Witcher 3 Share your first impressions

ChaosTheory said:

Yeah I found all of that… So I'm thinking I did something out of order, which created a bug in the quest. Having the "noonwraith" info from this site, I simply waited until noon, it showed up, I took a few whacks and then it disappeared (before I could kill it). Meanwhile it updated my quest and creature manual so that I can now proceed.

That said, I never would have waited until noon on my own, so I'm not sure why my game didn't update before. It has me wondering how many other quests I'll break since this was my first one!

Either way, moving on… thanks for assist.

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Maybe if you went at noon again it would reappear - it's quite useful to kill it as it may have some quite useful loot (hint: its green).

I also broke a quest on my first run through the starter area, by not reading the note before doing the treasure cache quest. And also I didn't follow the NPC that gets on a horse quickly enough- so failed that:

Hence, after restarting, I'm being much more caerful and keeping named saves as I go along and tick off some important progress - you can change the name of your saved games by going into the save directory in windows explorer (sort by modified date and rename the last manual save and it's associated png to the same name).

My very first impression was - oh no, it's like an MMORPG with stuff everywhere and quest hubs - but then, it's not entirely like that and there isn't really any way to do an open world with hundreds of hours of content without having stuff on the map.

I'm really enjoying the game so far - possibly too much - didn't stop playing yesterday til I noticed sunlight coming in the window behind my desk, doh.

It looks fantastic (a few graphical oddities here and there - not sure how to get rid of the shine the npcs have that geralt doesn't have and geralt's hair is always blowing like it's windy even when he's indoors - are he's just that amazing - the magic man that he is). Great animations/facial stuff.

I like the gritty look and feel to everything, the content is excellent.

Lotsa fun thus far.

you said:

any ocmment on the 'pc' interface ?

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I'm sure it could be better - console first design always leads to rubbish, but it's not terrible.

My biggest problem with it is that you can't rebind ALL keys - some are locked, which makes no sense. Apparently you can edit the input.settings file but even though it's semi-plain text it's not something I want to be bothered with doing when the keys should available for rebinding.

I'd like the Esc key behavior to be smarter too - if you press M for map (single press to get to map) then Esc should close the map. If you navigate to the map thru multiple other screens, then fine, Esc can back out one screen at a time. What happens now though is that if you press M for map and hit Esc you have to back out of 2 more screens. I hate hotkeys on the right hand side of the keyboard and that and Inentory I remap in every game possible, since they both suck for hotkeys. (Should be on the left hand side of keyboard so you don't have to move mouse hand or navigation/wasd hand to do ultra common tasks).

Voqar said:

My biggest problem with it is that you can't rebind ALL keys - some are locked, which makes no sense. Apparently you can edit the input.settings file but even though it's semi-plain text it's not something I want to be bothered with doing when the keys should available for rebinding.

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This is pissing me off too - do they imagine that everyone (including left handers such as myself) use WASD for navigation? And not only are those keys locked, but they've done it at such a low level that you can't easily override with autohotkey (actually there may be a way with a low level key hook, but that would take some difficult programming).

I wasn't aware that you might be able edit input.settings, thanks I'll take a look at that soon.

Roq said:

This is pissing me off too - do they imagine that everyone (including left handers such as myself) use WASD for navigation? And not only are those keys locked, but they've done it at such a low level that you can't easily override with autohotkey (actually there may be a way with a low level key hook, but that would take some difficult programming).

I wasn't aware that you might be able edit input.settings, thanks I'll take a look at that soon.

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This kind of thing is precisely the reason I spent a bunch of money on a gaming keyboard.

I can reassign the keys on my keyboard when they are not changeable in games. For example in your case you could use the keyboard software to change the arrow keys to wsad. Sad PC gamers need to resort to this kind of thing but it's the times we live in.

sakichop said:

This kind of thing is precisely the reason I spent a bunch of money on a gaming keyboard.

I can reassign the keys on my keyboard when they are not changeable in games. For example in your case you could use the keyboard software to change the arrow keys to wsad. Sad PC gamers need to resort to this kind of thing but it's the times we live in.

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unfortunately I haven't found a good gaming keyboard that works well left handed and has cherry precision key switches. However Corsair have a line of gaming keyboards that do have cherry red switches - but I don't think they are configurable. Autohotkey does actually work well for most games anyway.

Voqar said:

. . . .I'd like the Esc key behavior to be smarter too - if you press M for map (single press to get to map) then Esc should close the map. If you navigate to the map thru multiple other screens, then fine, Esc can back out one screen at a time. What happens now though is that if you press M for map and hit Esc you have to back out of 2 more screens.

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Yes, yes, yes. Very irritating. Anybody come up with a solution to get in and/or out of the map with just one key press?

Press the same button you used to enter the menu, to exit that menu again. So for map you press M to enter and then M to exit again. Irritating if you're used to esc, but at least its one button press.

