Witcher 3

So I get out of the starting area and to the next map. First little village has the guy in the town who has a missing brother. Cool, I go looking for him.

Gotta kill this bigass spider. It's just a red skull to me, but I figure if I'm careful and patient I can whiddle him down and kill him, no biggie. Well, after 10 minutes there was barely a sliver off of his health bar, so I gave up.

Went and looked up the quest online. The spider is level 33. I was level 3 when I got that quest. Yeah, that's maybe poor game planning there to offer that quest up so early, lol.

I haven't had the same problem with gray quests that a lot of people have, but I do feel like I have to rush through secondary stuff and focus on the main story so I don't end up trivializing the content. There also doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the way quests are leveled. The "suggested levels" are all over the place. You have level 6 quests in Novigrad and level 11 quests and mobs on Skellige when the game suggests you visit the island at level 16.

Finished up white orchard, or at least the ? and any obvious quests.
now, I can understand thats just the beginning of the game. but, im curious.

Is that how the rest of the game pans out content wise? Velen and the other place are obviously much larger, yes.
But I mean quests, etc. how much hidden stuff is there? any? are all points of interest marked with ?. White orchard kindof feels like a themepark openworld game to me a bit, very on rails. Lots of npcs, who don't talk etc. only named ones have any value. doors are locked to quest npcs until they are relevant to quests. the vast majority of loot, and monsters are related to ? marks. the "open world" feels very cosmetic.
I have found SOME random stuff granted. honeycombs are not marked, hollow treetrunks on occasion with loot, the rivers have chests unmarked as noted earlier..

An example, in white orchard one of the northern ? marks is a camp with loot. there is a dead body you can search with your witcher sense... geralt just comments, "odd" or something like that.. did I miss something? was there more to this? was this camp supposed to branch into something explaining this mans death? there were some wolves nearbye but that doesnt explain this guy seeming being stabbed.

Caliane_sl said:

Finished up white orchard, or at least the ? and any obvious quests.
now, I can understand thats just the beginning of the game. but, im curious.

Is that how the rest of the game pans out content wise? Velen and the other place are obviously much larger, yes.
But I mean quests, etc. how much hidden stuff is there? any? are all points of interest marked with ?. White orchard kindof feels like a themepark openworld game to me a bit, very on rails. Lots of npcs, who don't talk etc. only named ones have any value. doors are locked to quest npcs until they are relevant to quests. the vast majority of loot, and monsters are related to ? marks. the "open world" feels very cosmetic.
I have found SOME random stuff granted. honeycombs are not marked, hollow treetrunks on occasion with loot, the rivers have chests unmarked as noted earlier..

An example, in white orchard one of the northern ? marks is a camp with loot. there is a dead body you can search with your witcher sense... geralt just comments, "odd" or something like that.. did I miss something? was there more to this? was this camp supposed to branch into something explaining this mans death? there were some wolves nearbye but that doesnt explain this guy seeming being stabbed.

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If you don't like the ? marks, skip them all. On the other hand, main quests and ! quests are pretty good.

littles_sl said:

hit jump(b on my 360 controller) again as you are landing to roll and not take any fall damage(for jumps that arent off cliffs at any rate).

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Oh what the shit! I didn't know either, makes sense I guess but yeah falling half a body length and taking 40% of my health off was balls.

Also boats control like the horse, you can double tap for extra speed, without that knowledge it makes getting around Skellige isles feel like that shitty zelda game.

At Caliane: If you see red outlines using witcher sense and no quest update you don't have the quest yet, you are free to continue solving the quest however so when you do find the quest giver you can be like "bitch I already did all that, pay me"

joeboo_sl said:

So I get out of the starting area and to the next map. First little village has the guy in the town who has a missing brother. Cool, I go looking for him.

Gotta kill this bigass spider. It's just a red skull to me, but I figure if I'm careful and patient I can whiddle him down and kill him, no biggie. Well, after 10 minutes there was barely a sliver off of his health bar, so I gave up.

Went and looked up the quest online. The spider is level 33. I was level 3 when I got that quest. Yeah, that's maybe poor game planning there to offer that quest up so early, lol.

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I know which quest you mean and you have to stumble upon that one by yourself, it doesn't pop up on a notice board or as ! until it's relevant. At least it didn't to me ...

