe even a quest of two.

Give me that instead of generic houses that are just loot holes.

Disclaimer: Admittedly I have yet to complete the game so I cannot yet say whether some of the places I mention earlier will be enterable later in the game. Nevertheless to me it would have made so much more sense that the interesting houses, towers, poi had been enterable and all the generic homes had been "locked" off or you have met a get the f... out of my house when you opened the door.

You do realise that it takes time and resources to give life to an large scale open world ? What you wish for is impossible because it would take years and years to make every bit of the created world to have its own look, its own stories. Besides, do you imagine if every npc in novigrad had even a few lines of dialogues to share their own stories ? The amount of scripting, voiced-dialogues etc ?

Only in games that did not rely on voice-acted dialogues could you find such a deep experience with npc, like morrowind, where you could easlily write entire books if you wanted to when creating a new quest or simply a character story as he would tell you about ...

 

[Lyvean]

Why woud a realistic open world game would allow the player to enter any house and ask questions around? Do you go to your local military camp and chat with the general? What is this idiocy? Unless there is a reason, unless you are important, there is absolutely no reason to enter important buildings just because you need to learn more about the world. That is the antithesis of immersion. Chatting with local people, as so many sidequests allow, is enough information for the player. I would go even further than having the people calling the guards when someone enters their home uninvited. The point is to get away from the stupidity of Skyrim, not replicate it.

And I read above that someone tried to see which houses he could enter and which not in all of Novigrad and that he found that tedious?

Really? It was tedious? You don't say.

 

[OliverDK]

You do realise that it takes time and resources to give life to an large scale open world ? What you wish for is impossible because it would take years and years to make every bit of the created world to have its own look, its own stories. Besides, do you imagine if every npc in novigrad had even a few lines of dialogues to share their own stories ? The amount of scripting, voiced-dialogues etc ?

Only in games that did not rely on voice-acted dialogues could you find such a deep experience with npc, like morrowind, where you could easlily write entire books if you wanted to when creating a new quest or simply a character story as he would tell you about ...

I think you misunderstand my idea. I don't want every NPCs in Novigrad to be intractable and have his or her own stories. I was talking about enterable buildings that was far more interesting that what we have currently in the game.

I wish the generic enterable buildings we have currently was scrapped and that CDPR instead had put their focus on more the interesting buildings that are already in the game and made those buildings enterable and done something to make them feel unique and interesting.

As it is now I think I have entered around 50 buildings in Novigrad - it might be more it might be a bit less. I didn't count. I might have missed a few but believe me I have been at every single door I could find so far in the game and most of the buildings I have entered were generic loot houses and nothing more - they didn't add anything to the game, the NPCs just stood there and let me rob them silly. There are around 3 "ground" layouts. I can't even remember because none of them left any impression on me. Anyway with those "3" layouts they have tried to differentiate the interior of them by moving stuff around and closing things off or opening a door up or whatever. But again they were nothing but loot holes.

And that's boring to me and I wished they instead had closed off all those indifferent houses. Instead they should have focus on fewer buildings - like around 5-10 and made those buildings feel different and unique and made them part of the game in some sense that don't have to be complicated.

One of those buildings could have been as I mention the high building near the fish market and close to the harbor inn. And to quote myself made it like this:

It would be so cool to explorer for the obvious reason of the incredible view of the city you could have from it; imaging as you go up floor by floor you can admire the view of the city from different angles and heights - watching the city teaming and puzzling with life in the streets below. Looking out at the busy harbor as ships come in or sail off in the distance. Something like that does levels to immersion (for me at least).

Now we can get creative and you can make up your own ideas to the interior design but I could imaging that such a huge building could be quite diverse with each floor being interesting in it's own rights by having it's own "story" (design). For example the bottom floor could have been a couple of shops while the next few floors could have been offices of some sort - maybe a dentist or a doctor's practices or a town's officials office. Further up a few homes for a couple of wealthy families and maybe a few storage rooms for the shops and offices below. At the top you could have had a mage laboratory or a bar or a high class brothel and so on.

See that would have been far more interesting and inviting that any number of the currently generic buildings that you at the moment can enter and rob of belongings and then leave and forget everything about. The above example would leave a far better imprint on the player not to mention immersion (at least to me).

And yes in that building there could have been some NPCs you could interact with and maybe a quest or two. And no I am not asking for every NPC in that building should be able to strike up a conversion with you but just a few interesting ones you could discuss eg. the world situation with or what is happening in the city or a personal story. There really doesn't have to be more to it than that.

I would have liked 5-10 enterable buildings to be like that. Other than the buildings I mention could be:
- A busy warehouse at docks.
- The eternal fire chapel at Temple Isle in Novigrad.
- The tower bridge to Oxenfurt.
- One or two of the buildings at the bridge to Temple isles in Novigrad
- And so on.

And then for the hundreds of other buildings in the game - close them all off. Let them be locked or blocked somehow or have a person yell get the f out of my house and the screen fades and you are left on the street like with gramps in TW1.

That is whar I would have liked. Not every NPC in the whole city to be interactive or every building in the game to be enterable. Just give me a few interesting and memorable ones.

 

[Mohasz]

Personally I would much have prefer (and that was what I had hoped for when I first found out and saw these cities) that the most interesting houses or POI in Novigrad and Oxenfurt would have been enterable. That they where teaming with "life" and interesting NPC I could converse with about various things happening in the city, the world or just in that NPCs life.

Examples of those buildings could the tall house near the fish market in Novigrad, the eternal fire tower on temple isle in Novigrad, some of the huge houses on the bridge to temple isle in Novigrad, A huge warehouse in Novigrad, the towers at the bridge into Oxenfurt, more of the military places and temples in both cities, more of the towers in both cities, more of the public buildings in both cities and so on. Those places would have made sense to enter and would have been fun to explorer.

