The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt: Official Thread

Some pics from another forum highlighting the difference between the PC and PS4 version.

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This has nothing to do with the scale, I feel as though I was misled with the graphics they showed before game release and what I actually have, totally ridiculous
 
pontiac4life said:
This has nothing to do with the scale, I feel as though I was misled with the graphics they showed before game release and what I actually have, totally ridiculous
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Yes they should have been a lot more upfront about having to scale things back or make changes but I don't think it's fair to say the graphics are a joke. While there are times where you can see some corners being cut it is still a beautifully designed world with good graphics.
 
Derangel said:
Name five games remotely close to the scale of Witcher 3 that look better. Mods don't count. I'll start you off with one freebie: GTAV.
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I disagree on GTA. I mean the environments aren't really comparable, but I don't think it looks all that outstanding. It looks good for having started life as a two year old, last-gen game. But its not great.


pontiac4life said:
This has nothing to do with the scale, I feel as though I was misled with the graphics they showed before game release and what I actually have, totally ridiculous
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We're sort of beating a dead horse here, this has been argued countless times already. The bottom line is, two years ago the devs showed off a version of the game that they couldn't achieve on a large scale (despite what you say, this has a ton to do with scale. The game they showed two years ago wasn't near completed. It was a small snippet of a huge world. As the game world increased, the graphics quality had to decrease to make it playable). I don't think it was done with malice, they weren't trying to trick anyone. Like all of use, I'm sure CDPR would have loved to deliver that game. Either by way of the consoles not being up to the task, or the size of the world not being able to handle that level of fidelity, it didn't happen.

They probably should have been more up front about the changes made, but the reality is, they didn't have to. There was literally tens of hours of footage available to everyone, on all platforms, prior to the games release. Everyone had plenty of time to make an informed purchasing decision. If all they showed was 2013 era footage up until release, that would be incredibly misleading, down right illegal, false advertising. But they didn't. The quality they have been showing several months beforet he games release is the quality delivered.
 
When do u find decent swords? im only lvl 6 but i feel the ones u find sucks shit... and the vendors dont sell good ones either so i asume u either craft good or find from people u kill ?
 
In my play time, I picked up every notice board and quest in all of Velen. Took me like 2 hours of running around grabbing everything. Completed every quest I could possibly do and I only ended up at level 6. My Journal is FULL of level 15+ quests that I can't attempt. Quest markers on my map are blank, so there's nothing left to take. I even went back and finished White Orchard to 100%. Where are all the level 5-10 quests? The game skips from 2-3 straight to 10+. I guess I have to push the main story at this point.

I was using the starter silver sword that entire time. This game is very poorly balanced/scaled at low level. I spent an hour getting face-rolled by level 15 mobs before I decided to just quit.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
In my play time, I picked up every notice board and quest in all of Velen. Took me like 2 hours of running around grabbing everything. Completed every quest I could possibly do and I only ended up at level 6. My Journal is FULL of level 15+ quests that I can't attempt. Quest markers on my map are blank, so there's nothing left to take. I even went back and finished White Orchard to 100%. Where are all the level 5-10 quests? The game skips from 2-3 straight to 10+. I guess I have to push the main story at this point.

I was using the starter silver sword that entire time. This game is very poorly balanced/scaled at low level. I spent an hour getting face-rolled by level 15 mobs before I decided to just quit.
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The thing with this game is that you get very little experience for other quests in comparison to completing the main quests. You won't really level as much as in other RPGs by just killing stuff or doing the side quests. I did the same thing you did at first when I started right before the Velen thing. I completed almost all of it and visited I think 99% of it and was still pretty low level. Do the main quests then pause and do other secondary and witcher contracts as you go. If you try to save the main quest till later you find out that you are seriously underpowered. IIRC one of the first main quests is the Baron one and that is level 6 recommended.
 
LurkerLito said:
The thing with this game is that you get very little experience for other quests in comparison to completing the main quests. You won't really level as much as in other RPGs by just killing stuff or doing the side quests. I did the same thing you did at first when I started right before the Velen thing. I completed almost all of it and visited I think 99% of it and was still pretty low level. Do the main quests then pause and do other secondary and witcher contracts as you go. If you try to save the main quest till later you find out that you are seriously underpowered. IIRC one of the first main quests is the Baron one and that is level 6 recommended.
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All the guides said to ignore the main quest since it actually erases some side quests as you go.
 
Viper87227 said:
I disagree on GTA. I mean the environments aren't really comparable, but I don't think it looks all that outstanding. It looks good for having started life as a two year old, last-gen game. But its not great.
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I think as an over-all vision of the world GTAV is a little better. The parts where you can see it not quite holding up perfectly are less jarring for me then those spots in Witcher 3. In GTAV I can kind of ignore some of the not to great ground textures out side of the city but with Witcher 3 every time the camera decides to move around and show the horrible grass and plant life it yanks me out of the experience. During on moment I saw my horse move and a flat 2D modeled plant folded to the ground like a piece of paper than sprung back up like it had a spring under it. It was incredibly jarring.

