As a guy who's playing the game mainly for the excellent storytelling, well developed characters and awesome writing, that article makes me really happy 
I can't wait for the game. I'm going to retire from life and play it 20 times over. I'm going to master the combat system and annihilate everyone while doing it completely naked. I'm gonna remove my armour and use my fists to dominate every foe. And I'm gonna put on an awesome beard, so I can look as badass as Geralt does in the artwork we've seen so far.
Good times lie ahead
I can't wait for the game. I'm going to retire from life and play it 20 times over. I'm going to master the combat system and annihilate everyone while doing it completely naked. I'm gonna remove my armour and use my fists to dominate every foe. And I'm gonna put on an awesome beard, so I can look as badass as Geralt does in the artwork we've seen so far.
Good times lie ahead
I would even go a bit further and say, I wouldn't even mind, to have combat like in the first Witcher, which was easy one button clicking, with some potions and signs, and do away with all the gear collecting (except maybe very few story-related items), no crafting besides potions and no leveling. For me all those typical RPG elements (looting, gear, crafting, leveling) were mostly annoyances in The Witcher, cause I wanted to live through the story and ROLEPLAY and not constantly bother about stats and equipment. That is fine for me in an MMO, or other RPGs, but this one is STORY driven and I always felt distracted and pulled out of immersion, when I was supposed to think about stats and skills. Geralt is a Witcher in his prime fighting skills, he shouldn't learn new ways to fight. Also as far as I remember Geralt gets one new sword in the books, why do I constantly have to change gear here? Why are Nilfgardian boots better than Temerian? Why do they even change any stats besides agility maybe? It is not like anything is attacking my feet ever. I am also happy, that they implement an NPC reaction to thievery in the game. In my playthroughs, Geralt always mutated to a complete cleptomaniac, cause I felt, I would need all the ingredients at some point and if it is just because of the money to buy better equipment, so I wouldn't have to pay as much attention to the combat, which was difficult for me in many cases, because of reasons stated many times in the forum and also, because my laptop just meets minimum requirements and I often have lag in bigger fights, which make my Geralt hardly react to any commands I am giving or with a huge delay.FoggyFishburne said:As a guy who's playing the game mainly for the excellent storytelling, well developed characters and awesome writing, that article makes me really happy
I play the Witcher for the story, so combat, items and potion making within the lore and where it makes sense, but I fear for too much focus on looting, gear, leveling and crafting.
It's just a tease of a longer interview, which should appear on VG247 any day now, so stay tuned
Weeeeeeell eh. I don't agree, though I do see where you're coming from. The sentiment is something I agree with. I'd go even further than that and say I'd love to play an RPG where the only thing you do, the only thing, is talk. Using rhetoric and using your intellect and wit to solve problems, rather than brute force. It's one of the reasons why RPGs are one of my favourite genres, they sometimes allow the player to use the conversation mechanics to solve problems and express your intent. Something like what The Walking Dead did.Mataresa said:
Considering, however, the fact that the Witcher is an adaptation of a series of books, where there's a warrior monk order called Witchers who are called upon to combat various different beasts and monsters, it is vital to portray that as well in game. Not only that, but you have to reflect the moves and abilities of what a witcher would and can do. You can't exclude this part just as you can't exclude the political and social issues that the books cover. It's as much part of the storytelling as the writing and landscape. The combat mechanics are there to reflect your role as a mutated fighter. Dumbing down the combat or reverting back to TW1 wouldn't be good game design and it would hamper innovation. It's a step back either way you look at it.
So I'd say it's necessary for the combat to continue to evolve, if only to improve and refine it. Combat is not the issue but rather its presentation. If the combat doesn't engage you, then it's doing something wrong. That means that we should tweak it, not discard it. Creating a shit combat system wouldn't be a point in its favour. After all, it's a game and there are more than just one Aesthetic of Play at work here. I hate when developers are just pandering to the players by adding features that are "cool" and "popular" but some things are required when trying to accurately portray a work of fiction. It would be as if Cyberpunk 2077 completely omitted the whole "going insane after installing to many mods in your body" aspect of the table top game. Something would be amiss. It's a feature that helped define the game. Excluding it would defeat the purpose of creating an adaptation.
I can understand your frustration with the RPG tropes of having to upgrade your sword and armour. It's kinda like when you're playing God of War 2 and 3 but for some reason you start off in a shitty -zero state and have to relearn how to be god. Though there are several reasons why it should remain in TW3. Diversity in aesthetics on your avatar (not looking the same way as you started off), giving players a sense of progression, varying the gameplay by allowing the player to complement his abilities with equipment and gear, swords and the like serve as rewards for the player at the end of missions etc. Of course, they could just let the player start out max level and let players change skins on their weapons and gear in order to give the illusion of the old RPG features are still intact. There are ways around the old RPG rules and norms.
