Witcher 3 has a limited replayability because....

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Witcher 3 has a limited replayability because....

....because unlike Skyrim, unlocking the rest of the maps require the player to play the main quest.
Before someone trying to accuse of being a Skyrim fanboy (I haven't played it in years now), just consider these few facts, that makes the Witcher 3 more repetitious and possibly most people rather not replay it more than 2 -3 times.
This does not mean, that people playing W3 didn't get their money's worth or the Witcher 3 is not fun. I'm 100% sure, that everyone who knew what to expect from W3 probably feel satisfied and the game is head and shoulders above other games released in the past few years.

But here is my little rant.
In Witcher 3 you start:
You are put on a rather small map which has limited number quests beside the main story. It's not possible to leave this map without completing the main quest. If you don't finish the main quest (and its connecting secondary quests), you are stuck on this map forever and no progress can be done.

In Skyrim:
You escape from the execution and you don't have to follow the main quest. The whole map is yours and do whatever you feel like. You can spend 300 hours easily without ever go see the Jarl of Whiterun. If you start the main quest, you can stop any time (do you want dragons or not? Do you want to be dragonborn or not? Do you want the civil war finished or not?) None of these would limit the player to do everything else or limit their leveling, and availability of items - beside a few quest based items.


In my opinion, you can only listen to the conversations and cut-scenes only a few times before it feels boring. Everyone has the work through the main quest in order to unlock all maps and also have to reach a certain level and a certain status in the main quest to unlock every parts of each map.
Both games fail to send a feel of accomplishment to the player, because both worlds are static. Skyrim's world doesn't change, whether there are dragons wrecking the villages and killing people, or whether or not you cleared the dungeon or cave from the monsters.
In Witcher 3, you can go kill the commander of the witch-hunters. The witch hunting continues. You can kill Radovid , his troops remain everywhere. Politics doesn't change, the towns and fields continues to be full of hanged people. I - playing Geralt- continue to be spit on and called names, regardless what I do.
Ravaged villages continue to be ravaged, save the few mini-missions, where after Geralt killing the bandits or monsters, the villagers return.
There is no consequences for NOT doing a monster killing quest, in which (many of them) a monster threatens a village or a person. If the player doesn't do the mission, the monster doesn't come. For example, a griffin threatens a village, would never come and rip apart any villages and take people or livestock away, but most likely circling on the sky at a random spot, doing basically nothing.

So as you can see, I may be criticizing how developers (in general, not picking on a particular) unable to come up with a game, which makes the player feel they accomplished something. There is no "aftershock" or consequence, beside minor ones. Apparently the developers would rather focus on leveling and loot as a measurement for accomplishment.
Games relying heavily on the story has the limitation of the story itself, creating a sort of tunnel driving and correcting the player to a certain path, which only allows small deviations from the planned path of the story.
I cannot just forget about Ciri and Ciri stays alive until I get to a certain part of the story. There is no sense of urgency of anything really. Things are on a hold, until I finished fiddling with my potions or finding out what the question marks are on the maps. At the same time, I must check Novigraad first and run through a bunch of errands (that I may not want to do), otherwise Geralt cannot travel to Skellige from Velen or Orchard. I must answer certain questions from Triss, there is no way to avoid Triss altogether and there is no way to avoid Yennefer either.
You know what I'm getting?
 
Geralt has been doing noble acts for his whole life (100 years ish) dealing with monsters that trouble human communities. His fellow witchers have been doing the same for hundreds of years ~ yet still they are spat on, murdered, lynched, driven away and cheated. Not by all, but by many.

Once you have moved outside White Orchard you have a *nearly* free reign over all three "main regions" ~ Velen, Novigrad and Skellige. You need not touch a single main quest unless you want to for *most* of the game. (You may cripple your eventual late game levels, because you will consume the higher level sidequests leaving main quests (and some sidequests which are presented later) at an "overlevelled and smaller reward state", but you can do it.)

You cannot access some regions until you progress the story line ~ KM, IoM and the Spiral are locked until their appropriate game stages, and there are sidequests and main quests in the main regions that are locked off until later in the game.... but you really could, if you wanted spend hundreds of hours meandering about totally ignoring the main plot stuff.