Some of the ? in N/NE of White Orchard culminate in you finding a chest near the old windmill, you can piece it together from the notes you find, but most are self contained.

Yes, there is a lot of filling to make the world look nice and alive, but given the size of it, I think it's good that you can know from a single look whether the NPC is relevant or not. If I had to click through conversations just to figure out if they have something interesting, I'd hate it.

Vorph_sl said:

I'm a big fan of SweetFX/ReShade, but imo the only thing this game needs is SMAA instead of that temporal 'vaseline filter' crap.

Some of those lookreallyawful too. I think their creators need their eyes examined or something.

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Use the K-Putt settings, they are the best imo. Does SMAA, little bit of sharpen, reduces yellow a bit. Nothing crazy.

Caliane_sl said:

Finished up white orchard, or at least the ? and any obvious quests.
now, I can understand thats just the beginning of the game. but, im curious.

Is that how the rest of the game pans out content wise? Velen and the other place are obviously much larger, yes.
But I mean quests, etc. how much hidden stuff is there? any? are all points of interest marked with ?. White orchard kindof feels like a themepark openworld game to me a bit, very on rails. Lots of npcs, who don't talk etc. only named ones have any value. doors are locked to quest npcs until they are relevant to quests. the vast majority of loot, and monsters are related to ? marks. the "open world" feels very cosmetic.
I have found SOME random stuff granted. honeycombs are not marked, hollow treetrunks on occasion with loot, the rivers have chests unmarked as noted earlier..

An example, in white orchard one of the northern ? marks is a camp with loot. there is a dead body you can search with your witcher sense... geralt just comments, "odd" or something like that.. did I miss something? was there more to this? was this camp supposed to branch into something explaining this mans death? there were some wolves nearbye but that doesnt explain this guy seeming being stabbed.

Click to expand...

You can turn off the undiscovered ? in UI options, that way you need to find them on your own if that is what you prefer.

Also, some of the wilderness stuff seems more fleshed out in Velen.

Evernothing_sl said:

Use the K-Putt settings, they are the best imo. Does SMAA, little bit of sharpen, reduces yellow a bit. Nothing crazy.

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Tried it, could barely tell a difference at all. Not worth giving up adaptive v-sync imo, especially since RadeonPro also takes care of SMAA.

Caliane_sl said:

An example, in white orchard one of the northern ? marks is a camp with loot. there is a dead body you can search with your witcher sense... geralt just comments, "odd" or something like that.. did I miss something? was there more to this? was this camp supposed to branch into something explaining this mans death? there were some wolves nearbye but that doesnt explain this guy seeming being stabbed.

Click to expand...

This is an unmarked quest called Deserter's Gold. If you have already looted the chests that the treasure hunt leads to, then nothing happens when you read the spy's note and no quest is added to your log.

Yeah the ? content is pretty bland to bad depending on the area. The open world is also piss poor with how little there is outside the main quest. The game is very linear and you can't really do things out of order. Run off to the area there and see an NPC you'll need for the next series? Tough shit you can't interact in a meaningful way and you'll be running back there once you have the quest. ITs like finding a lost boy in a cave but he won't interact or go with you unless you spoke with his mother first. There is also fair bit of running in this game for sure. I wish they would allow you to fast travel more like Skyrim to cut that down.

The early ! quests are amazing once you get to Crones and Barons. By far the best early game writing you'll see.

Things will slow down in Novigrad a lot but push through it because the game picks up again in Skel and doesn't stop after that for the most part.

This has been an excellent game. Certainly 9/10 material, lots of little issues so its not perfect and some big issues like the open world being stale as fuck but the story telling is second to none.

I'd love to see a main story quest (40 hours or so) like Witcher in a Skyrim like open world (complete with all the options) with Bloodborne controls with the option at higher difficulties for even Bloodborne combat. That would be my perfect game.

I haven't finished the game (didn't see Skellige) but I really didn't feel the world is bland or stale at all. Unlike Skyrim some cities really feel like actual towns instead of the usual "10 NPCs and 5 buildings should do the trick" stuff. Some sceneries are beautiful and the ? stuff can go from monster nests (mostly meh) to big underground dungeons. You can liberate some places, so while it's kinda generic it didn't feel so stale. Also when you go back to the places you already went, you often have story or quest follow-ups. And in Death March mode some ? places could reveal to be challenging, depending of both your gear and build.