But mm. I don't know. This is where we have to take into account that we're adapting the Witcher into the video game medium. We need to respect and honour the way video games work in order to engage and stimulate the player in a positive way as well as staying true to the original intellectual property while at the same time doing something new and fresh. This is because we want to create an amazing game and not just copy paste a book into a video game format and hope for the best. People play games for gameplay as well, or maybe I should say, for interactivity. Hmhm... Tricky issues are at work here. Not as easy to solve as I had hoped ^^
Damn this ended up being a long post. When I start babbling, I can't stop ^^ It feels like I could go on forever and discuss genres, ludo-narrative story telling and game design for another 30 pages but I'll stop here. Still, I feel like if your laptop is what's hampering your enjoyment of the combat, rather than combat in games itself, then it's time to upgrade my friend. Because it's here to stay and, hopefully, evolve further beyond what we've experienced so far.
Woho! Can't waitMataresa said:It's just a tease of a longer interview, which should appear on VG247 any day now, so stay tuned
I hope you're gonna announce the release date soon as well. I guess it's safe to assume you'll be releasing TW3 in January 2014, right? Good, I knew I could count on you.
I mean COME ON, it has to be in January, right!?! There's only so much waiting I can do before I implode by all the excitement!
Nice tryFoggyFishburne said:Woho! Can't wait
I hope you're gonna announce the release date soon as well. I guess it's safe to assume you'll be releasing TW3 in January 2014, right? Good, I knew I could count on you.
I mean COME ON, it has to be in January, right!?! There's only so much waiting I can do before I implode by all the excitement!
Is it weird, if I agree with you and still keep my opinion at the same time? ^^
I just liked that in the first Witcher I remember saving the 5000 Orens for the new vest and later getting one new armor. (Might have been more than that, don't quote me on it, I just don't remember.) And maybe a handful of swords. I didn't have to bother that much or compare stats. (I only found out how to upgrade my sword at the end of the first playthrough. ^^)
And I like fighting in the game, but it is not what I am playing it for. I guess, that is why I switched the difficulty to easy on my second playthrough. I like slashing through the enemies, whithout having to worry that much and focus on the immersion and the story. I highly respect people that can play on dark mode or even insane, or play games like Dark Souls. But I am not that kind of a player. So don't misunderstand me. I don't hate the difficult combat, but it is not important to me.
Of course they will keep and improve it and that is a good thing. I like to watch skillful people ploughing through enemies.
Ok, thats it: MM360 just confirmed, January 2014 we are playing The Witcher 3. ;P No seriously, I think they should take as much time as they need to make the best game they can. Especially if it is the last Witcher game. I will miss him. (But horned helmets be gone!)
I just liked that in the first Witcher I remember saving the 5000 Orens for the new vest and later getting one new armor. (Might have been more than that, don't quote me on it, I just don't remember.) And maybe a handful of swords. I didn't have to bother that much or compare stats. (I only found out how to upgrade my sword at the end of the first playthrough. ^^)
And I like fighting in the game, but it is not what I am playing it for. I guess, that is why I switched the difficulty to easy on my second playthrough. I like slashing through the enemies, whithout having to worry that much and focus on the immersion and the story. I highly respect people that can play on dark mode or even insane, or play games like Dark Souls. But I am not that kind of a player. So don't misunderstand me. I don't hate the difficult combat, but it is not important to me.
Of course they will keep and improve it and that is a good thing. I like to watch skillful people ploughing through enemies.
Ok, thats it: MM360 just confirmed, January 2014 we are playing The Witcher 3. ;P No seriously, I think they should take as much time as they need to make the best game they can. Especially if it is the last Witcher game. I will miss him. (But horned helmets be gone!)
Let them have enough time. the game is going to be a real big shot and apart from designing gameplay mechanics, environments, characters, quests and . . . REDs got a whole bunch of testing and optimizing ahead of them.FoggyFishburne said:Woho! Can't wait
I hope you're gonna announce the release date soon as well. I guess it's safe to assume you'll be releasing TW3 in January 2014, right? Good, I knew I could count on you.
I mean COME ON, it has to be in January, right!?! There's only so much waiting I can do before I implode by all the excitement!
I agree.gaurdian said:
We don't have to look too far to find a AAA RPG which has suffered from a hasty deadline. CDProjekt alone knows their window of opportunity, the tine gap when they'll make a sizable profit and still manage to finish up the game with hardly any last-minute ado.