Personally seems a waste in a game which has a story to make a point of ignoring the story, but it can be done, and if it floats your boat?
 
unless you are talking about white orchard then only KM is locked out behind the main quest.
You can go everywhere even Skellige without the need to progress through the main quest.
 
The game is designed to be linear open world, at least it is in my opinion. It's not like a Skyrim or any other Elder Scroll game that lets you do virtually anything you want. It may disappointing to some but I don't think the game's intention is to let you go anywhere you want at any time, and I don't have a problem with that. Open world games don't have to be like other open world games.

It depends what the devs really have in mind for NG+. Is it going to be about continuing to level your character, or more about the experience? Because they won't be able to have it both ways. If it's about leveling your character then I imagine they will limit zone access again until you reach certain points in the game (like they do in the Batman series). If it's about the experience, then perhaps everything will be open and available right away.

The latter would be interesting, because then you could complete higher level quests that normally you had to advance super far in the game to do. i haven't seen them specify yet how this will work so if someone can enlighten me I'd appreciate it. My gut tells me they'll still force you to play through certain zones.
 
Yeah, if you played this game then you see why it is not possible to compare it directly, because W3 is linear in story. Then this comparison will inevitably turn into preference of taste.

And if I had to judge by that, I favor W3 right because of its linear story. The results of different dialogue options are interesting enough to replay it again. And for cryin' out loud, I still discover more sidequests popping up after starting for the 3rd time.

For me these are 2 different games, I'd go as far and refuse to see W3 as an open world game, since it is not, technically, it just got several big instances connected by loading screens. These instances play like several open zones but eventually are tied to a linear storyline. That'sokay for me since I am all about exploring stuff and that is possible in W3 like in Skyrim.

Or a simplified matter of choice:

Skyrim aka 'where the hell am I actually' vs. W3 aka sex, blood and friends with benefits.

I share AngryJoes opinion (look up is review on YouTube) on that. You are not playing your own character, you are playing Geralt's story. For that, 'doing anything' does not quite fit.
 
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The Witcher 3 is all about the story. If you don't dig the story and main quest, and want to happily mess around in a complete open world, then perhaps it's not for you. But while open world as it may be, the main story with Yen, Geralt and Ciri is where the action is at. CDPR have done a good job at making the world feel open world, even though you are technically restricted to just a few regions. They're fairly expansive.

By contrast, Skyrim's main story was shockingly bad (IMO), but I dig the vast open world to Morrowind and back.
 
The Witcher never meant to be any "improved version of Skyrim" or something like that. The Witcher as the game has its own unique personality and doesn't need to copy Skyrim to succeed. Currently, there is such a stupid fashion that each new RPG game compares to the "perfect" (huehue) Skyrim, which is a total misunderstanding. You are comparing part of the game, which in the case of Skyrim is almost the most important and in the case of The Witcher it's only a supplement, which for me might not even be (like in The Witcher 2) and the game will still be very good.

But yes, generally you're right. Skyrim is probably a better game when it comes to replaybility. (but not for everyone, because Skyrim bored me to death and I completed the game only once)
 
The Witcher never WAS supposed to be a new Skyrim...

There are different design phylosofies at play here. And to me, as a person that spent... 100 hours in Skyrim and 200 in Witcher 3 SO FAR.... I like the Witcher 3's better.


But STALKER is the best... that is a fact. over 1 500 hours so far and I still want to play....
 
I really hope they will find a way to delete motion sickness by games. I stopped playing Skyrim because I could not play for more than 15 minutes till I had the urge to throw up, just because of its weird camera motions.

The same with Assassin's Creed franchise and Uncharted. So many gems I will not be able to enjoy. *Sigh*

But luckily not this game ;).

on topic: the sheer amount of mods available and the decision of the dev.s to directly design the game for this makes it a different game and adds more replayability than most other games, in my opinion. W3 creates a personal conclusion to Geralt the wicther, while Skyrim can be turned into your very own world.
 
Skyrim has no catchy heroes like Triss or Geralt.
Don't even want to compare these games. Everything in TESV was so identical. Without mods that game is a nightmare.

