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The Witcher 3 Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

hiver

Guest
Extremely praising preview from the German Gamestar, whose writer could play the complete game for two days. ("Among the best in my 33 years of gaming, we cried in the end"). Apparently, it's not three separate areas now, but only two (the whole continent and the isles). Regarding the aforementioned box quest: You could also follow the thief to the rebel camp. You can disable quest markers and even all hud elements, difficulty settings affect the mob AI, not the mob hit points. C&C wherever you go.
yeah the journalist really has a raging hard-on the whole preview long, also to mention:

-no hp bloat on higher difficulties, enemies deal more damage, have better AI (dodge better and more often) but take the same hits like in lower difficulties
-the quest everyone here was ranting about with the box you should retrieve, you can also follow the guy with some distance and he will lead you to his camp for example
-enemy combat behaviour really diversive and plausible
Ill believe it when i see it when it comes to Ai,

Nice to hear about that third option, but the quest is crappy like that, if you scratch its setup. Its probably done through quest compass senses, you know. But its should be maybe probably to just tag behind and follow the guy literally, unless he teleports.
Wonder if you can disrupt the range of following him and such stuff... is there any Ai reaction if you come too close and stuff like that. Wouldnt be surprised if you just had to move away a bit for it all to continue in that case.
But hey, well see.

I noticed that groups of enemies still attack individually most of the time,and wait while the other ally performs his attack. Yes Geralt jumps and moves a lot and fast in the fights but still, you rarely see two enemies swinging at once.


Is that fixed damage up there or DpS? 132.99 ?


...all the puns for those Yennefer quest lines....
 

odrzut

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The video is staged – a TW player / journalist would be rolling not just once, but all the time.

Yeah it just the fastest move AND it has invulnurable frames. They should just remove it and leave the rest of the evading moves.

There are giants in withcherland?

Sapkowski steal left and right, to explain it away he invented the "conjunction of spheres" - many universes connected to each other 500 years ago and everything moved to witcherland.

I don't remember giants from the books, but they would fit no problem.

ninja lesbian vampires from outer space
there were lesbian (or bisexual?) vampires, and they probably are from outer space (meaning - from other universe). I doubt they are ninja though.
 
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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
Sapkowski was an enthusiastic RPG player, he even wrote one of the first Polish RPGs Oko Yrrhdesa (Eye of Yrrhdes). The world in his book looks like a gritty custom DnD campaigns so it's not wrong to expect everything that would fit in your standard DnD world. One of his early stories even mentioned clerical magic, which is very rare outside of DnD itself. There was no trace of clerical magic in his later books though. He probably either forgot about it or tried to distance himself from DnD.
 

odrzut

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IMHO it's the difference between "natural religions" with real clerical magic and working rituals, like druids or melitele, or lady of the lake - and organised religions like the eternal fire - this kind of religion is more about ideology and institutions than about worshiping magical beings and performing miracles.
 
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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
IMHO it's the difference between "natural religions" with real clerical magic and working rituals, like druids or melitele, or lady of the lake - and organised religions like the eternal fire - this kind of religion is more about ideology and institutions than about worshiping magical beings and performing miracles.

The point is that he used the term "clerical magic" which very rarely appears outside of Dungeons and Dragons. The civilized races of The Witcher world are Humans, Elves, Half-Elves, Dwarfs, Halflings and Gnomes - all races from the DnD Player's Handbook, and nothing else. I don't remember right now, but after googling one of the monsters from the later books all I've got in restults were references to DnD. My point is that Witcher books are clearly DnD inspired so we can expect everything from the Monster Manual.
 

odrzut

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There is more civilised races in Sapkowski books. Right now I remember vrans, mermaids, doppelgangers, high vampires.
 
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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
There is more civilised races in Sapkowski books. Right now I remember vrans, mermaids, doppelgangers, high vampires.

By "civilized" I've meant having living in civilization, races you'd expect PCs, traders and bandits to belong to, DnD also has intelligent monsters like vampires, liches and ilithids. Vrans are long dead, the only high vampire in the Saga is a hermit, I don't really remember mermaids. The point is not that Sapkowski basically stole everything from DnD but that the saga is very inspired by DnD so things like Giants, Cyclops, Slimes etc. don't really clash with the feeling of the Witcher's world and should be expected in games. It's not like Witcher is low fantasy, it has talking, spellcasting dragons, planar travel and fireball spamming wizards - some of the most epic aspects of the Dungeons and Dragons.
 
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Project: Eternity
One of the new 4 images of today and its very.. very... i dont know

i think its a BIG spoiler

bqq5vie.jpg
I think it's
conjunction of spheres
 
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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
Probably, the Saga never dealt with the incoming catastrophe despite the fact that it was the main motivation behind Elves trying to get Ciri. Still - dealing with it would go against the cannon as it was still a pretty major issue generations after the end of the Saga.
 

Anthedon

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Got my eBay code as well, almost a 45% discount from the already discounted price on GoG. Thanks nVidia.
 

