Witcher 3 - Impresssion @ Destructoid

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Destructoid has a new impression article on the Witcher 3 E3 reveal.
Those of you who haven't really gotten into The Witcher series might not be too invested in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt yet despite how great it looks. That's something you'll want to change leading up to release across PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One next year. This third installment may be wrapping up Geralt's story, but it seems like the perfect opportunity to jump into the franchise (or keep playing, if you're already a fan).
By the end of CD Projekt RED's sizable hands-off E3 demo, I was so on board with the new installment. Much of the emphasis this time around is placed on crafting an absurdly large open world — one that takes 40 minutes to travel across on horseback — and filling it with interesting, often dynamic things. You can seamlessly jump on a boat and sail to distant islands in real time without coming up against loading screens. It's magical. Unless, of course, you attempt to sail when the weather is bad and the sea is rough — your ship will go down, and the water is too frigid to swim in for long. It might've seemed like a good idea at the time, but don't do that.
As a bonus here is a polish translated article titled,"The Witcher 3 will cost more than 100 million zł." Lets just say $34 million in US dollars.
More information.
 
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Wow, that's a serious amount of money! Skyrim had quite a bit more as far as I know, but in a more expensive country. Maybe they really can pull this off. I wonder where the cash is coming from? GOG money + TW2 income?
 
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Life is worth living when talent like this gets to play with serious resources ;)
 
Life is worth living when talent like this gets to play with serious resources ;)

Couldn't have said it better. ;)

This will most likely be amazing. And the game should probably be awarded game of the show, but we know it won't. Not backed by a big publisher, and not american enough. ;)
 
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Lets just say $34 million in US dollars.
Would EA give some "obscure" developer $34M to make a singleplayer RPG? And not a new title but a sequel.
Would Ubisoft?

You don't need to answer. Sims4 and AssassinsCreed4 will be released next year.
 
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Would EA give some "obscure" developer $34M to make a singleplayer RPG? And not a new title but a sequel.

Dragon Age 3 no doubt has much, much more, and it's being funded by EA. Probably $70M+ considering the latest delays. According to rumors even Dragon Age 2 had $25M, which was a small, slapped-together-in-a-year RPG with tons of re-use.

Of course, we don't know how DA3 will turn out yet, but it has the potential to be good.
 
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34 millions dollars? Is that the size of investment you are supposed not to break even with when selling 12 to 15 millions copies?
 
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yes how many copies do they need to sell to break even? I didn't know games cost this much money to make. I would have thought even a big budget games will be around 20 million tops. Where do they spend all of the money on? Marketing? certainly not on developers.
 
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yes how many copies do they need to sell to break even? I didn't know games cost this much money to make. I would have thought even a big budget games will be around 20 million tops. Where do they spend all of the money on? Marketing? certainly not on developers.

Marketing and developers (whatever that implies), sure. But also Voice-Overs, 3d-artists, AI, Animations (Motion capture? facial motion capture?), Writing, Testing/QA, Sound effects, Music, Distribution, Licenses for used tools/libraries/whatever… and much more. Just watch the credits of some AAA games.
 
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Games have become ridiculously expensive in the AAA space. I'd say much, much more expensive than they really need to be to appeal wide.

It's like a sickness that spreads from investors to the audience - and back again.
 
Yeah. We all tend to say "hey, I dont need voice overs for every character". But we still like to hear it. And so they do it. And it costs.
 
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Some of that money's coming from Nvidia I guess. Look at their fancy new physx fur and hair technology. Realistic bush, hurray! And screw everyone on a diferent brand or lower end model. You might say Tomb Raider did similar for AMD hardware, and I would agree that was also bad form, but at least Lara still had hair, animated hair, affected by gravity and wind, without tressfx. Lara didn't go bald when you turned it off.

The wolf model in the presentation looked like bald crap without it since the model is made with the fur layer in mind with no alternative version and you probably won't even have halfway settings like getting the fancy fur shaders without the physics on top, as if only nvidia's latest GPUs can render any kind of fur shaders, an effect possible to create (obviously in different quality and implementations) since what, forever, considering some GameCube games had it (animating by wind and other stimuli, even!).

I guess it's possible they didn't show the real alternative model in the presentation just to better demonstrate the benefits of the physx effects but somehow I doubt that's the case and will continue to do so until they show otherwise. Bad form, CDP. Spend a tiny sliver of those millions for real alternative wolf (and whatever else extensively require fur to look decent) models with non physx fur shaders or at the very least a wolf that has the size and silhouette of a furry wolf even if the fur is only a texture/normal map (although again a shader should be more than possible with a little effort).
 
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A bit of math. Let's say they sell 3 million copies in the first three months (fullpriced).
From each copy let's say they get 20 dollars (on PC they get more, on console probably less, so it should even out). That is 60 million dollars directly to CDP, which should cover those 30 million and make nice profit.
And the game will probably sell a lot more, what with being certain GOTY and having huge marketing budget behind it.
I know I am getting both GOG and CE versions day one.
 
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Well if any of you read the link it says more than half of that is for marketing. That's the problem with the industry. The game technically only cost $12-20 million.

- Directly on the production of the game plan to spend at least 45 million zł. We also expect that the marketing budget is the third part of The Witcher around $ 25 million - says the head of CD Projekt.

This is a total of more than 110 million zł. No other game, which was produced and financed by the Polish company, did not cost so much.

Adam Kicinski emphasizes that while 40 million zł, which goes into production, I immediately fall in the cost of CD Projekt Red, the $ 25 million will be settled otherwise. The assumption is that the first lining them came distributors Witcher 3, and then collect them from the revenues of each copy sold. Global publisher of games is because CD Projekt.

- Marketing expenditure incurred by our distributors will not be our costs, but will be deducted from revenues due to us from the sale of the game - says Adam Kicinski.
I could just imagine what the larger publishers spend on marketing that sales need to be over 5 million just to break even.

Regardless I can't wait to buy the game off GOG and give them my support.
 
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Boats sounds great :) And even better, jumping and climbing is in too it seems. Still seems to lack swimming (limited) and i really doubt it's possible to dive under water like in TES or early Gothics. Very good to have something that now will compete with TES for real.
 
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