Now that I've read your post thoroughly I can articulate what I had been meaning to say, this time around, suavely.FoggyFishburne said:Weeeeeeell eh. I don't agree, though I do see where you're coming from. The sentiment is something I agree with. I'd go even further than that and say I'd love to play an RPG where the only thing you do, the only thing, is talk. Using rhetoric and using your intellect and wit to solve problems, rather than brute force. It's one of the reasons why RPGs are one of my favourite genres, they sometimes allow the player to use the conversation mechanics to solve problems and express your intent. Something like what The Walking Dead did.
Considering, however, the fact that the Witcher is an adaptation of a series of books, where there's a warrior monk order called Witchers who are called upon to combat various different beasts and monsters, it is vital to portray that as well in game. Not only that, but you have to reflect the moves and abilities of what a witcher would and can do. You can't exclude this part just as you can't exclude the political and social issues that the books cover. It's as much part of the storytelling as the writing and landscape. The combat mechanics are there to reflect your role as a mutated fighter. Dumbing down the combat or reverting back to TW1 wouldn't be good game design and it would hamper innovation. It's a step back either way you look at it.
So I'd say it's necessary for the combat to continue to evolve, if only to improve and refine it. Combat is not the issue but rather its presentation. If the combat doesn't engage you, then it's doing something wrong. That means that we should tweak it, not discard it. Creating a shit combat system wouldn't be a point in its favour. After all, it's a game and there are more than just one Aesthetic of Play at work here. I hate when developers are just pandering to the players by adding features that are "cool" and "popular" but some things are required when trying to accurately portray a work of fiction. It would be as if Cyberpunk 2077 completely omitted the whole "going insane after installing to many mods in your body" aspect of the table top game. Something would be amiss. It's a feature that helped define the game. Excluding it would defeat the purpose of creating an adaptation.
I can understand your frustration with the RPG tropes of having to upgrade your sword and armour. It's kinda like when you're playing God of War 2 and 3 but for some reason you start off in a shitty -zero state and have to relearn how to be god. Though there are several reasons why it should remain in TW3. Diversity in aesthetics on your avatar (not looking the same way as you started off), giving players a sense of progression, varying the gameplay by allowing the player to complement his abilities with equipment and gear, swords and the like serve as rewards for the player at the end of missions etc. Of course, they could just let the player start out max level and let players change skins on their weapons and gear in order to give the illusion of the old RPG features are still intact. There are ways around the old RPG rules and norms.
But mm. I don't know. This is where we have to take into account that we're adapting the Witcher into the video game medium. We need to respect and honour the way video games work in order to engage and stimulate the player in a positive way as well as staying true to the original intellectual property while at the same time doing something new and fresh. This is because we want to create an amazing game and not just copy paste a book into a video game format and hope for the best. People play games for gameplay as well, or maybe I should say, for interactivity. Hmhm... Tricky issues are at work here. Not as easy to solve as I had hoped ^^
Damn this ended up being a long post. When I start babbling, I can't stop ^^ It feels like I could go on forever and discuss genres, ludo-narrative story telling and game design for another 30 pages but I'll stop here. Still, I feel like if your laptop is what's hampering your enjoyment of the combat, rather than combat in games itself, then it's time to upgrade my friend. Because it's here to stay and, hopefully, evolve further beyond what we've experienced so far.
Woho! Can't wait
I hope you're gonna announce the release date soon as well. I guess it's safe to assume you'll be releasing TW3 in January 2014, right? Good, I knew I could count on you.
I mean COME ON, it has to be in January, right!?! There's only so much waiting I can do before I implode by all the excitement!
*********************************************************************************************************************************************
Why graphics matter
No one in his right mind would ever dream of saying about Shakespearian prose:
Words are to the written language what graphics are to video games. In them visuals are not the icing on the cake you might or might not bother to pour at the last minute so to render that sponge more appealing. They are the sponge. Yes, an integral part of it, as much as gameplay, characters, story or any other component videogames might be divided into. To deny this is to deny the intrinsic nature of games as medium.
Take Shakespeare's plays. They could've suffered from a very different choice of words while still maintaining their structural integrity, that is, in the end essentially telling the same stories. And yet what makes them masterful is their power of expression, their unparalleled formal qualities, the elegant and inventive style whose primary substance is the words being picked and those being left out. In fact, only within our analytic brains can we engender a divide between form and content. Form is content, as Shakespeare so eloquently demonstrates.
