The Witcher 3 [PC, PS4, XBone] - Hearts of Stone - 13/10

[Sly Boots]

I know mate, just elaborating on points made earlier.

[Wrathbone]

Damn vampires, dey took our jerrrbs! Build a wall!

[Jez]

This is precisely why Witcher 3 has utterly destroyed other RPGs and games in general for me.

The story writing, voice acting and direction of the story elements just fucking kills anything else out there. Witcher 3 (and the other 2 games) is full of stuff like this. It's not sloppy, it's not a second thought (or worse) it's not hyped to shit high levels pre release then generic garbage on release.

It's just having a care about putting the right things as a priority during development and not pushing out the same old same old stuff. RPG should always be about the story and sadly the "big" players have forgotten that to varying degrees.

[Wrathbone]

I agree, and certain studios have misplaced their priorities (Bioware with trying to shoehorn multiplayer stuff into their games, for instance), but it's easy to underestimate exactly how difficult it is to create something as high quality as Witcher 3. It's an aberration - this is not the new standard which all RPGs can aspire to, because realistically they can't. CD Projeckt RED had a big budget, the right talent and - from what I can tell - a real, honest to god passion for what they were doing. Using Bioware as an example again, they definitely have the budget and they certainly have talent and a solid fan base, and while I'm sure there are people in that studio who are passionate about making their games masterpieces, I get the impression they're limited by the powers on high. They've gone too corporate, and corporate mindsets don't produce masterpieces. They produce good quality money-makers.

I'm rambling a bit but I think my point is that we can't expect every studio to make something as good as Witcher 3. It's not possible in most circumstances.

[Jez]

Dunno about the budget being massive think it was 70million. Yes I know that's enormous in terms of the reality of things. But I'd love to see how much your typical bioware/Bethesda or any of your generic games that top the charts cost in comparison like.

[Sly Boots]

Dunno about the budget being massive think it was 70million. Yes I know that's enormous in terms of the reality of things. But I'd love to see how much your typical bioware/Bethesda or any of your generic games that top the charts cost in comparison like.

Reckon it stretches a bit further in Poland

[Jez]

Money well spent either way can't wait to hear more about cyberpunk after the coffer swell with w3.

[Wrathbone]

Not sure about Bioware budgets but Skyrim's budget was very similar to W3's £52m budget.

[Jez]

Fair dues. Thought would be more in fairness to them. Still not a patch on w3 story effort and I'm not even touching the quality of voice acting for the vast part.

[Edwin]

On the B&W endings:

Spoiler: show

Keeping Syanna and Anna Henrietta alive is the most complicated ending. You need to use Regis's plan and enter the fairytale land (note: This path is a million times better than the unseen elder path), while there you need to talk to Syanna at every opportunity and find out about her motives without judging her too harshly. You need to win the ribbon in the gwent game, give it to Syanna and once you escape the fairytale land take her to Detlaff. She will disappear, you'll have to kill Detlaff then when you talk to Syanna in her cell you'll be able to talk her out of killing Anna Henrietta.

There is a third ending that lands Geralt in prison but I haven't tried it yet, although unlocking it seems simple enough (don't give Syanna the ribbon, let Detlaff kill her)

[Sly Boots]

Cool, tough to get ending ftw

[DjchunKfunK]

I disagree on your point about shoehorning mutliplayer in Wraithbone as the multiplayer in ME 3 was really good and the DA:I multiplayer was made by a different dedicated team. While I agree sometimes resources can be hived off the main project to get the multiplayer side done, in the case of Bioware that stuff is factored in from the start so I don't think it has any impact on the singleplayer side.

I do agree about EA having an impact on their work, the focus testing stuff that leaked before DA:I and then the again for ME: Andromeda shows that to be true.

[Wrathbone]

With ME3 it categorically had an effect on the singleplayer game as one of the endings was only feasibly achievable by playing the MP game (until the DLC, at least). I think it was possible to get the ending without MP if you did a very specific set of things through all three games, but that's no excuse. Hopefully they've learned from that, but I'd much rather they focused on their SP efforts in their RPGs than trying to tick MP boxes. It worries me what they're doing with Andromeda because there are hints that MP will (or can) have some impact on SP, and they haven't yet clarified how that works.

[Jez]

Not sure why they do this mixing the SP and MP like this. The vast audience for this are surely there for the Single player. I didn't even bother touching the MP in me3 despite knowing that it was apparently good and liking MP games in general.

[DjchunKfunK]

With ME3 it categorically had an effect on the singleplayer game as one of the endings was only feasibly achievable by playing the MP game (until the DLC, at least). I think it was possible to get the ending without MP if you did a very specific set of things through all three games, but that's no excuse. Hopefully they've learned from that, but I'd much rather they focused on their SP efforts in their RPGs than trying to tick MP boxes. It worries me what they're doing with Andromeda because there are hints that MP will (or can) have some impact on SP, and they haven't yet clarified how that works.

Well that's a different thing. I took it from your original post that you felt it took away from the base game. The decision to link multiplayer stuff to an outcome in the singleplayer was a strange decision, but considering the endings were all pretty naff, and not that different, it didn't really bother me.