Mortuus said:
When do u find decent swords? im only lvl 6 but i feel the ones u find sucks shit... and the vendors dont sell good ones either so i asume u either craft good or find from people u kill ?
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Craft them. In these kinds of games the best weapons and armor are almost always crafted ones. I'm level 4 at the moment and so far have crafted new armor, a new silver sword, and a new steel sword all miles better than anything I've seen at vendors or randomly out in the world.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
All the guides said to ignore the main quest since it actually erases some side quests as you go.
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Do they? I don't look at any guides. I usually go in blind so I have to figure things out. I entered Velen and I noticed I was seriously underpowered. And leveling seemed so SLOW. then I just said screw the side quests I'll get to them later, and then I started getting more experience by doing the main quests. I can't tell you if any quests got erased, but I did fail 2 of them cause I got them too early couldn't properly complete them.
 
Mortuus said:
When do u find decent swords? im only lvl 6 but i feel the ones u find sucks shit... and the vendors dont sell good ones either so i asume u either craft good or find from people u kill ?
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Do the viper quest and you get a steel and silver schematic. Google how to get the quest, I forgot. It's in the first zone, though.
 
LurkerLito said:
Do they? I don't look at any guides. I usually go in blind so I have to figure things out. I entered Velen and I noticed I was seriously underpowered. And leveling seemed so SLOW. then I just said screw the side quests I'll get to them later, and then I started getting more experience by doing the main quests. I can't tell you if any quests got erased, but I did fail 2 of them cause I got them too early couldn't properly complete them.
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I don't think any quests will downright disappear. Like TW2, there will be side quests that you automatically fail if you progress to far into the story before completing them. I think it's a good thing though. I've always thought it a bit odd when games hand you a side quest that sounds urgent, but you can accept it and then come back days/weeks/years later and jump in like everyone has been waiting on you with baited breath to come back and take care of business.

I've only failed one quest in TW3 due to not getting to it soon enough, and while I won't spoil anything, the game made it pretty obvious that time was a factor and it wasn't a quest to just shove into my backlog for a rainy day.
 
I have found it useful to travel the coastline. You find lots of areas. In the second map there are areas with level 16 monsters and near the mission areas level 3/4 mobs. @ 5 I just could not damage the higher level ones. I found a level 37 schematic that way. For books and notes... you gotta read them all. They may add bestiary entries or new missions. Then the missions, do the green side quests and ignore the main quest until no greens. Also hit the towns. Anything marked a ! (person, board) contains a mission.
 
Derangel said:
I keep forgetting to look for them. I just did the early stuff in Vizema I hope I didn't forget any that I can no longer get.
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Where do you even get them? Purchase, loot? I was assuming you won them when you beat someone.

I beat the tutorial dude. Made it to the 2nd area, and next guy's cards just dominated me.
 
pontiac4life said:
This has nothing to do with the scale, I feel as though I was misled with the graphics they showed before game release and what I actually have, totally ridiculous
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The only thing i find ridiculous is that you are crying over a good looking game. The only thing that can explain your gullibility is that you're either young or stupid. The whole point of E3 is to generate a buzz in order for them to do that they show something ridiculous to get people talking about it. Will that magic slice live up to the hype? maybe but probably not. The general rule of thumb for us old men is unless we see actual gameplay, it's smoke and mirrors bs. Take last years Crackdown slice as an example, will the game look anywhere near what they showed? HELL NO but it was still entertaining and it did tell us that crackdown was coming out at some point and it got people talking about it again.
 
pontiac4life said:
This has nothing to do with the scale, I feel as though I was misled with the graphics they showed before game release and what I actually have, totally ridiculous
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No offense but have you been living in a cave playing the E3 trailer in an endless loop until release day?

Final graphics have been on display for months in gameplay videos, preview/teaser articles on various gaming sites and blogs, and on twitch streams where they were giving some of the bigger streamers early access. Reviews began to roll out more than a week prior to release. Pre-orders can be cancelled. Did you ignore all of those things?

There was no veil of secrecy, suppression of footage or embargoes until launch day as some more unscrupulous companies have done. They were sending early access copies of the game far and wide.
 
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i am actually enjoying gwent a lot. I hated having to do dice and arm wrestling in witcher 2. now I look forward to playing gwent. The hardest one so far (very early in game still) was that guy in the court yard after yenn portals away. Fucker had so many hero cards that weather doesn't affect. Beat him after a couple tries getting lucky triple pair that doubles damage. I think you get one card for every player you beat first time.
 