The same goes for graphics. We can admire the English language for its huge lexicon, the world's largest, twice as large and the second largest. We can clearly see how Shakespeare was able to bend language to suit his needs so thoroughly and so precisely and have it say what he wanted to, the way he wanted to, because he had such a vast lexicon at his disposal to begin with. Are we blind to the parallel here? Increasing graphical fidelity amounts to expanding the lexicon. It means enlarging the scope of what can be said visually.
To give an example, in the early days of video game history, 3D characters used to boast a poly count of a mere 350. At the time would an artist be able to model a monster drooling off its mouth and have it fit in fewer than 350 polygons? Not if he wanted it feet-ed or ear-ed. Can we not see how the emotional impact upon the player, his aesthetical experience, would be vastly different whether a drooling troll was around?
Currently, we are neighbouring the 30 000 poly count threshold. For the first time ever, creatures can not just smile but smirk, not just growl but pick their noses. They can convey a much wider range of emotions; their body language can finally deliver. And have we become so oblivious as to how much characterization can benefit from increased graphical fidelity? Arm tattoos, eye patches and embroidered garments, for example, all hint at the inner lives of the characters who wear them and their worlds at large. And, for example, how much more menacing do volumetric clouds feel when compared to backdrops? We can now have them as well.
The alternative? Well, without good enough graphical fidelity, we would have to be told about all of these minute details and the effect would be irrevocably lost, for overstated. The overarching fact is that higher graphical fidelity not only means the ability to tell a story more vividly, precisely and convincingly, it also means video games can finally tell stories they have been unable to up until recently.
When photography first came into being, back in the early 1800’s, it was first met with some disdain. Painting was the real Art. The newcomer medium could not aspire to anything but the role of a second rate by-product, a succedaneum of the real deal. Now, I’m not saying you personally are guilty of this kind of ill-grounded pedantry. But there does seem to be some of it at work in most posts dismissing the importance of graphics in video games. Their assumption is that words are inherently superior. They're not.
Super! I love ambitious, deep, and mature. Now I am waiting for a longer interview. And, for Adanos' sake, do not hurry with release, take all the time you need to make TW3 a masterpiece of the 21st century gaming.
Well, might as well add my 2cents.
I loved TW2, combat, crafting, the political story, not so much. Yes, I know that their are people that would dumb down everything else except the "political" story but in my view, that would be wrong, does people have other "strategy" games to play.
TW1-2 games are about combat and Geralt's story, some crafting (I'm very pleased that the crafting dose not have you running around all day trying to get the ingredients, its used but it does not get in the way!)
Same with the story, I don't mind the "political side of it) as long as it does not get in the way of Geralt's story, some people might want nothing but the political story, I'm not one of them (as I'm sure their ate many of us), the politics in TW2 went in one ear and out the other, I really didn't care who one, lost or whatever, it's just too much to try and keep track of all the factions, names, etc....
I read somewhere else that someone wanted BIG cities, not me, if you go back and play Oblivion, you can spend all day running around in the city trying to find something, that's not the Witcher I want to play! Besides, Geralt strikes me as a small town boy, what do big cities have a need of a Witcher?
Bottom line, I do not believe that the Wicher franchise is a crafting or politics or big city type of grind and I hope that the Dev's don't make it one!
TW2 was a very enjoyable game, and I hope that THW3 is not so dramatically changed from TW2 that it becomes something else! TW2 had the right amount of crafting, leveling (if its made higher , that's fine) and if the politics are there for those "arm chair kings" ok, just make the speeches brief!
I loved TW2, combat, crafting, the political story, not so much. Yes, I know that their are people that would dumb down everything else except the "political" story but in my view, that would be wrong, does people have other "strategy" games to play.
TW1-2 games are about combat and Geralt's story, some crafting (I'm very pleased that the crafting dose not have you running around all day trying to get the ingredients, its used but it does not get in the way!)
Same with the story, I don't mind the "political side of it) as long as it does not get in the way of Geralt's story, some people might want nothing but the political story, I'm not one of them (as I'm sure their ate many of us), the politics in TW2 went in one ear and out the other, I really didn't care who one, lost or whatever, it's just too much to try and keep track of all the factions, names, etc....
I read somewhere else that someone wanted BIG cities, not me, if you go back and play Oblivion, you can spend all day running around in the city trying to find something, that's not the Witcher I want to play! Besides, Geralt strikes me as a small town boy, what do big cities have a need of a Witcher?
Bottom line, I do not believe that the Wicher franchise is a crafting or politics or big city type of grind and I hope that the Dev's don't make it one!
TW2 was a very enjoyable game, and I hope that THW3 is not so dramatically changed from TW2 that it becomes something else! TW2 had the right amount of crafting, leveling (if its made higher , that's fine) and if the politics are there for those "arm chair kings" ok, just make the speeches brief!