The Witcher 3 is another level. Can't say it has a limited replayability.
Always interesting to replay all the moments include the most typical side quests.
 
The Witcher series has always been more story driven, which I prefer personally. Skyrim (which was my fav before TW3) is more about the open world, exploring, random encounters etc. Both different games with a different main focus.
 
Skyrim is a sand-box. Each of its story-lines is linear (main, and guilds), with practically no choices (unlike in TW3), and they are completely independent from each other, and can be done in any order. Personally I find it crazy that becoming a leader of the mages, thieves, Dark Brotherhood, etc. has no bearing to anything in the world. Skyrim is just a bunch of separate and completely disconnected stories thrown into the same world, and you can play all these stories with the same char. Why people find it appealing is beyond me. It is like playing a bunch of different story mods.

TW3 does not just have a main story-line, but all other secondary story-lines are very strongly connected to the main one in different ways. It is a completely different kind of story telling. In Skyrim story-telling is non-existent, in TW3 it may be not perfect, but CDPR is sure as hell on a right track. That's what makes TW3 a (flawed) masterpiece, while Skyrim is just a very big, and very expensive make-your-own-story playground for nerds like us. :)

How much replay value TW3 holds strongly depends on how much you like the plot. For the fans of TW saga (books, or games, or both), replay value is as high as of TW1 and TW2 (I replayed both of them at least a dozen times already over the years). For the lovers of open-worlds and sand-boxes TW3 will probably loose any replay value after Fallout 4 comes out, or any other huge expensive sandbox from Bethesda.
 
I don't think that TW3 has much replay value, at least not if you've done everything in your first playthrough. And the main story is way too linear to offer good reasons to replay the game Same is true for gameplay. The variation of possibilities is too small and the abilities not worth exploring. Witcher 3 is imo a game that is well designed for a single playthrough - that's it.
 
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I don't have a problem with the linear nature of map unlocking, it's not like there's any shortage of stuff to do on them as you progress through the story, no the problem for me is in the post-ending worlds state. Most Witcher contracts are far under level and provide nothing to do. Similarly (and not unreasonably though) none of the people are around. It's a shame the game didn't benefit from more time and money because what both could have afforded it would have made it spectacular. Hopefully once the tools are released the modders will increase the game's longevity.
 
I for one will replay this game for years (did it with the first 2, so I know this will be no different.), but not all games need to have skyrim replayability. I would much rather play 35 hours of the Witcher 2 once than 200 hours of skyrim. To me skyrim is like channel surfing, sure it passes time, but am I engaged? Do I actually enjoy myself? Not really and that's why I will spend my $60 on a CDPR game even if it offers 1 and done over an open sandbox game.

The mods will just take Witcher 3 to another level, I'll probably make it a yearly trilogy run through, maybe even read the books before each time to haha.
 
I for one will replay this game for years (did it with the first 2, so I know this will be no different.), but not all games need to have skyrim replayability. I would much rather play 35 hours of the Witcher 2 once than 200 hours of skyrim. To me skyrim is like channel surfing, sure it passes time, but am I engaged? Do I actually enjoy myself? Not really and that's why I will spend my $60 on a CDPR game even if it offers 1 and done over an open sandbox game.

The mods will just take Witcher 3 to another level, I'll probably make it a yearly trilogy run through, maybe even read the books before each time to haha.

Consider though, would you play The Witcher 2 for 35 hours or 200 hours of a Skyrim that had a story of comparable quality to The Witcher 2's? If The Witcher 3 had benefited from more money and time, and thus had a completely open world sandbox to play in post-story completion, it would have combined the best of both worlds in terms of those franchises.
 
Consider though, would you play The Witcher 2 for 35 hours or 200 hours of a Skyrim that had a story of comparable quality to The Witcher 2's? If The Witcher 3 had benefited from more money and time, and thus had a completely open world sandbox to play in post-story completion, it would have combined the best of both worlds in terms of those franchises.

It would have completely destroyed Witcher...
 
Im speaking for myself, love both games. Skyrim 300+ hrs - TW3 400+ hrs. Replayability TW3 wins handily. Also I'm very much interested in the expansions of TW3 unlike those of skyrim.
 
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