havent played witcher 3, but i couldnt play 1 or 2 for more than an hour (hated the combat). will probably give it a shot down the road.
~1/10 of a billion dollars to develop and market one game just seems silly. at that point, its more "business development" than "game development". i know thats the reality of AAA titles these days, but it seems... i dont know, a bit wrong.
gta5 cost ~$250 million! 1/4 of a billion dollars! gta4 cost less and was a much better game, IMO.
i guess im just scared gaming will turn into the movie industry where big budget crap will be a profitable spectacle during its release, but is critically remembered as crap.
I bought Witcher 1 and 2 over a year ago on a GoG sale. Had a hard time getting into it for similar reasons.
Just this week I finally got over the starting annoyance curve in Witcher 1. For me the two biggest annoyances are:
#1: Nauseating camera. I played all the Bioware fantasy RPGs (BG1/BG2/NWN/NWN2/DAO/DA2) and they give you decent control of the camera. Despite Witcher 1 using the NWN engine, they decided to mess up the camera, so it auto rotates all the time. This makes me queasy.
#2: Click-Rhythm combat. It is like they couldn't decide if they wanted to make a beat em up that was button mashing, and reflex based, or classic RPG based on stats, so they went half in on both, and annoyed a lot of people.
I put up with both of these because it has better atmosphere and story than any of the Bioware RPGs I have played. Really can't wait to get in a few more hours tonight.