Help! I despise huge open world games, but I want to experience TW3!

[J_C]

So, as you can see in the title, I fucking hate huge open world games. They become boring and a chore for me after a while. When I say huge open world games I think about games like Oblivion, Skyrim, GTA4-5 and it seems The Witcher 3. I don't like open world games in general, although there were a few exceptions.

Namely, Gothic 1-2, Sleeping Dogs, GTA Vice City, Might and Magic 6-7-8, The Witcher 2, Fallout New Vegas. What these have in common is that although they are open world (or semi-open world with linear parts like TW2), they are not mindblowingly huge. They are not littered with stupid quests, you don't have to collect a lot of shit, they don't bloated crafting systems (except New Vegas), they are a more tighter experience, despite being open world.

Now I always liked The Witcher series, and I was waiting for the 3rd one very much. But when I heared the news about it being bigger than Skyrim I thought to myself, Jesus, why does everybody think that this is a good thing? That's awful!

So, I started the game of course after release, and I liked it a lot initially. Combat is OK, artstyle is great, story is great, atmosphere is great. No man's land was great. Then I arrived to Velen, opened the map, zoomed out, and then......and then I thought, no no no NO NO, I won't be able to finish this.

I am doing quest, fighting monsters, dying a lot (on Blood difficulty), and it is already wearing me down, and I only discovered about 10% of the map. And I already played at least 20 hours. All those cinematics in converstaions just add to the fire.

But I'm interested in seeing how the game plays out. What should I do? Lower the difficulty and run through the main path? But wouldn't that cheapen the experience, and wouldn't I miss out on the great sidequests? What would you guys do?

 

[Ludo Lense]

Probably not your style of game from what you described. Witcher 3 advertised itself pretty honestly in this regard. 90% of this game is kill quests with interesting dressing, I enjoyed it and The Witcher really does seem like a setting where the detective vision fits. The combat is bad in almost all regards anyway so feel free to lower it to the lowest setting of difficulty. Keep to the main quest and do some side quests when you are under the recommended level. (You should always do the side quests given by important NPCs btw).

 

[Makabb]

They are not open world games, they are games with a 1 big level, witcher 3 got 3-4 big levels. Consider them as such, it's all in your mentality !

 

[J_C]

Probably not your style of game from what you described. Witcher 3 advertised itself pretty honestly in this regard. 90% of this game is kill quests with interesting dressing, I enjoyed it and The Witcher really does seem like a setting where the detective vision fits. The combat is bad in almost all regards anyway so feel free to lower it to the lowest setting of difficulty. Keep to the main quest and do some side quests when you are under the recommended level. (You should always do the side quests given by important NPCs btw).

Yeah, I started doing that right now. I just feel pretty stupid playing it at the lowest setting. I'm like those we are laughing at, who are playing Mass Effect on the Just the Story difficulty. Oh how low I have fallen.

 

[Perkel]

TW3 open world feels more properly realized that 99% of "closed" world out there.
It's not Oblivion/Skyrim design where you have every 5m cave. Or AC design where you have shit ton of filler crap.

There is absolute shit ton of fully realized quests with good C&C. So for me open world is basically background for questing not game itself.

 

[Carrion]

I think one thing that TW3 does a lot better than most open-world games is that many of its quests are local, and it doesn't use the size of the map to unnecessarily pad out the game by making the player travel from one side of the map to another all the time, excluding treasure hunts and some small quests that you might as well skip or just leave on hold until you happen to be in the area. Also, even though Velen is a huge area, it's actually very easy to get around even without fast travel, as you can almost always take shortcuts and get to your destination within minutes. Skellige is the only place where you'll probably spend a lot of time travelling, as the distances are generally a bit longer, there are more natural barriers and boats are slower than horses.

Anyway, the game doesn't really require you to go full completionist, or even explore a whole lot at all. You might as well just follow the main quest, visit a town only if you're in the vicinity or have an actual reason to go there, and it doesn't play that differently from TW2 aside from having a larger scope. You probably won't even be that underleveled if you just follow the main quest and do the occasional side quest every once in a while. It is a huge game, though, and it'll probably take a long time to finish even if you ignore half of the content.

 

[Roguey]

Say no to completionism and only do sidequests with an interesting hook. Don't go to any locations unless they're a part of a quest you're on.

That's how I handled Skyrim to avoid burnout.

 

[dragonul09]

Just don't roam dude,you won't find anything interesting outside the vilage/contracts and side quests.You will rarely find a lousy encounter here and there but beside that everything is just copy pasted landscape and the same shitty monsters that guards a supposed ''hidden treasure''.


The game is big in size but the actual content is on par with The Witcher 2 and 1.This game should have a world like Gothic 1-2,Risen where every inch of the map actualy matters but instead they went for the Skyrim/Fallout 3 crowd,where wandering like a retard and collecting tons of worthless loot is the new shit.