Donkerman said:

Press the same button you used to enter the menu, to exit that menu again. So for map you press M to enter and then M to exit again. Irritating if you're used to esc, but at least its one button press.

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yep that worked. Thanks

I've got something on the main quest that I'd like to ask about. It's nothing too advanced. I'm around level 6 in Velen.

So, oppinions?

There are some armor crushing beasties in the area you're talking about, but I did it at level 6 on easy. It might be harder on the higher difficulties.

danutz_plusplus said:

I've got something on the main quest that I'd like to ask about. It's nothing too advanced. I'm around level 6 in Velen.

Spoiler

In the spirit of non-linear-ness I decided to not do as the Bloody Baron asked, and search for the the old man (Pellar), and instead went to find the witch near Midcopse, (who turned out to be Keira Metz). Anyway, she told me about the elven mage and I went south to meet her and the elven mage at the elven ruins. Upon arriving there I got the Wild Hunt cinematic, and Geralt wanted to set out after them. After being stunned that she actually jumped inside the portal without me, if I waited too long (that was awesome by the way, if you can miss such an objective and then hopefully can find your way back to Keira), I reloaded and went after her. Was teleported to some cave. That's where I stopped to wonder if I'm not maybe doing this main quest way too early seeing as I didn't follow the recommended path and didn't go find the Bloody Baron's family.

Anyway, basically the question is, am I not too early to go on this quest? I'm almost level 6, but it just felt like it all steamrolled out of my control. Here I was doing side-quests, and all of a sudden I was chasing the Wild Hunt.

So, oppinions?

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No it is part of the game and you should be fine at your level.

danutz_plusplus said:

I've got something on the main quest that I'd like to ask about. It's nothing too advanced. I'm around level 6 in Velen.

Spoiler

In the spirit of non-linear-ness I decided to not do as the Bloody Baron asked, and search for the the old man (Pellar), and instead went to find the witch near Midcopse, (who turned out to be Keira Metz). Anyway, she told me about the elven mage and I went south to meet her and the elven mage at the elven ruins. Upon arriving there I got the Wild Hunt cinematic, and Geralt wanted to set out after them. After being stunned that she actually jumped inside the portal without me, if I waited too long (that was awesome by the way, if you can miss such an objective and then hopefully can find your way back to Keira), I reloaded and went after her. Was teleported to some cave. That's where I stopped to wonder if I'm not maybe doing this main quest way too early seeing as I didn't follow the recommended path and didn't go find the Bloody Baron's family.

Anyway, basically the question is, am I not too early to go on this quest? I'm almost level 6, but it just felt like it all steamrolled out of my control. Here I was doing side-quests, and all of a sudden I was chasing the Wild Hunt.

So, oppinions?

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You're not. I did it first too, it's the other lead you find among the spy's papers. That quest level when you first receive it is level 5, it goes to level 6 latter. It's rather self-contained as well and it open up a secondary quest chain too (which I have yet to finish because I have too many quests to do and I'm running all around Velen…).

azarhal said:

You're not. I did it first too, it's the other lead you find among the spy's papers. That quest level when you first receive it is level 5, it goes to level 6 latter. It's rather self-contained as well and it open up a secondary quest chain too (which I have yet to finish because I have too many quests to do and I'm running all around Velen…).

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Cool, thanks. Did anyone complete it by not jumping into the portal with Keira? I wonder what should I do. Because I'd love to explore that underground elven temple/ruins. Saw some drowners down there.

I jumped.

It doesn't matter if you jump into the portal with her or not. You can still explore the entire area.

JDR13 said:

It doesn't matter if you jump into the portal with her or not. You can still explore the entire area.

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Yeah, I can imagine that I can return there. But was wondering without returning.

Unless I missed something, jumping into the portal with her only takes you across that chasm. If you don't enter it, you have to find your way to her. You can backtrack though if you do decide to enter the portal and clear the path you would have used if you didn't.

Iirc, it's just a few Drowners and a Water Hag. Nothing special in terms of loot.

danutz_plusplus said:

Yeah, I can imagine that I can return there. But was wondering without returning.

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JDR13 said:

Unless I missed something, jumping into the portal with her only takes you across that chasm. If you don't enter it, you have to find your way to her. You can backtrack though if you do decide to enter the portal and clear the path you would have used if you didn't.

Iirc, it's just a few Drowners and a Water Hag. Nothing special in terms of loot.

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Indeed. I don't know why I thought there would be more.

I explored the tunnels, and have reached the boss fight with my first Wild Hunt soldier/warrior (Nithral). And I'm on my 5th or 6th attempt. Damn he's fast. I always have to go in, do a fast attack then be sure to dodge him. And keep doing this until forever. I once so close to finishing him off once, but stumbled right at the end. I'm taking a break, and I'll get back to him.

Shall we have a poll to see how people are feeling about W3 at this point? Might be interesting to contrast in a few weeks time, when people have completed it.