Watched the entire stream last night, and I really really loved Damien's and Miles' answers to all the questions! It was actually quite interesting to hear some new stuff about the process of creating The Witcher 3. Coolest bits of info in my opinion:
- How they considered huge levels of environmental destruction in the game. Using a spell in a cave apparently caused all the stalactites and stalagmites to explode and fall and possibly hit enemies, and slashing a rock apparently cut it in half? Still a good thing they toned it down though, otherwise nobody might have been able to run the game.
- The ice-skating. I'm actually sad it got cut, because when I heard about it a month back I suspected it would be to recreate the scene from the books. And I was right! ...except it's no longer in the game. R.I.P BloodOnIce scene, it might've been amazing graphically, story-wise, and gameplay-wise. Not a bummer though, because I understand the rationale of "introducing new game mechanics in the last bit of the game" being bad.
- The development process was organic. I think anyone(?) could suggest something and it could become a feature of the game. That kind of flat structure sounds really awesome because nobody's ideas are being shut out thanks to their "low" position. I hope they continue to use this structure for Cyberpunk 2077! (Although it's probably why the game was delayed twice... but it is the lesser evil so it's totally worth it.)
- Lastly, the living ecosystem. You can slaughter a deer and, depending on whether there are monsters around to smell the carcass, said monsters might come calling. Said monsters might then decide to duke it out over the meat. If there are travelers passing by, they might end up fighting said monsters. And so on. Apparently Miles was galloping along when he ran into some bandits on horseback; they were engaged in combat when all of a sudden endregas attacked and slaughtered the bandits. Naturally, Miles turned and ran for his life (or maybe it was Roach panicking hm). These organic encounters sound really fun, and it's so good to know that the world is perfectly capable of functioning both with and without you.
However, uh... when the stream finally got to the gameplay segment, I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed. I actually thought I enjoyed Damien's and Miles' talking more...
Until I downloaded the HD gameplay footage this morning. Maybe it was my intense level of fatigue the previous night or the horrible stream quality, but I have no idea why I felt as disappointed as I did. The gameplay's AMAZING! I think I discovered a new level of heaven watching it in HD-
Shall post my impressions of the gameplay in a separate, well, post since this one's getting quite long. In the meantime, thank you CDPR for all your hard work, thank you Damien and Miles for being at PAX and giving such an awesome presentation, thank you twitch for making streams so easy, and damn you twitch for the stream's quality! Kudos!