Hello and welcome to another episode of Crispy's Initial Impressions. This time we're going to be looking at a game that has caused Codex much consternation so far, CDPR's latest creation, the vaunted Witcher 3.
After many many months of anticipation on my part, the infamous downgrade in the graphics engine of Witcher 3 really put me off to it. I had known from the start when looking at all the initial (amazing) screenshots that something was too good to be true. I remember commenting and speculating about its unbelievable visual fidelity and specifically its amazingly open-world design (not just a large map, but what had appeared to be entire building interiors that had no visible hard entryways, thus giving the illusion of not requiring any loading screens for them) and secretly doubting they could pull it off. Well, I was right, although transitions to interiors seem like they're still pulled off smoothly and loaded in the background.
However, despite the huge hit the terrain, vegetation, textures and most other models used in the game took, Witcher 3 is still quite a beautiful game.
In contemplating whether or not to go ahead and buy the game on Steam, I read as much here on Codex about it as I could stand/stomach. More of a morbid curiosity at first -- so strong was my desire to skip the game entirely due to mostly butthurt over the graphics downgrade -- that I just jumped right in to its megathread and soaked in the hatred most seemed to be heaping upon it. And it does deserve quite a bit of it, but for other reasons which I'll touch on only somewhat below. What I kept hearing was that if anything, the game still looked good. Apparently its extremely detailed character models and its overall appearance was quite impressive even in its neutered state. So, after debating it for a while, and you know me -- weak-willed when it comes to shiny new popamolers -- I dove in.
I like the game. I do appreciate its beauty. The Witcher 3 has a pleasing, granular or natural look to it. Maybe not unlike Gothic in some ways, obviously much more detailed, but I think its best feature artistically is its consistency across the board. Geralt, although he moves like a recent stroke patient, is very well modeled as are all other major NPC's. The filler NPC's aren't so great, but they're not distractingly bad. Terrain is... realistic? There are well-done geographical features like believable bluffs, beaches, gulleys, escarpments, etc. Exploring, so far, is fun for us hiking sim fans. Playing with the minimap off, I'm almost overwhelmed by the size of the environment, and I intend on playing through the entire game that way. I'd rather rely on Geralt's Witcher sense to spot hidden enemies and my own basic sense of direction and reasonably well-developed powers of observation (along with the world map) to locate my objectives. Gives me the sensation that I'm not completely brain-dead playing a game like this, yet.
Performance is, as they say, a mixed bag. Witcher 3 requires some good amount of tweaking to wrestle into a sweet spot for fidelity/framerate nirvana. For me, adding in the SLI factor always makes things even more interesting. I spent basically a full day struggling to get the Nvidia driver that's required (352.86) to get a proper SLI profile in Witcher 3, just to stabilize. Lots of complaints on Nvidia's forums about this driver TDR'ing (crashing to desktop) all over the place. But I fought through it. Seems that a re-installation of it was necessary, even though I always do driver installs the "correct" way with a DriverSweeper cleaning in-between anyway. Don't overclock your GPU's when running this game; it's extremely sensitive to that and will crash within minutes, most people including myself are discovering.
But once I got the driver to calm down, once I got my two 760's scaling well in the game, and once I got all settings where I like them (more below), now I'm enjoying 1920x1200 at 60fps 95% of the time, dipping into the 50's only when in a village or extremely thick/detailed forest areas. Smooth framerate is important in any action game, which is what this game clearly is, so don't discount its importance. I can't imagine trying to get Geralt to roll, roll, roll his way to victory against some hapless bear at 30fps. The graphics whore in me would be appalled anyway.
I like:
- Textures and anything that has to do with the environment like Sharpness and terrain details at Ultra
- Grass density and Foliage distance I had to back down somewhat, at Medium or High
- Shadow quality I left at High, not Ultra. The shadows in this game generally look p. bad, no matter what setting they're at, but at Ultra there's a large enough performance hit to not bother. Further tweaking of the shadows settings in the user settings .ini file is something I may experiment more with, using Nvidia's decent Witcher 3 tweaking guide.