Like yourself,i got bored by the time i got in Novigrad,if the game didn't had fast travel i would have quited the moment i got to Velen.

 

[AetherVagrant]

What everyone said, if you arent an rpg noob, you can mostly skip side quests and stick to the main story components and anything *extra* special that grabs your attention. and many of the quest wind up having a very different approach to solving or very unexpected outcomes. Playing more like an adventure game is totally doable and cuts the sense of repetition/grinding.

 

[rezaf]

TW3 open world feels more properly realized that 99% of "closed" world out there.
It's not Oblivion/Skyrim design where you have every 5m cave. Or AC design where you have shit ton of filler crap.

Everyone seems to be raving about this, but I just fail to see it that way.
I haven't played enough yet to talk much about your last paragraph, chances are there are a ton of good quests, but the open world DOES consist of a shit ton of filler crap.
On the first map, not so much, but the second consists mainly of "empty" villages, populated by nondescript peasants who you can't converse with, sometimes accompanied by one or two generic merchants who have "let's trade", "let's play cards" and "bye" as their only lines. There's large stretches of Oblivion-style empty land and exploring is generally not rewarded. A great deal of "special encounters" are boring copypaste affairs.

Granted, TW3 is more realistic when it comes to dungeons - in that there hardly are any dungeons, as in the real world - but other than that, it's just another open world game in which the open world is too big for it's own good.

 

[Perkel]

TW3 open world feels more properly realized that 99% of "closed" world out there.
It's not Oblivion/Skyrim design where you have every 5m cave. Or AC design where you have shit ton of filler crap.

On the first map, not so much, but the second consists mainly of "empty" villages, populated by nondescript peasants who you can't converse with, sometimes accompanied by one or two generic merchants who have "let's trade", "let's play cards" and "bye" as their only lines. There's large stretches of Oblivion-style empty land and exploring is generally not rewarded. A great deal of "special encounters" are boring copypaste affairs.

That is the point actually. I love that most of NPC don't have this "let me tell you history of my life" dialog tree.
Like i said open world in TW3 is on background not in foreground.

For example near Novigad there is village. In that village people talk about one chick with cats and how she is crazy or something because she was adventurer. You can hear it in several places. You can find that house and her diary and start a quest.

 

[J_C]

TW3 open world feels more properly realized that 99% of "closed" world out there.
It's not Oblivion/Skyrim design where you have every 5m cave. Or AC design where you have shit ton of filler crap.

There is absolute shit ton of fully realized quests with good C&C. So for me open world is basically background for questing not game itself.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that the open world design is very well realised. It's just that I don't like the huge open world concept in itself, yet i'm interested in the story and quests. This conflict is hard to swallow for me.

I will finish the game of course, but as other suggested I will roam less and won't try to be a completionist. Which is not easy since I was always like that in RPGs. :D It is burned in my muscles.

 

[rezaf]

That is the point actually. I love that most of NPC don't have this "let me tell you history of my life" dialog tree.

Well, pretty fine line to tread, ain't it? Tons of people you can talk to but none of which have anything useful to say aren't that hot - greetings from Daggerfall - but are tons of people who have nothing to say period and repeat the same stupid banter over and over and over again really better?

Maybe there's a few jewels in the mud here and there ala the cat story you describe, but by and large ... one example, everytime I pass by a Nilfgardian, I seem to hear that remark about local women bathing only every three months or whatever.
In my book, the no-story-content<->story-content ratio in TW3's open world is fairly unfavorable.

 

[made]

I feel sorry for you not being able to enjoy fun games.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Just do the main quest and important NPCs side quests? Some contracts are good to and they are not that long.

Most of the POI s rubbish imo so you won't be missing much. Especially at Skellige sea %90 of them POIs consist of diving in water&getting thrash loot while battling dozens of cliff racers sirens.

 

[Carrion]

Granted, TW3 is more realistic when it comes to dungeons - in that there hardly are any dungeons, as in the real world - but other than that, it's just another open world game in which the open world is too big for it's own good.

I don't think it's too big for its own good, it's actually pretty much the right size. It's big enough to portray the right sense of scope without being so huge that it would become detrimental to gameplay. Their biggest achievement is probably Novigrad, which doesn't quite live up to the whole "biggest city in the world thing", but which nonetheless manages to feel like an actual city rather than an abstraction or a compressed version of one (first open-world fantasy game since Daggerfall to do so?), complete with proper outskirts and fields that actually seem large enough to support the whole city, rather than just being some flat 100-square-metre spot with a couple of plants sticking out of it like in every other game out there. I think that is where the whole realism aspect comes to play, and the world is also very consistent to avoid the "amusement park" feel while still having tons of unique locations.