Perkel

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One of the new 4 images of today and its very.. very... i dont know

i think its a BIG spoiler

bqq5vie.jpg

Looks like Zericania or that desert where Ciri was. My bet is on second. As well it may be some dimentional traveling considering Ciri...
 

Perkel

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Sapkowski was an enthusiastic RPG player, he even wrote one of the first Polish RPGs Oko Yrrhdesa (Eye of Yrrhdes). The world in his book looks like a gritty custom DnD campaigns so it's not wrong to expect everything that would fit in your standard DnD world. One of his early stories even mentioned clerical magic, which is very rare outside of DnD itself. There was no trace of clerical magic in his later books though. He probably either forgot about it or tried to distance himself from DnD.

Well crux of sapkowski world is traditional fantasy world made real as it gets.
He takes most of tropes and puts them on head.

Virgins working with hunters to hunt unicorns trope - unicorns are extinct now, virgins quickly unvirgined themselves multiplied by years of celibacy, few of them ended up in best brothels.
Dude playing flute to catch mices ? - Poison soon was more effective, dudes became drunks and mostly nobodies.
Elves stoic, high culture, immortal - all of that stoicism is mask and under it they are same as humans. Since they lost war now they mostly starve and die of disease consumed by hatred.
Driads ? - brainwashed people ruled by autocrat.

By "civilized" I've meant having living in civilization, races you'd expect PCs, traders and bandits to belong to

you mean "playable races" Because even in DnD there are shit ton of races that trade/rape. Even mentioned Illithyds have proper cities, they trade and so on.
 

Paul_cz

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Four new interviews about the game incl. quest design:
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/witcher-3-wild-hunt-the-world-map-the-gameplay-and/1100-6426884/

GameSpot: Perhaps the biggest change that we've noticed between The Witcher 2 and Wild Hunt is how the quests are carried out. Obviously the main quest is still a major focus, but there seems to be so much more going on in the wider world.

How have you guys balanced the main quest with all of this extra stuff that's going on?

As with the previous games, we are very focused on the story line. On the story of Geralt, of Ciri, and Yennefer. At start of production, that was our main focus. But as we've developed the game we have designed side quest lines that were connected very strongly to the main story line.
As you progress through the main story, you can continue on and ignore the story lines of local places or important characters that you meet. You choice, between ignoring those or participating in them, can cause some consequences in the world as well.
And you will have choices throughout those quests. It was also very important for us, as with the previous games, to give players a variety of choices so that you feel like you're playing an established character with Geralt. But there's some degree of freedom in how Geralt behaves. What choices does he make, and how does he impact this world?
We also tried to avoid the black and white division of choices, just like in the previous games. For us it's more like you are in a tough situation and you have to manage somehow. You have to decide what Geralt would do in this situation if you were in his shoes.
Choosing the lesser of evils.
Exactly. The lesser of evils. Sometimes you will even feel that, "Okay, none of these solutions are good. What should I do?"
In one of the sidequests I played, there's a dwarf whose forge was burnt down. I hunted this guy down, the guy who committed it, and he's drunk. I put a spell on him and brought him back. And I thought, "Yeah, now the dwarf's going to give him a punch or something." But he had him hanged! I'm like "Holy shit!"
I wouldn't have done that if I knew that would happen.

Yeah. when we design quests and story lines, we always try to keep everything in the context of the world. Basically in this situation, this dwarf was inhabiting a village that was conquered by the Nilfgaard Empire, and they believe themselves to be very just. But their laws can be perceived as cruel by some. For burning someone's property, especially a dwarf that works for the Guardians, it's basically perceived as sabotage. Like military sabotage.

So, if you analyze it like this, this shouldn't be so surprising. But if you look at it from the human perspective, like you did, it might seem downright evil.
You talked about how the side quests don't feel like side quests. For instance Keira was helping me in the underground dungeon in one of the early-on quests. Then it finished, but she's like "Oh, can you help me with something?"
I could have just walked out, but I decided to help her. And when I helped her with this small riddle, it opened up a whole other quest.

Actually the thing you mentioned is another whole line of quests. It's not just a single quest. It's basically the story line of this character. Unraveling it can have consequences for the world. It can basically impact what will happen later on in the main story line. These side quests are intertwined with the main story line very strongly.
How many of those side quests are there in comparison to the ones in the main story?
I can roughly tell you the number of story lines. I think it's about 8 or 10, and each one of those has 3 side quests. Something like that.
Aside from that we have also normal side quests, which are totally not connected to the main story line.
When you complete the main quest, can you go back to some of those longer side branches, or will not doing them hurt you a lot for the main quest? How does all that work?
Okay, so we have the main story line and very important story branches. These branches end as you progress with the main story line, but there are also side quests, big side quests, that are not dependent on the main story line at all. Once you end the game you can continue playing those.
If you do not complete these side branches it also has an impact on the main story line. That's why you can't go back and change them, because then you would cheat the game.
For example, you mentioned this quest with a sorceress. If you ignore this side quests line, you will learn what happened to the sorceress in the main story line later. If it already happened to her, you can't go back and change that.