This. I would've loved to see some of the interiors of the more special buildings. But I guess it would've been a lot more work for them. I hope they add some interesting stuff with the expansion.

 

[MattMk1]

I think that the high number of buildings you can't enter is an unavoidable consequence of the CDPR design philosophy - their city / town design has always been much more true to life than in most RPGs. (IIRC they actually hired people who studied architecture to handle some aspects of the art direction)

Compare their work with something like Redcliffe in the original DAO - a handful of buildings (not even enough to house all the NPCs you meet, never mind a large village that's the seat of an Earl... or is it Arl?) one of which is a big temple, overlooked by a gigantic castle that's larger than most real-life royal castles in Europe. Or Skyrim - even though it's a tired comparison by now - which has lots of cities and villages filled with relatively small numbers of gigantic houses and castles and often no visible means of supporting all those fantasy McMansions. (hell, in Skyrim, you often get the feeling the town and city guards in a given place significantly outnumber the inhabitants)

However, if you're going to have literally hundreds of buildings because you want the city to look like something that might actually have existed in Medieval Europe, there's no realistic way you can spend the resources on making them unique locations you can enter - not unless your goal is to make an urban RPG that's meant to be about that city, and nothing else. You simply need to give the player enough to do in the city to create a satisfactory illusion of life - which is something I think W3 succeeds at, and games like Skyrim don't do nearly as well as, despite the latter actually having more buildings you can enter and generic NPCs you can ostensibly talk to (but who have nothing meaningful to say.)

Another thing to consider is that, like virtually every major RPG, the original Witcher 3 design probably included a lot more content than what made it into the finished game - so a lot of those doors that light up but are always locked were probably meant for quests or encounters that had to be cut when reality set in.

 

[oli56]

I would like to address a point mentioned several times in this thread, which is basically "why do you want to open all doors, you would never do that in real life" and the affiliated topic "why do you want to talk to any person in the street you would never do that in real life". Both concerns are true but I think miss the point. The point being "what does make an environment alive for you?" Depending on people we will have many answers to this question, this is why there are so many opinions expressed in this thread. For some, the "aliveness" is the number of people doing stuff around you, even if they are just bots you cannot talk to, some may be satisfied with that level of "aliveness". For me though, having hundreds of bots you cannot interact with is similar to having zero bots, or having static decoration content. So in terms of aliveness, no value. The same applies to hundreds of building having doors you cannot open. This is not necessarilly that I would open all possible doors, but *knowing* there is something behind them participates to the aliveness. It will make me want to be curious. If I know before hand most people are bots and won't even talk to me (even some vendors!), most doors are locked and will never open, the world considerably shrinks! I just don't want to ping every door to see which one will open, don't want to try to talk to any person knowing most of them will have nothing to say. So well, basically this comes down to knowing what make a world alive for you. From my point of view, this is the thought that things are possible, that psychological disposition that make you feel you are in an environment where many things are possible even if you don't do them all. If I know in advance most things are not possible, either static or bot-like, this ruins the experience.

 

[Calloveri]

I think you need to play more quests to get the full content of that city, maybe the village is shut down because "peasants" are afraid to come out because there is dragon nest nearby or something. I remember playing gta 3 where i stumbled to a roadblock to another huge city. I had to do quite some questing before i could access the content.

 

[cgbravo]

I have to agree is not as immersive as I thought it would be and I started noticing the more I traveled around exploring, unless you're doing quests it can get a bit boring, I've only seen bandits once and been attacked by henchmen maybe twice but thats all

 

[GabrielH100]

Hi, Novigrad's design is fantastic, huge city with so many details and attention put into building something realistic. On the other hand, most people have nothing to say, most vendors have nothing to sell, and most doors are closed. In the end, what could have been a game inside the game is just an empty shell, a beautiful one, but an empty one. My wish would be a "Living Novigrad" DLC, a DLC really giving life to this city that deserves so much more. But will this happen? I have great doubts!

Religious persecution. Witch Hunts. Gangland warfare. Would you leave your door unlocked? Or speak to a stranger?

 

[Szoreny]

Skyrim has a better living and breathing world than W3. That is what I was hoping for with W3, W3 is still a great game but skyrim IMO still has it beat in that regard. That being said W3 crushes skyrim when it comes to your choices mattering. In skyrim they really don't, but in W3 they can have a big or even small subitle effect. If only we could get Skyrims living breathing world and W3s choices that matter.

Uh yeah but whats the biggest city in Skyrim, - Markath? There are about 85 NPCs in Markath including 2 named dogs, add to that some generic guards.

And yes you can go in every door. There are 23 visitable areas. In the game's biggest city. And that's including the mines, ruins, the hall of the dead and some open air locations like the marketplace.

Now I don't know about you, but I vastly prefer W3's approach with hundreds of generic NPC's and tons of buildings (no I haven't counted them), un-enterable as they may be. To me its a much more convincing representation of a city, as when you're visiting such a place on business you won't be interacting with the majority of the residents, nor barging into their homes.

Sure it would be NICE to be able to do so, but in this case I'm satisfied with the backdrop of appropriate scale, rather than the weird double-think of Skyrim where a crowded city has the population of a backwater town.

 

[Thang]

Looking at ACU i wish TW3 would spawn that many NPCs in novigrad.

 

[Guest 3800752]

A merchant, barber or herbalist once discovered should stay pinned on the map. I hate having to search the same NPC again and again.

 

[Tangsta]

Geez how easily people forget this game only had a production budget of $15 million. Novigrad is still more lively than Los Santos in GTA V, and that game had a massive budget and workforce, and it's the only major area the game had.

Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but yesh, please be a bit realistic with your requests!