I do agree that there could be more NPCs to talk to, though. One or two flavor NPCs with proper dialogue trees in each town would be nice, as even the innkeeps usually don't have anything to say about anything. Aside from quest characters, your old friends (who themselves are pretty much always quest characters) and different types of merchants, there's not really anyone to talk to, which makes it easy to just mindlessly roam from place to place without even bothering to try to talk to anyone. The amount of interesting NPCs probably isn't any lower than in the previous games, but it of course feels a bit different when all those characters are spread around the map rather than all being in the same small area so that you run into them all the time. That being said, the game does a good job telling some stories without any forced exposition, which makes many locations feel unique even if all they contain is just one or two minor quests.

 

[rezaf]

I don't think it's too big for its own good, it's actually pretty much the right size. It's big enough to portray the right sense of scope without being so huge that it would become detrimental to gameplay.

You say that but then go on describing the lifelessness of it all. What good does it bring to have a realistic amount of fields surrounding a city (I'm taking your word for it since I'm not there yet) if it's just scenery you're forced to traverse (of course you can always fast-travel)?
An open-world game should give you stuff to do in said world, or making the game open is totally pointless.
You'd lose almost nothing in TW3 if the quests were more concentrated into quest-hub villages and leaving those would present you with the world map where you could only travel to a specific location or another quest-hub.
The fields and villages would be only pics on the map, but since there's nothing in them worth mentioning, why have them in the first place?
To me, that's the very definition of filler content.

I agree there's probably plenty of content in the game, but with the huge open world approach, it feels - to quote good old Bilbo Baggins - sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.

 

[Doktor Best]

I dont think the "openworld" gets in the way of the storytelling as its not as distractive as other games if you turn off the POI markers. Its more like a bigger set piece for the storytelling to go on in and i think it adds to the game.

 

[Perkel]

TW3 open world feels more properly realized that 99% of "closed" world out there.
It's not Oblivion/Skyrim design where you have every 5m cave. Or AC design where you have shit ton of filler crap.

There is absolute shit ton of fully realized quests with good C&C. So for me open world is basically background for questing not game itself.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that the open world design is very well realised. It's just that I don't like the huge open world concept in itself, yet i'm interested in the story and quests. This conflict is hard to swallow for me.

What conflict ?

World is as i said background instead of foreground. You can explore areas but most ot the time you won't find anything unless you first gathered knowledge about some places or it is connected to quest.

In TW3 ow works like this:

get quests from dude which is fully realized --> find place --> finish quest.

Where in Oblivion or other types of ow
explore some random cave -- > wow note HISTORY WOWZA ! -- > random chest with final note
explore random cave --> random mobs --> random reward.

TW3 world is much more connected to Gothic style OW where each place has something behind it but most of the time you want to first start quest before. OW in Gothic also works as background that connects places and gives you this feeling that word isn't consisted of several stitched up areas but is one thing that has design behind it.

It especially goes well with Witcher mentality where he wants to earn gold not swim in swamp looking for some rotten loot or fight monsters probono.

 

[J_C]

TW3 open world feels more properly realized that 99% of "closed" world out there.
It's not Oblivion/Skyrim design where you have every 5m cave. Or AC design where you have shit ton of filler crap.

There is absolute shit ton of fully realized quests with good C&C. So for me open world is basically background for questing not game itself.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that the open world design is very well realised. It's just that I don't like the huge open world concept in itself, yet i'm interested in the story and quests. This conflict is hard to swallow for me.

What conflict ?

World is as i said background instead of foreground. You can explore areas but most ot the time you won't find anything unless you first gathered knowledge about some places or it is connected to quest.

In TW3 ow works like this:

get quests from dude which is fully realized --> find place --> finish quest.

Where in Oblivion or other types of ow
explore some random cave -- > wow note HISTORY WOWZA ! -- > random chest with final note
explore random cave --> random mobs --> random reward.

TW3 world is much more connected to Gothic style OW where each place has something behind it but most of the time you want to first start quest before. OW in Gothic also works as background that connects places and gives you this feeling that word isn't consisted of several stitched up areas but is one thing that has design behind it.

It especially goes well with Witcher mentality where he wants to earn gold not swim in swamp looking for some rotten loot or fight monsters probono.

The conflict is that I hate open world games which are this huge because there is an OCD and completionist inside me, which makes me explore every bit of the map, to find every quest and hidden area. So I don't really want to play a game like this, because it feels like a chore. But on the other hand, I like every other aspect of the game, so I want to play it. That's the conflict.

But, as others and you have said before me, I will try to surpress the completionist inside me and play it in another way, not combing the forrests after every small shit.

 

[rezaf]

Wasn't there a TNG episode where they disabled a borg cube by installing TW3 and instructing the drones to collect all plants in the game?

