Witcher 3 Share your first impressions

* Graphics; overall it looks rather nice apart from a few things. Don't really like the water, looks off somehow, doesnt even seem to have reflections. Flora looks rather ugly. LOD / pop-ins is quite unnoticeable. They seem to have done a really great job with trees switching from 2D to 3D, in Skyrim (and in some other open world games) this is terrible and very noticeable.

* Performance is so-so.. i've now managed to get it to around 50 FPS with shadows to medium, no SSAO, no hairworks.

* My idea of a open world game is not to get messages like "you have reached the end of the world" and then i have to turn back.. i mean i've played for 15 minutes and already seen a message like that.. Yes i guess it's just the first map but they should've had a mountain or something there to prevent further travel in this "open world" game

* controls when diving is horrible.

* loading is super fast (ssd)..

I'll edit in more impressions later..

any ocmment on the 'pc' interface ?

vurt said:

* My idea of a open world game is not to get messages like "you have reached the end of the world" and then i have to turn back.. i mean i've played for 15 minutes and already seen a message like that.. Yes i guess it's just the first map but they should've had a mountain or something there to prevent further travel in this "open world" game

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I think I read somewhere that the constraints were only for the intro section. I hope so.

I also think the water looks really bad and needs modding ASAP. Strange. It looks more like bad artistic design than engine weakness.

yes the water is terrible, i think the lack of recflections makes it look odd.. Skyrim does a much better job.

Also diving is a complete joke, i'm not sure how so many devs can mess up diving, it works great in TES, nothing strange, in Gothic 2 it was terrible, this is something similar, really, really awful controls. Too bad since i like diving in games..

First impression are quite positive from me. Graphically I think it looks beautiful as hell. There might've been a downgrade, but it looks great. And run great too. I've got absolutely everything on max (even hairworks, vsync, AA, etc) and runs between 40 and 60 fps.

I've started on Death March difficulty, and it's quite a pain with some enemies, but it does also give you a different feel. That the world is a lot more dangerous.

One thing which was very distracting for me was the minimap. All the markers (plant markers especially) are distracting as hell. So distracting that I caught myself look more on the minimap than on the beautiful imagery in the world. So I did something I never did before. I disabled the minimap and intend to see how it goes like this. So far it's pretty cool. The minimap also usually served as a gps or enemy detector, so now, without it enabled, I can more easily focus on the actual game, than on the enemies or the bazillion plants I need to pick up.

I'm sure the saturation is just out of whack. Turning it down about 20% in Nvidia settings looks much more natural for most things, but washes a few things out

What a gorgeous game. My computer stutters a little on the cinematics, but I love the faster, more fluid feel of the combat.

I've only gotten to the first town so far, but I played (and loved) Gwent. I sat here cackling at the captions on the cards. XD

I think I'm gonna have a blast with this one.

hmm, now i cant wait. I get my copy tonite.

Everyone playing on PC? Aubrielle?

Did some questing around White Orchard (which is kind of a prologue area) for about 2 hours. Running on PC, got some stuttering too on cutscene when zooming on faces, but I haven't played much with the settings. Selected High and set shadows to medium (hairwork is on though and I haven't installed the new Nvidia drivers, update notice popped while I was playing). The rest of the time, it's fluid enough for me to play the game. Unlike the other posters, I like the water…

The game pretty much has the control (K&M) of the second one, but with the ambiance of the first one. White Orchard is pretty much the Outskirts without the creepy religion. The conversation cutscenes are really nice too, in fact I expect to see less of them as the game go on.

Will have to play more, I'm barely level 2, but right now it seems to be a keeper. Also, Cyberpunk with this engine...OMG!

vurt said:

Also diving is a complete joke, i'm not sure how so many devs can mess up diving, it works great in TES, nothing strange, in Gothic 2 it was terrible, this is something similar, really, really awful controls. Too bad since i like diving in games..

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To each his own. I thought diving was done quite well in Gothic 1&2. The only problem is that it wasn't utilized more.

kobold said:

I'm sure the saturation is just out of whack. Turning it down about 20% in Nvidia settings looks much more natural for most things, but washes a few things out

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That doesn't surprise me. TW2 is also oversaturated, especially with bloom enabled.

xSamhainx said:

hmm, now i cant wait. I get my copy tonite.

Everyone playing on PC? Aubrielle?

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Yep yep. Are you?

I haven't even started yet, and I already have a gripe.

Apparently not all the keys are rebindable? I'm able to change which keys perform actions, but only to keys that are already used by the game.