- Antialiasing off. I'd like to run with it on but it's too much of a strain. The game looks great at my resolution without it anyway, and I'd rather have the smoothness in framerate compared to some fuzzy AA. Further driver improvements and patches may allow for it later.
- Most of the post-processing features like DoF and the fish-eye thing I left on. They're nice-looking to me. I actually enjoy using Witcher sense and having that chromatic effect on. It doesn't hurt my framerate and it reminds me I'm in that view mode, although having it bound to right mouse button as a modal is reminder enough. *shrug*
- HairWorks is a joke. There's such a dramatic hit to performance that it's not even a question. There's also enough decent wind-blowing effects going on without it that I don't miss it at all. It might be nice to see it in action on certain creatures, but for just a few moments until I kill them? Forget it. I'll just LARP that Geralt and company all use some hairspray in the morning and that he waxes his beard.
As far as the gameplay itself, and I'll keep this brief as it's already been dissected thoroughly by the experts here at RPG Codex, I like some aspects of it and wince severely at others.
- The combat maneuvering is amazingly awkward. You're forced to try to tease single targets out of a group of them to take on one-on-one (which is much easier, obviously) than to dive into a group, which is what Geralt, especially at this stage of his career, should be able to do, because your targeting jumps all over the place when doing so. Locking on to a single target is suicide when taking on a group, particularly if you play on one of the harder difficulty settings. Against monsters I find myself just spam clicking, against bandits and the like if I can get them into a fencing match, there's some enjoyment there timing the ripostes and so forth. Still trying to get used to it.
- As mentioned, exploration is fun to this point. Could drastically change considering the size of the game. Others have commented (cursed) that the game gets repetitive, but I would imagine the seasoned hiker won't necessarily mind. I enjoy riding Roach; Night Goat was commenting earlier today that the horseback movement was done much better than the on-foot movement. I agree.
- Conversations and dealing with the denizens of the game are actually fun, but I fear this may devolve soon if/when I start running into more and more familiar-looking faces. I don't know yet if there's a lot of copy-pasting of the major NPC's. I hope not. Geralt's voice is pleasingly in-line with what I remember from the previous games. All other voice acting seems top-notch, at least in English.
- The interface, inventory screens, HUD, crafting screens, etc. seem plain, utilitarian. I hate the consolization, of course, but I'm numb to it by now so I deal with it. No way I'm going to hook up a controller. KB/mouse for me or just go ahead and bury me out back. At least with the 1.04 patch everything is re-mappable now.
I'll conclude in what must sound like typical fashion to my fans: For anyone still on the fence about Witcher 3, I think it's worth it. CDPR probably made, I grudgingly admit, the best choice when it comes strictly to doing what they had to do to make the performance of the game acceptable. I truly lament the loss of the amazing graphics that were advertised all those months ago, but if it were to have taken thousands in upgrades to get them playable, it would have been a fatal blow to their commitment, thin as it seems to be, to PC support.
If you're lucky enough to have a truly powerful gaming rig, you'll be quite pleased nonetheless. For Twitcher, if you get two out of the three needed to hit home -- that is, 1. Still-good-looking graphics, 2. Good to great NPC interaction and mood/feel, with missing out on 3. Good combat/gameplay -- you've still got an enjoyable game. Again, these are just initial impressions, but with a hiker like this one usually the first few hours will tell you whether it's worth it to spend the time tweaking the game and putting up with its flaws in order to wander around or not. Skyrim was generally worth it. Oblivion lost its hiking charm p. quickly although Shivering Isles brought it back somewhat. Risen 2, forget it. Witcher 3 has "it" but in some ways just barely. If Geralt's walking/running/jumping/climbing mechanic were cleaned and tightened up, brought more into line with the responsiveness/feeling of riding Roach is, it'd be a no-brainer. As it is, it's "good enough" for me.
All that, combined with what I hope holds up as an interesting story and environment, and I don't regret my Steam purchase of the game. Still, I kind of wish I'd have begged for a key for the game in the Giftstravaganza thread.