For those crying about Gore....seriously? I'm lopping limbs, heads, torso. He even cut a guy in half diagonally from shoulder to waist.
 
so it looks like the whole repair thing may be unnecessary, it only appears to subtract some 10% from the maximum value, which is about equivalent to some buffs. So with decent weapons.... it can be ignored.
 
poison123 said:
For those crying about Gore....seriously? I'm lopping limbs, heads, torso. He even cut a guy in half diagonally from shoulder to waist.
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The problem is there is no blood "splatter" on the ground, which was in both TW1 and 2.

I mean you cleave a guy in two, his body has this blood decal appear over it, yet the ground is pristine without a drop on it aside from the very cheap looking "pool" that appears sometimes like a circa 1995 game.

Also I have noticed blood appears on Geralt during a fight but it quickly quickly disappears (Within like a second or two).

They already said it was a bug and something they could patch, we just don't know when they plan to do that.

Even Dragon Age; Inquisition had more detail in that regard.
 
So just got back in the country, been out of the loop for a week.

Sounds like I can max the game at 3440x1440 with Titan X SLI. Any graphics mods that are must do? It sounds like the game is pretty impressive as is.

I read about some quest glitches, any issues with crashing and such or has that been resolved by patches?
 
Dayaks said:
So just got back in the country, been out of the loop for a week.

Sounds like I can max the game at 3440x1440 with Titan X SLI. Any graphics mods that are must do? It sounds like the game is pretty impressive as is.

I read about some quest glitches, any issues with crashing and such or has that been resolved by patches?
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For the quest glitching, all I will tell you is do Deserters gold the correct way it's meant to be, if you go into the "camp" where it ends first (and you easily can because it's marked on your map with a giant question mark) it will bug it and won't let you complete it.

As far as graphical mods, not yet.

They haven't released the Redkit modding tools so the only mods we have are the most basic kinds that people can do without it. The more intensive one like graphical overhauls and such will come later on after people have dug into the redkit modding tools for a bit.
 
So what's everyones verdict?
Is this a better game than Dragon Age Inquisition?
Graphically and gameplay wise.

I would say they're pretty close to each other in overall score.
 
Eshelmen said:
So what's everyones verdict?
Is this a better game than Dragon Age Inquisition?
Graphically and gameplay wise.

I would say they're pretty close to each other in overall score.
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I would say I am 50-60% with the game and so far it's pretty great. But my game of the year so far is still BloodBorne. Goddamn I would love to play BB on PC.


TW3 has a ton of content but the mechanics of combat are bad and the player movement is barely passable -- so it makes exploring kinda derpy.
 
Eshelmen said:
So what's everyones verdict?
Is this a better game than Dragon Age Inquisition?
Graphically and gameplay wise.

I would say they're pretty close to each other in overall score.
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They are two completely different games because Dragon Age is based around squad based combat and The Witcher is of the lone wolf genre. Dragon Age looks better to me at enjoyable frame rates. To enjoy both you really want to have a high frame rate for more fluidity in the character models. To achieve a high frame you have to cut off the hair in The Witcher, and that really kill the immersion. I consider a high frame rate to be 60 fps. That will allow for taxing scenes to dip into the low 50's.

I get headaches if the frame rate gets below 40 with VSYNC off. I can't stand to turn VSYNC on as it causes input lag which irks the hell out of me. I would prefer an even high frame rate as I have a 120Hz monitor.

If none of what I like in a game matters, then you'll probably be able to turn on The Witcher's hair and enjoy it. It will kill your frame rate of course, but some people don't mind 30Hz gaming. Which would skew the graphical acumen of both games much closer to even. Both development houses are insanely talented. The Witcher has much more enjoyable side quests. The side quests in Dragon Age remind me of WoW or the Star Wars MMO where you are constantly fetching inane shiny objects. That gets boring after awhile.
 
cageymaru said:
They are two completely different games because Dragon Age is based around squad based combat and The Witcher is of the lone wolf genre. Dragon Age looks better to me at enjoyable frame rates. To enjoy both you really want to have a high frame rate for more fluidity in the character models. To achieve a high frame you have to cut off the hair in The Witcher, and that really kill the immersion. I consider a high frame rate to be 60 fps. That will allow for taxing scenes to dip into the low 50's.

I get headaches if the frame rate gets below 40 with VSYNC off. I can't stand to turn VSYNC on as it causes input lag which irks the hell out of me. I would prefer an even high frame rate as I have a 120Hz monitor.

