meanwhile

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-11-06-ubisoft-details-the-crews-19-99-season-pass

comments less charitable ....

Based CD-Projekt is BASED!!! Gonna go buy something on GOG now as a thanks!

Delayed till May, perfectly happy with this too many games coming out st once, now I can enjoy Batman until Bloodborne is out and then move into Witcher.

Dear Gamers,
Ever since we started working on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt,
we knew it would be an ambitious game. We wanted, and
still aim, to give you an incredible experience, an epic
adventure in a vast, completely open fantasy universe.
The sheer size and complexity of The Witcher, key features
of the title, have had a decisive impact on production. Now,
nearing the end of our work, we see many details that need
to be corrected. When we release the most important game
in our studio’s history, we must be absolutely sure that we
did everything we could to limit any bugs to a level that will
allow you to enjoy the game thoroughly.
With this in mind, we took another look at current workloads
and what they mean for the team. Even though everyone is
working at full speed, we concluded that we need another 12
weeks, so we are shifting the release date of The Witcher 3:
Wild Hunt to May 19th, 2015.
We owe you an apology. We set the release date too hastily.
It’s a hard lesson, one to take to heart for the future. We
know what we want to do to make Wild Hunt one of the best
RPGs you will ever play. And we continue to work hard to
achieve just that. So, we apologize and ask for your trust.
Thank you for the all support you show us on a daily basis.
We truly do appreciate it. It has fueled us in our passion
since the start and will continue to do so.
The Board of CD PROJEKT SA

You do what you need to CD Projekt to avoid this day 1 patch BS that seems to be the norm this generation rather than the exception.

Yep disappointed that it is delayed again, but rather have a working game in May than one that works sometimes and needs endless patches to get it right.

For those that want their Witcher fix though, I saw an iOS game up based on some Witcher board game that has been released which in turn is based on the CD Projekt games and the original books.

Dammit... in some sense they're the one developer I'd trust to do the right thing and with games like Drive Club and Unity recently, they'd do well to be cautious.

I guess Feb will be will be reserved for Bloodborne now.

A member of that Board, Adam Kiciński, said a bit more talking to Polish financial journalists (CDPR is a public company) later that day.

"Gamers ..." he said (in a translation supplied by Eurogamer Poland), "took our decision very well. [The] market is afraid of badly polished games on next-gen platforms.

"There's a lot of small errors though, because the game is huge. It's the only reason behind the delay. We didn't assume it will be this big. Only after putting all the pieces together it turned out it's bigger than the two first put together. Let me remind you: it's open and not linear. We are just learning how to play it and we have to catch the little pieces. We know what to do, we just have to do it. We don't want to release the game with bugs that undermine the gameplay."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-12-10-witcher-3-dev-market-is-afraid-of-badly-polished-games-on-next-gen

Some fairly heavy system requirements for The Wild Hunt but looks like the min requirements aren't too bad (tho I always wonder how the developers define the "minimum" experience).

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-07-the-witcher-3-pc-system-requirements-revealed

This weekend there was a global hands-on preview event for game journalists so hopefully we'll see some detailed previews soon. What interests me is both the preview clip and "reddit" sessions suggest it may have been previewed on all available platforms (PC, Xbox One and PS4). The clip below shows plenty of Xbox One controllers, probably plugged into PCs, but also a few actual consoles.

The GoG site (CDProjekt's distribution platform) will also be doing a twitch stream this evening our time which will hopefully discuss a lot of new details - http://www.gog.com/news/the_witcher_wild_hunt_special_on_twitch

A preview from Eurogamer - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-26-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt

It's not filled of technical details but rather an overall impression of 4.5 hours of gameplay. From the description this'll definitely trump DA:Inquisition for me - a vast open world you can take time to enjoy rather than bloated with trivial 'checklist' quests. Just a pity we have to wait until May.

^ just read, looks fantastic ...

saw Namco Bandai's name there was was like huh ... but

POL cdp.pl
PAL Bandai Namco Games
CIS 1C Company
NA WB Games
JP Spike Chunsoft
SA Megarom Interactive

anyway pic for those who will not read ...

Polygon ... LOL they only got to play 3 hours ...

http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/26/7906065/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-first-three-hours-show-off-this-sequels-changed





The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is almost astoundingly bigger than past games. Tost tells me the game's full geography is "35 times larger than all the playable areas in The Witcher 2 combined." One zone later in the game, a series of islands called Skellige, is in and of itself bigger than the entirety of the last entry in the series.

If you just want to enjoy the story with minimal struggle, play it on easy. If you'd like something closer to the sometimes excruciating difficulty of the previous games, play it on hard. Normal difficulty, for the first time ever in the series, seems to strike a successful balance.

14 minutes gameplay

For those getting it on PC, what graphic cards do you have? Sorry if this was asked already.

yaazie said ...

For those getting it on PC, what graphic cards do you have? Sorry if this was asked already.

GT670, which is smack in the middle of min and recommended IIRC.

Hardest difficulty level will be Dark Mode. Not only does it up the challenge but fall in battle and there’s no reloading from the last checkpoint – you have to start the game again from the beginning.

That sounds fun

Don't think I died once playing the Witcher 2 so can't say it will be much of a challenge if you go by that, especially since the Witcher 2 is hailed as a difficult game for some reason.

This is what CD designer Webber said:

When asked where he would put The Witcher 3's "normal" difficulty setting on a chart, with Skyrim right down the bottom, and Dark Souls at the top, Webber told us it would be somewhere close to the middle. However, when asked about the game's punishingly difficult "dark" mode, well, he said that wasn't even on the same chart.

"Dark difficulty is something that many people in the company are very passionate about," said Webber. As well turning the difficulty up to its very highest setting, Dark difficulty also features permadeath. "[Many people] want a real challenge. If you die five minutes before the ending, it's over.

anyway I guess we will see

LOL'd at this though

"Normal should be a challenge," Webber explained, telling us that in most games, "normal is easy, and easy is - well, you can be on your phone while playing."

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/139751-The-Witcher-3-Will-be-Very-Difficult-CD-Projekt-Red-Doesnt-Mind

Perma death doesn't work and never will until we are in an online only world with online storage.

It's like Diablo 3 hardcore mode, people die and just reload their cloud storage save before it uploads. What's the point?

Hopefully a separate save file gets created that is completely locked and cannot be modified in anyway so that the people that put in the work actually earn it.