Yeah, like anyone would have given me one.
After many many months of anticipation on my part, the infamous downgrade in the graphics engine of Witcher 3 really put me off to it. I had known from the start when looking at all the initial (amazing) screenshots that something was too good to be true. I remember commenting and speculating about its unbelievable visual fidelity and specifically its amazingly open-world design (not just a large map, but what had appeared to be entire building interiors that had no visible hard entryways, thus giving the illusion of not requiring any loading screens for them) and secretly doubting they could pull it off. Well, I was right, although transitions to interiors seem like they're still pulled off smoothly and loaded in the background.
However, despite the huge hit the terrain, vegetation, textures and most other models used in the game took, Witcher 3 is still quite a beautiful game.
In contemplating whether or not to go ahead and buy the game on Steam, I read as much here on Codex about it as I could stand/stomach. More of a morbid curiosity at first -- so strong was my desire to skip the game entirely due to mostly butthurt over the graphics downgrade -- that I just jumped right in to its megathread and soaked in the hatred most seemed to be heaping upon it. And it does deserve quite a bit of it, but for other reasons which I'll touch on only somewhat below. What I kept hearing was that if anything, the game still looked good. Apparently its extremely detailed character models and its overall appearance was quite impressive even in its neutered state. So, after debating it for a while, and you know me -- weak-willed when it comes to shiny new popamolers -- I dove in.
I like the game. I do appreciate its beauty. The Witcher 3 has a pleasing, granular or natural look to it. Maybe not unlike Gothic in some ways, obviously much more detailed, but I think its best feature artistically is its consistency across the board. Geralt, although he moves like a recent stroke patient, is very well modeled as are all other major NPC's. The filler NPC's aren't so great, but they're not distractingly bad. Terrain is... realistic? There are well-done geographical features like believable bluffs, beaches, gulleys, escarpments, etc. Exploring, so far, is fun for us hiking sim fans. Playing with the minimap off, I'm almost overwhelmed by the size of the environment, and I intend on playing through the entire game that way. I'd rather rely on Geralt's Witcher sense to spot hidden enemies and my own basic sense of direction and reasonably well-developed powers of observation (along with the world map) to locate my objectives. Gives me the sensation that I'm not completely brain-dead playing a game like this, yet.
Performance is, as they say, a mixed bag. Witcher 3 requires some good amount of tweaking to wrestle into a sweet spot for fidelity/framerate nirvana. For me, adding in the SLI factor always makes things even more interesting. I spent basically a full day struggling to get the Nvidia driver that's required (352.86) to get a proper SLI profile in Witcher 3, just to stabilize. Lots of complaints on Nvidia's forums about this driver TDR'ing (crashing to desktop) all over the place. But I fought through it. Seems that a re-installation of it was necessary, even though I always do driver installs the "correct" way with a DriverSweeper cleaning in-between anyway. Don't overclock your GPU's when running this game; it's extremely sensitive to that and will crash within minutes, most people including myself are discovering.
But once I got the driver to calm down, once I got my two 760's scaling well in the game, and once I got all settings where I like them (more below), now I'm enjoying 1920x1200 at 60fps 95% of the time, dipping into the 50's only when in a village or extremely thick/detailed forest areas. Smooth framerate is important in any action game, which is what this game clearly is, so don't discount its importance. I can't imagine trying to get Geralt to roll, roll, roll his way to victory against some hapless bear at 30fps. The graphics whore in me would be appalled anyway.
I like:
- Textures and anything that has to do with the environment like Sharpness and terrain details at Ultra
- Grass density and Foliage distance I had to back down somewhat, at Medium or High
- Shadow quality I left at High, not Ultra. The shadows in this game generally look p. bad, no matter what setting they're at, but at Ultra there's a large enough performance hit to not bother. Further tweaking of the shadows settings in the user settings .ini file is something I may experiment more with, using Nvidia's decent Witcher 3 tweaking guide.
- Antialiasing off. I'd like to run with it on but it's too much of a strain. The game looks great at my resolution without it anyway, and I'd rather have the smoothness in framerate compared to some fuzzy AA. Further driver improvements and patches may allow for it later.
