Did The Witcher 3 Live up to the Hype?

|First of all, it is semi-open world, not open world. It has 5 explorable areas separated by load screens.|
So Fallout 3/NV, GTA's, Skyrim or any other Elder Scrolls with 10k+ loading screens coming for each building and filled with invisible walls/environmental obstructions, are exactly what in comparison?
|The story is a boring "Where's Waldo/Ciri" scenario where I go somewhere, ask about Ciri, get sent on a monster hunt to get info, get a little info, rinse and repeat.|
Great story analysis you've provided there. I suppose Dante's "Inferno" should be considered nothing more than boring piece of shit/repetitive walking simulator as well? What makes Wild Hunt's story exceptional is exactly the same…it is a masterpiece when it comes to characterization and storytelling, not because it emphasizes a grandiose purpose behind the protagonist or the main story.
|No matter how well represented and acted, the quests are still purely of the fetch/and kill 1-10 of these variety that reminded me far more of a MMORPG than a single player game."|
This is flat out nonsense…many side quests start simple, but evolve into stories of their own, they can affect the main story, have immediate and later consequences in the game, are carried by characters with different and conflicting motivations that change over the course of the quest…and you equate this with "Fetch x/Kill Y" MMO quest design? Learn how to troll better, if you don't want to make yourself an even bigger fool than you already are.
|The controls are clunky, you can only play Garrett the way they want you to and because of the level requirements for many quests, you can only do them in a certain order.|
Who is Garret?
|Combat is repetitive.|
Very intelligent and in-depth game play analysis.
|The world is static and non-interactive in a way that should embarrass CDPR considering the Elder Scrolls has had better object simulation since Morrowind.|
Characters in the world are more dynamic, interact with each other and the player more intelligently, the world has handcrafted and atmospheric environments, far better composition and organic design than any other open world game, as well as a more interactive and immersive ecosystem. Ask any urbanist or geologist on this planet, which video game open world excels above others in design, and you'll receive exactly the same answer.
|People have no reaction to you just walking in and stealing their stuff.|
Compared to everyone going berserk for stealing their favorite spoon in Elder Scrolls, or paying some money to the guards for eradicating half a city? Or pinching their clothes off while they're still wearing it? Or all present omniscience of the guards?
|There are large cities and many npc's, but so what?|
Sure…who needs well designed settlements and plenty of characters in an open world game anyway?
|Most of the doors are locked, and most of the npc's are little more than window dressing.|
Because Novigrad alone has more buildings than entire Skyrim/Gothic series put together. Not every character needs to have interaction with the player, and how many in Skyrim had actually anything meaningful to say, aside from the same inane, repetitive babbling?

This is why I love gaming community that suffers from no shortage of juvenile degenerates who try to shit over a game without even knowing the name of the protagonist of the game that he is trying to "criticize"…and in the end, the fool doesn't even realize that the only thing he had accomplished, is displayed his ignorance on the matter.

Very surprised you took the time to read that mess of scribble Bob. Never mind trying dissect it.

Well, I love bashing the witless. It's one of the few joys of my existence.

I'm not the nicest person in the world but that is not a very nice welcome. The poll asked a question and he answered. Everyone has a right to their opinion. I haven't played the Witcher 3, but I sure wasn't a fan of 1 and 2. Not liking what other people love shouldn't be a crime.

What he wrote made sense to me. I disagree with what he stated since he seems to like games I consider to be console tripe with egregiously shallow character generation (if there is even one) and progression systems, which we can safely and correctly group the Witcher into. But I am the only person I know who has impeccable taste in crpgs. so most helmet-wearers disagree with me.

Anyways, welcome to RPG Watch Jeremy Alexander. Besides your disagreeing with The Witcher 3, your poor taste in loving console games should make you fit right in here.

If you are ever interested in playing some actually good crpg games, let me know and I'll give you a list.

jeremyalexanderj said:

Maybe you could point out the "mess" part since I would love to hear an argument that counters any of my points.

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Your points are probably quite valid, the 'mess' that's being debated is the fact that you wrote what is termed a Wall of Text. In other words, you forgot to press the enter button on your keypad every 5-7 lines or because you'd moved onto a different point. Walls of Text are the surest way to alienate 99% (made-up stat, of course) of readers.

See, I pressed enter, and now this second sentence stands out and is much easier to digest.

Their keyboard broke or believes that "enter" key is just a decoration.
Till they fix it... Sorry I have better things to do than reading through that nobreaks style abomination.

Unrestigered said:

Everyone has a right to their opinion. I haven't played the Witcher 3, but I sure wasn't a fan of 1 and 2. Not liking what other people love shouldn't be a crime.

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I have no problem with intelligent and thorough criticism, intended to improve the quality of the matter at hand...only with one that's entirely meant to shit all over something because someone can't get grow out of a mentality of a spiteful, angry child.

Take for instance his first sentence and let's examine it from several angles.
He did well to mention that Witcher III is indeed not an open world in a traditional sense, as the game is not presented on a typical island/continent such as in Gothic II or Skyrim.
The cons of this approach is that it does takes away much of the control from the player when it comes to exploration and the world is not as easily traversible and feels more "fragmented" than it is in more classical open world games.
However, any intelligent person would also realize that this is completely in line with game's core design....which is that of being a Story Driven game, and having exploration directed by story line...and that by doing that, this allows a presentation of a much more immersive, coherent and realistic ecosystem. For instance in Skyrim, you could ride in less than a minute, from +40 degrees Celsius area to an ice cold polar region...in real life, good luck surviving that. Inquisition had the same problem, as did even Gothic 3.
Witcher also provides a much stronger sense of "place", of sustainable settlements and realistic distance between them...Redania feels like a much more believable kingdom than Myrtana/Cyrodiil/etc, precisely because the world in the Witcher is only played out in one small portion of it.