But, obviously, you can play the game again and change what would have happened if you had play differently.

Do all of them have impact on the main quest, or do some of them not really matter?

Branches connected to the main story line do have impact. Some of them have very, very big impact on the main story line and on the endings themselves.

We have three alternate endings and about 36 or more combinations of ending states for the world. The branches impact those very heavily.
 

J_C

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Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Fist fighting isn't QTE anymore. And it's possible to fist-fight against many oponents at once, and move around while doing it.


Does rolling have any effect on your stamina at all? Because I don't see it in the video. If not, I can't imagine why would they do it. Having a stamina mater ala Dark Souls, which would only allow 2-3 rolls would improve the combat a lot. Although I never resortad to constant rolling in TW2, I can see why does constant rolling annoy people.
 

Merlkir

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One of the new 4 images of today and its very.. very... i dont know

i think its a BIG spoiler

bqq5vie.jpg

Looks like Zericania or that desert where Ciri was. My bet is on second. As well it may be some dimentional traveling considering Ciri...

Yeah, Ciri even fights some weird creature whose description seems to fit the one on this pic.

She does?! Shiiiit, it's been a while since I read the books. I mostly remember her chasing the unicorn, eating skin cream and various lizards. :D
 

Perkel

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Guys you should read Gamespot interview with LEAD quest designer.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-the-side-quests-in-the-witcher-3-can-change-th/1100-6426897/

MAIN THINGS FROM INTERVIEW:

- Open world heavily inspired by Gothic and its exploration. Also like in Gothic world doesn't scale.
- Seems like there will be some individual handplaced loot that will be powerful (probably without scaling).
- Focus is on main questline like in previous games.
- They are going back to TW1 sidequests that will be mixed into main quest. Like for example what will happen in one side quest can have later impact on main quest. Not doing those sidequests naturally also will have impact.
He said that those outcomes sometimes can have very heavy impact on story.
- There will be self contained quests and unmarked quests that can leater lead to whole chain of side quests.
- Journalist interviewing designer told that he was doing some sidequest exploring some cave with one chick and when quest ended she asked him to go somewhere with her and there wasn't any quest associated with it, if pc does that it leads to whole chain of quests that have big impact on story.
- There will be few characters that will have their own chains of quests throughout the story that will also mix with main story having impact on it.
- Some unpredictable outcomes of quests (as per usuall in TW games), choosing sometimes lesser evil. Not focusing on what is right but more on ok i am in this situation what i would do (even if all outcomes are not right).
- There will be villages populated by mosters, clearing them out will make villagers to came back which leads to rewards such as equipment , shops etc. IT is also tied to exploration and some of those can have impact later in game. Finding hidden cave can neat your some rare ingredient, mutagen etc.
- There is small talk about Gwent some sort of card game that is by words of journo "bigger than heartstone". Probably some overexcited shitty journo. Still it says also that those cards you will be able to find, win etc . They did it because dice poker felt to random instead of having progression. So now when you will play with some dude who is supposed to be good he will be good. Confirmed tournaments and quests related to that game.
- You will play Ciri in multiple parts of story. Not only in prologue. Ciri abilities will grow over time of game. Players will be playing in self contained areas instead of open world.



Last part is interesting. We know that prologue will be connected past when Ciri was at Kaer Moren when Yennefer was there. If this thing he said is what i think it is we will be playing probably as her in various parts of TW novel saga.

I assume this is to show player who wtf she is and why players should care for her same as Yen which leads us probably to cutscenes from her life in books.
 
Last edited:

Anthedon

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Why loot level scaling is in I still don't understand. Especially when he mentions Gothic where you need a lot of str/dex to wield better weapons.
 

Perkel

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Why loot level scaling is in I still don't understand. Especially when he mentions Gothic where you need a lot of str/dex to wield better weapons.

Probably because there aren't any STR/DEX stats for witcher.

Bigger question is how levels will work. If it will be something like TW1 or TW2 where difference between lvls were mostly in skills not in stats then loot level scaling won't be such a problem.

Bigger thing is imo how weapon damage will work. If it will just better sword = better "DPS" and +1 level is difference between trash and good sword then this may blow. But if swords will be flattened in damage. Let's say lvl 1 sword does 100 damage and lvl 10 does 120 damage then it imo could work.

In other word it depends on implementation.
 

dragonul09

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Why loot level scaling is in I still don't understand. Especially when he mentions Gothic where you need a lot of str/dex to wield better weapons.

Oh come on dude,Geralt is a fucking witcher,they are trained to handle every weapon out there and are legendary for their proficiency with swords.They have the strength and agility of a monster and you tell me he can't handle a 15 inch sword because ''muh level requierement''.I think lool level scaling is necessary for this game because Geralt is not a beginner to be limited when it comes to handle new weapons.
 

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