For example, I can swap Dodge with Jump, but I can't assign it to any key that the game doesn't already use. Seriously?

And I also think the PC controls are not great, to say the least. After playing the tutorial I abandoned the keyboard for a gamepad—clearly the input device the game was designed around. The keyboard controls are unnecessarily convoluted, with “Dodge” for instance requiring you to press Alt and W/A/S/D at the same time. Considering how much you’re dodging, it’s a huge pain.

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PC World First Impressions. Their only major complaint. Thought a big one in my book. I never did like Geralt the Circus Acrobat of TW2, so more of that + console controls = less of a reason to be interested in the game at this time.

I put dodge on my 4th mouse button and it seems fine. I did notice some of the non combat keys are lock which is annoying.

The game is pretty enough on ultra settings. At 1080P i get about 100-110 FPS, at 3440x1440, 21:9 monitor I only get 35-40. enabling sli at the higher resolution didn't seem to change anything so it must not be supported yet. Even at 35-40 FPS though it's surprisingly smooth haven't had a stutter at all. The game kinda supports 21:9. The game world does but the HUD size isn't adjustable past 1080p and the cut scenes are 1080P as well but so are pretty much all games.

PC SPecs, i3770@5ghz, 32GB ram, SSD, sli titan x's.

K&M controls seem fine after adjusting them. putting some keys on my mouse and changing keys with my keyboard software so I can remap all keys. I agree though the default layout is poor.

I'm in the tutorial area and it's annoying as I keep running in to the end of the world. the area is pretty small. I found swimming adequate. The default HUD is too large imo but can be made smaller.

The atmosphere is good and the world feels alive but I haven't run into many enemies and there doesn't feel like there's as much to do as there was in skyrim right off the bat but again this is a small tutorial area I think or it might be a starting area either way it's small.

Sorry this post is all over the place but I just typed stuff as it came to mind.

The more I swim, the more I like it. I also really like the way the water looks.

My only complaint related to swimming/diving is that there doesn't seem to actually be anything underwater besides rocks and plants. I assume that will change when I reach a sea/ocean, but it would be nice to see some fish or something in the lakes.

I also think the foliage looks really good as well.

The weakest thing to me so far, graphics-wise, are the ground/rocks textures. Some of them look very low-res and just down right bad imo.

The game runs smooth with an very old quad core and a GTX 970.

I'm not even out of the tutorial area, just giving it a spin before I wait for any forthcoming patches, but my initial impressions are, first off -- this game is friggin gorgeous. Let me gush a bit. Skies, environments, and let me talk about the colors, wow, it's phenomenal - the colors chosen, as well as the use of varied colors to set a tone, and then the little details all over, like the objects scattered around, such as the windows when in a room, how you can see through them to the outside and the living world, and how everything fits together smoothly into the overall world.

All of it combines harmoniously into a stellar job of creating a realistic and believable fantasy world. And they did everything right, in terms of mood and the way the characters talk and relate to each other. The music is especially great, and sets the mood perfectly. And the importance of music in a game like this can't be over-stated. This is the best fantasy music I have heard since the Icewind Dale soundtrack.

This is a fantasy world you can get lost in, and enjoy every step along the way. I'm really beyond impressed of what they have done. Every rpg player should think about getting this game, in my humble opinion.

Starting over now. I played up to the part where the Nilfgaardian had you answer questions about the events that happened in TW2. I was curious to see how that part played out if you chose the option to simulate a TW2 savegame at the start. Now I'm going to begin again using my save file from TW2.

I notice there's also an option to neither import or simulate a TW2 save, so I guess there's a canon storyline.

HiddenX said:

The game runs smooth with an very old quad core and a GTX 970.

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What settings and FPS you are getting pls? I have the same card and I had to fiddle with some setting to get it to run at 50FPS.

Ok, playing more seriously now (first "play" was just to get an impression of graphics and performance). Love the attention to details, lots of character everywhere, even puts games like RDR and GTA to shame most of the time (which says a lot considering the extreme cost of those games).

Not too happy with the rather inconsistent colors though, sometimes it's perfect (skin tones are great i think), but sometimes the saturation is more belonging for a game like WoW.. It's probably done on purpose though, they want something in between realism and cartoonish like WoW..

After some modding this game could look spectacular (well, more to my liking, i think more "grim" graphics with less saturated colors and a slightly more realistic look would fit this game better).

Really nice that mouse/keyb and controller is changed on the fly.. if you touch the mouse it will say its changing to mouse/keyb and same with controller.