If none of what I like in a game matters, then you'll probably be able to turn on The Witcher's hair and enjoy it. It will kill your frame rate of course, but some people don't mind. Which would skew the graphical acumen of both games much closer to even. The Witcher has much more enjoyable side quests. The side quests in Dragon Age remind me of WoW or the Star Wars MMO where you are constantly fetching inane shiny objects. That gets boring after awhile.
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I think the regular hair looks better and more natural and realistic, at least on Geralt, honestly. HairWorks looks like he has a bunch of floating vermicelli on his head - the weight, friction, inertia, it's all off.
 
dmonkey said:
I think the regular hair looks better and more natural and realistic, at least on Geralt, honestly. HairWorks looks like he has a bunch of floating vermicelli on his head - the weight, friction, inertia, it's all off.
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It looks pretty bad on Geralt, but on monsters it's pretty seksowny.
 
For me both games are good in different areas.

I quite like the party-based combat and skills of DA's combat. TW3's combat is passable but it's not nearly as "Tactical" as DA:I's as far as the breadth of skills and abilities.

Graphics wise there are areas where each shine.

The art style in some DA:I areas is nice and the foliage looks great for the most part. Also so far at last, DA:I seems to have more "Variety" in terms of the different styles of areas you visit.

The main drawback to DA:I is that it's made up of many regions and the world is separated by a lot of loading screens, it doesn't feel like one big world. You alos have a lot of "cliffs" and other things that keep you "Trapped" into an area and gives the feeling of it being a "game world."

TW3's main drawback as far as graphics go is thie foliage and lack of self shadowing and detail.

However the world itself just seems more "natural." TW3 contains three regions (Separated by loading screens) but the worlds within each region feel large, especially the "Second" one where the majority of the game takes place. The world design feels very "natural" and you don't have giant cliffs every where you go blocking you in (if you say go too far in the prologue area Geralt simply makes a comment about it and the game puts you back some).

The world itself feels very "lived in." Especially in regards to villages and the look of them. Also how you can go into most buildings, unlike DA:I where it's a lot of closed off buildings and doors you can't go in. In Novigrad alone (The biggest city in TW3) they said there's something like two THOUSAND openable doors. Most other rpgs, especially open world ones pale in comparison when it comes to being able to explore a huge landmass with buildings you can enter WITHOUT loading screens.

Story wise, both games have choices to make and consequences, but i find that The Witcher has a more realistic sense of morales. It's not overly "good or bad" and there's a lot of choices you make that feel neither good or bad but have unforseen consequences that can make you question what you did or what others do.

DA:I shined in having memorable party members and as others have said, TW3 is mostly a lone wolf game. You have supporting characters that fill the world and some that are close to Geralt, but for the most part you are playing as a lone wolf so there's no sense of getting to know them and backstories to them as in-depth as the party members in DA:I.

The area where I felt DA:I faltered the most was the sidequest that littered the world, a bunch of "fetch" mmo style quest with little substance.

So to sum it up:

TW3:
Better "open" world in terms of sheer size, far fewer loading screens, lively cities/lots of interiors.
Better side-quest that feel more detailed and aren't simple fetch quest galore.
Better choices/consequences as far as story an dquest go


DA:I:
Better variety in terms of enviornments
Better "companions" in terms of their stories
Better combat (this is my personal opinion, others may enjoy TW3's combat more).
 
For me it comes down to this: On a list of checkboxes that made Red Dead Redemption my 10/10 gold standard for this style of game, Witcher 3 comes closest and ticks the most checkboxes of any game to date. And in many exceeds RDR - its certainly a lot bigger and the graphics are obviously better. Yes RDR was a western and W3 is fantasy, but there are TONS of similarities and I'm constantly having RDR flashbacks. DA:I was fun but it was tedious after a while, and in many ways never really felt "open world" but more compartmentalized areas, that also felt pseudo-linear since even though you could go anywhere on the map, there was usually an obvious beaten-path way of winding or working through them. Plus a lot of "kill Templars 1/100" and "Gather plant 1/50" bullshit quests. In W3 I have yet to do a quest that isn't well executed with cutscenes and interesting story and a plot twist or requirement to complete the quest that wasn't predictable. 100% of them have been interesting.

Attention to detail is phenomenal in W3. During a quest with an NPC last night, went off to explore a cave that required swimming underneath something, and when I came back she was sitting down waiting, then gets up and says "How was the water" and Geralt says "Refreshing, you don't know what you're missing". Little things. Laughed when I browsed Reddit this morning and saw someone else noticed the same thing.

While many people that don't even own the game continue trying to masturbate the "graphics downgrade" line, many of us actually playing the game are having an amazing experience. And because its early days, I think its going to take some time before people really have a grasp of how massive the game is, because the first 20 hours are just the tip of the iceberg.
 
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game sounds amazing...am holding out until at least the next patch is released...hopefully that's the one with the expanded ini tweaks
 
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