 

[Perkel]

TW3 open world feels more properly realized that 99% of "closed" world out there.
It's not Oblivion/Skyrim design where you have every 5m cave. Or AC design where you have shit ton of filler crap.

There is absolute shit ton of fully realized quests with good C&C. So for me open world is basically background for questing not game itself.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that the open world design is very well realised. It's just that I don't like the huge open world concept in itself, yet i'm interested in the story and quests. This conflict is hard to swallow for me.

What conflict ?

World is as i said background instead of foreground. You can explore areas but most ot the time you won't find anything unless you first gathered knowledge about some places or it is connected to quest.

In TW3 ow works like this:

get quests from dude which is fully realized --> find place --> finish quest.

Where in Oblivion or other types of ow
explore some random cave -- > wow note HISTORY WOWZA ! -- > random chest with final note
explore random cave --> random mobs --> random reward.

TW3 world is much more connected to Gothic style OW where each place has something behind it but most of the time you want to first start quest before. OW in Gothic also works as background that connects places and gives you this feeling that word isn't consisted of several stitched up areas but is one thing that has design behind it.

It especially goes well with Witcher mentality where he wants to earn gold not swim in swamp looking for some rotten loot or fight monsters probono.

The conflict is that I hate open world games which are this huge because there is an OCD and completionist inside me, which makes me explore every bit of the map, to find every quest and hidden area. So I don't really want to play a game like this, because it feels like a chore. But on the other hand, I like every other aspect of the game, so I want to play it. That's the conflict.

But, as others and you have said before me, I will try to surpress the completionist inside me and play it in another way, not combing the forrests after every small shit.

Switch off Ponts of Interest in hud menu. IT helps. A LOT.

 

[J_C]

TW3 open world feels more properly realized that 99% of "closed" world out there.
It's not Oblivion/Skyrim design where you have every 5m cave. Or AC design where you have shit ton of filler crap.

There is absolute shit ton of fully realized quests with good C&C. So for me open world is basically background for questing not game itself.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that the open world design is very well realised. It's just that I don't like the huge open world concept in itself, yet i'm interested in the story and quests. This conflict is hard to swallow for me.

What conflict ?

World is as i said background instead of foreground. You can explore areas but most ot the time you won't find anything unless you first gathered knowledge about some places or it is connected to quest.

In TW3 ow works like this:

get quests from dude which is fully realized --> find place --> finish quest.

Where in Oblivion or other types of ow
explore some random cave -- > wow note HISTORY WOWZA ! -- > random chest with final note
explore random cave --> random mobs --> random reward.

TW3 world is much more connected to Gothic style OW where each place has something behind it but most of the time you want to first start quest before. OW in Gothic also works as background that connects places and gives you this feeling that word isn't consisted of several stitched up areas but is one thing that has design behind it.

It especially goes well with Witcher mentality where he wants to earn gold not swim in swamp looking for some rotten loot or fight monsters probono.

The conflict is that I hate open world games which are this huge because there is an OCD and completionist inside me, which makes me explore every bit of the map, to find every quest and hidden area. So I don't really want to play a game like this, because it feels like a chore. But on the other hand, I like every other aspect of the game, so I want to play it. That's the conflict.

But, as others and you have said before me, I will try to surpress the completionist inside me and play it in another way, not combing the forrests after every small shit.

Switch off Ponts of Interest in hud menu. IT helps. A LOT.

Yeah I did. But in my brain I know there are POIs out there, so I am forced to discover them on my own. Yeah, I'm a clinical case.

 

[Carrion]

You say that but then go on describing the lifelessness of it all.

It's not lifeless, really, most of the life just goes on without any input from the player. What I'm asking for is mostly fluff, characters you can just talk to without no real purpose. Now the game is very heavily focused on quests, and a lot of the exposition comes in the way of eavesdropping on other people's conversations.

What good does it bring to have a realistic amount of fields surrounding a city (I'm taking your word for it since I'm not there yet) if it's just scenery you're forced to traverse (of course you can always fast-travel)?

Dunno, I kind of hate the crammed-to-the-full open worlds where cities are within a five-minute walk from each other and there's a dungeon between every corner. TW3's world actually feels like it breathes a bit and has somewhat believeable proportions, especially the Novigrad area, yet I don't think it has any more filler than other open-world games. The distances might be longer, but there's not that much backtracking and moving around is fast, and I don't even use fast travel.

You'd lose almost nothing in TW3 if the quests were more concentrated into quest-hub villages and leaving those would present you with the world map where you could only travel to a specific location or another quest-hub.

Yeah, they probably could've done something like that. It's a well-crafted game world, but the open-world free roaming sometimes clashes with the story, and the game does often play a lot like TW1 or TW2, except just on a much bigger map.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Zep--