I was pretty upset about how they handled both keyboard controls and character movement but they mostly fixed that with patches so it's pretty cool how fast they reacted. Also with some .ini tweaks the game is really gorgeous in 1440p. It's a fantastic game with some flaws but the story, setting and combat really make up for that, even when it's the 1000000th time you light a candle instead of looting a chest.

Bondurant_sl said:

even when it's the 1000000th time you light a candle instead of looting a chest.

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Rebinding ignite and extinguish to a different key than all the other interact stuff is really easy. Just search for those two things in input.settings and change IK_E to whatever.

Gamepad users can do the same thing, changing IK_A_X to IK_B_CIRCLE.

I just stumbled upon a cannibal camp and looted a "chicken sandwich" from one of them.

Normally in games id just chow down on whatever but in this case...

Harkon_sl said:

I just stumbled upon a cannibal camp and looted a "chicken sandwich" from one of them.

Normally in games id just chow down on whatever but in this case...

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Well, it probably tastes like chicken regardless.

Bondurant_sl said:

I haven't finished the game (didn't see Skellige) but I really didn't feel the world is bland or stale at all. Unlike Skyrim some cities really feel like actual towns instead of the usual "10 NPCs and 5 buildings should do the trick" stuff. Some sceneries are beautiful and the ? stuff can go from monster nests (mostly meh) to big underground dungeons. You can liberate some places, so while it's kinda generic it didn't feel so stale. Also when you go back to the places you already went, you often have story or quest follow-ups. And in Death March mode some ? places could reveal to be challenging, depending of both your gear and build.

I was pretty upset about how they handled both keyboard controls and character movement but they mostly fixed that with patches so it's pretty cool how fast they reacted. Also with some .ini tweaks the game is really gorgeous in 1440p. It's a fantastic game with some flaws but the story, setting and combat really make up for that, even when it's the 1000000th time you light a candle instead of looting a chest.

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Except those towns are filled with card board npcs that have nothing to say to you. Sure there is an occasional one that will direct you via their speech but 99% of them have nothing to say. There is no real story outside the ! and no real reason to interact with anyone without an icon. The amount of conversation you can have outside the ! is about zero. Something that makes the world feel like its there for show but not for interacting.

In addition to that, the exterior world is very pretty but there isn't hardly anything there outside of the ? and some random chests. Seriously, you have huge expanses of area that you can ride through, see nothing living, fight nothing do nothing except run run run. You might run into the occasional bear or dog pack. This is a dangerous world and you can run off the paths and rarely see a damn thing dangerous. In fact if it wasn't for the stamina regen on the horse the paths would be useless as there is no real danger from going off them for the most part.

The place you liberate are also the same bull shit copy and paste garbage of small village with a few buildings and 5 monsters sitting there. Big fucking deal. There are a couple of interesting ones where you'll delve under ground but those are few and far between. Many of those areas you pass on the main quests or actual side quests as well. Previous Witcher games made the world feel much more dangerous. This world is pretty.

Speaking of monsters, the number you fight is actually pretty small for the world size. That massive swamp has about 8 drowners in it and they will all be huddled near each other. There also isn't a ton of variety as you'll be fighting the same shit over and over for the most part. When something new comes it feels pretty special.

The help your bro's and ho's quests are very short. They spent a ton of time with filler in some of the most ridiculous ways and very little time with people you have interacted with for 2 other games already.

Being linear, you place a ton of stress on that huge open world and limit yourself in a big way. By having nothing outside the ! quests, all the interesting ones you'll do anyway, you also leave virtually nothing worth discovering for later playing.

While the story is outstanding their open world could of been much better.

Imo this is much more enjoyable than skyrim - the open world has lots to do and discover thats not listed on the map in any form.

X X E X X_sl said:

Imo this is much more enjoyable than skyrim - the open world has lots to do and discover thats not listed on the map in any form.

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I'd say they are completely different games that scratch different itches. I doubt I'll play witcher nearly as long as I did any of the single player elder scrolls or fall out games.

Good lord the game slowed down once I hit Novigrad. How long until I'm done with this shit?