- Most of the post-processing features like DoF and the fish-eye thing I left on. They're nice-looking to me. I actually enjoy using Witcher sense and having that chromatic effect on. It doesn't hurt my framerate and it reminds me I'm in that view mode, although having it bound to right mouse button as a modal is reminder enough. *shrug*
- HairWorks is a joke. There's such a dramatic hit to performance that it's not even a question. There's also enough decent wind-blowing effects going on without it that I don't miss it at all. It might be nice to see it in action on certain creatures, but for just a few moments until I kill them? Forget it. I'll just LARP that Geralt and company all use some hairspray in the morning and that he waxes his beard.
As far as the gameplay itself, and I'll keep this brief as it's already been dissected thoroughly by the experts here at RPG Codex, I like some aspects of it and wince severely at others.
- The combat maneuvering is amazingly awkward. You're forced to try to tease single targets out of a group of them to take on one-on-one (which is much easier, obviously) than to dive into a group, which is what Geralt, especially at this stage of his career, should be able to do, because your targeting jumps all over the place when doing so. Locking on to a single target is suicide when taking on a group, particularly if you play on one of the harder difficulty settings. Against monsters I find myself just spam clicking, against bandits and the like if I can get them into a fencing match, there's some enjoyment there timing the ripostes and so forth. Still trying to get used to it.
- As mentioned, exploration is fun to this point. Could drastically change considering the size of the game. Others have commented (cursed) that the game gets repetitive, but I would imagine the seasoned hiker won't necessarily mind. I enjoy riding Roach; Night Goat was commenting earlier today that the horseback movement was done much better than the on-foot movement. I agree.
- Conversations and dealing with the denizens of the game are actually fun, but I fear this may devolve soon if/when I start running into more and more familiar-looking faces. I don't know yet if there's a lot of copy-pasting of the major NPC's. I hope not. Geralt's voice is pleasingly in-line with what I remember from the previous games. All other voice acting seems top-notch, at least in English.
- The interface, inventory screens, HUD, crafting screens, etc. seem plain, utilitarian. I hate the consolization, of course, but I'm numb to it by now so I deal with it. No way I'm going to hook up a controller. KB/mouse for me or just go ahead and bury me out back. At least with the 1.04 patch everything is re-mappable now.
I'll conclude in what must sound like typical fashion to my fans: For anyone still on the fence about Witcher 3, I think it's worth it. CDPR probably made, I grudgingly admit, the best choice when it comes strictly to doing what they had to do to make the performance of the game acceptable. I truly lament the loss of the amazing graphics that were advertised all those months ago, but if it were to have taken thousands in upgrades to get them playable, it would have been a fatal blow to their commitment, thin as it seems to be, to PC support.
If you're lucky enough to have a truly powerful gaming rig, you'll be quite pleased nonetheless. For Twitcher, if you get two out of the three needed to hit home -- that is, 1. Still-good-looking graphics, 2. Good to great NPC interaction and mood/feel, with missing out on 3. Good combat/gameplay -- you've still got an enjoyable game. Again, these are just initial impressions, but with a hiker like this one usually the first few hours will tell you whether it's worth it to spend the time tweaking the game and putting up with its flaws in order to wander around or not. Skyrim was generally worth it. Oblivion lost its hiking charm p. quickly although Shivering Isles brought it back somewhat. Risen 2, forget it. Witcher 3 has "it" but in some ways just barely. If Geralt's walking/running/jumping/climbing mechanic were cleaned and tightened up, brought more into line with the responsiveness/feeling of riding Roach is, it'd be a no-brainer. As it is, it's "good enough" for me.
All that, combined with what I hope holds up as an interesting story and environment, and I don't regret my Steam purchase of the game. Still, I kind of wish I'd have begged for a key for the game in the Giftstravaganza thread.
Yeah, like anyone would have given me one.
Last edited:
) slice of a city into 3D open-world RPG? It just wouldn't feel right.