jeremyalexanderj said:

Absolutely not. It is the most overrated RPG I can remember. Proof that all style over substance still fools people. First of all, it is semi-open world, not open world. It has 5 explorable areas separated by load screens. The story is a boring "Where's Waldo/Ciri" scenario where I go somewhere, ask about Ciri, get sent on a monster hunt to get info, get a little info, rinse and repeat. No matter how well represented and acted, the quests are still purely of the fetch/and kill 1-10 of these variety that reminded me far more of a MMORPG than a single player game. The controls are clunky, you can only play Garrett the way they want you to and because of the level requirements for many quests, you can only do them in a certain order. Those two facts combined mean I will never replay the game. Combat is repetitive. The world is static and non-interactive in a way that should embarrass CDPR considering the Elder Scrolls has had better object simulation since Morrowind. People have no reaction to you just walking in and stealing their stuff. The trees sway like they have some sort of neurological disorder. Unless everyday sees hurricane like weather in this world, it is laughable physics. There are large cities and many npc's, but so what? Most of the doors are locked, and most of the npc's are little more than window dressing. They stay in the same place and spit out the same few lines of canned dialogue. The only things I enjoyed about the game overall was Gwent and the quality of the dialogue and presentation of conversation. The character that have more than 3 lines were well done. CDPR has made a good game that will hopefully lead them to greater things with Cyberpunk, but calling this the best rpg, or best open world rpg ever is pure hype. The peasants are grumbling a little louder, but the crowns of the rpg and open world rpg genre are still with their original owners, Ultima, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Deus Ex,etc. This game was about 25-35% of what I thought it would be and what they hyped it to be. I'm looking forward to Cyberpunk, but they really need to make some great strides to be in the same conversation with the greats. I spent 128 hours with Witcher 3 and would give it a 7, or 7.5 out of 10. Good, not great. And still being fixed, I might add as they took many potshots at companies like Bethesda for buggy releases.

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Is that you Todd?

As it turned out, no, it didn't live up to the hype for me.

DArtagnan said:

As it turned out, no, it didn't live up to the hype for me.

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How come. You were pretty excited about it. What changed?

I personally haven't managed to finish it. I've had a very hectic schedule, and left it off just after getting to Skellige. And now I feel it very daunting to pick it back again. And hearing how absolutely massive it is sure isn't helping.

I don't think there's ever been a game that lived up to the hype for DArtagnan.

True. But from the get go it didn't live up to the hype for me, so I have to agree with Dart on this one. However, it did exceed my expectations on storytelling and writing and voiceacting, but the hype didn't hype me on it, thus I was pleasantly surprised.

I thought it was fantastic, but Gothic 1&2 are still the best open-world aRPGs in my book.

Hard choice for me between Morrowind and G2/G1, and Witcher 3 is real close.

Eh…I think nostalgia is working it's magic here. There are some things from those games that CDPR could have really looked up to… better crime system, less restrictions and more environment interaction from TES, more intuitive/rewarding exploration and better scaled opponents from Gothic(s)..but in writing, main story and side quests, characters and quality of voice acting, activities, monster design and game play, sound, music, world design and atmosphere…Wild Hunt is simply a league plus above them. And the game is still being improved by the developers and with the mod kit not too far off…I'd say in it's current state Wild Hunt is at three quarters of it's full potential.

danutz_plusplus said:

How come. You were pretty excited about it. What changed?

I personally haven't managed to finish it. I've had a very hectic schedule, and left it off just after getting to Skellige. And now I feel it very daunting to pick it back again. And hearing how absolutely massive it is sure isn't helping.

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I give some thoughts in the now playing thread.

JDR13 said:

I don't think there's ever been a game that lived up to the hype for DArtagnan.

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Quite a few actually

But it's very rare these days.

My fault, in this case, as I let myself be uncommonly hyped for Witcher 3. I also waited too long to play it. Mistake.

I wonder, though, if victims of a similar level of hype around here are all being honest with themselves with how they're putting this on such a pedestal

We'll never know, I guess.

DArtagnan said:

I wonder, though, if victims of a similar level of hype around here are all being honest with themselves with how they're putting this on such a pedestal

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This is indeed true if you buy into the hype and play game, you can and will over look many flaws. However does that matter as long as the person who played the game thinks they played the best game ever? Few years down the line, you tend to forget the game however you never forget the emotional feeling about that game so at that end of the day, only the emotional feeling matter even if it was gained with drug called hype.

errr... NO. I was pretty hyped about DA:I and PoE but the flaws prevented me from putting them on pedestals. But I'm quite happy to put TW3 on one.

lostforever said:

This is indeed true if you buy into the hype and play game, you can and will over look many flaws. However does that matter as long as the person who played the game thinks they played the best game ever? Few years down the line, you tend to forget the game however you never forget the emotional feeling about that game so at that end of the day, only the emotional feeling matter even if it was gained with drug called hype.

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It kinda depends on what you're looking for, I suppose. I can agree that this is just about games - and opinions of games. Hardly world changing stuff - but still.

Since we're going out of our way to discuss this topic that we're so passionate about, I think it makes sense to strive towards fair criticism and attempt some level of objectivity.

Of course, in terms of the individual experience - it doesn't really matter if you enjoy something in a "pure" way or based on a predisposed emotional investment. The enjoyment is key. I do have a theory, though, that "tainted" enjoyment will not match "pure" enjoyment, but that's probably better left aside for now.

But when you're communicating with others - I think it's wise to minimise the entirely subjective point of view, as you can never transfer your emotional make-up to someone else. You can, however, transfer messages - and you can make them clearer by not mixing it up with personal stuff that's impossible to accurately convey to another human being.