The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - A night to remember (CGI Trailer)

@Scottie - awesome launch trailer. The potion goes back the first game when you could make your blood poisonous to blood drinkers. Looks like The Witcher 3 is going to ramp up the complexity of potions and crafting again, more in line with the first game.

Damn, thats a lot of nice stuff in there!

Miraculously, the Witcher 3 day one patch on both PS4 and Xbox One (and possibly PC) is being reported around the 500MB mark. First time in ages I'll actually be able to play a new game shortly after picking it up!

http://gearnuke.com/witcher-3-preload-live-ps4-day-1-patch-preload-download-size-revealed/

Popped the disk in and can confirm on PS4 the update is only 480MB - only a few MB more for XBox One apparently.

Collectors Edition is fantastic with the usual tokens, artbook, soundtrack but also an incredible statue. Unfortunately it comes at a vicious price.

Wow the CE is amazing. The Art Book is hefty, the medallion can kill someone, the steel case pretty, well pretty and that statue. It is huge, heavy and amazingly detailed. One small gripe is that the sword piece is very thin and flimsy.

However the best part is hat the inside of the box is signed by the entire dev team. A really nice surprise when you pop the lid

I'm enjoying it so far... I feel like I've barely dipped my toe into this game. I'm completely overwhelmed— I need my brown paper bag now... *wheeze*

Some quick impressions on The Witcher 3 having completed the first region of White Orchid:

Firstly the game looks incredible (playing on PS4). Sure it's not quite what they revealed a few year back but it manages to take the incredible scenes from the Witcher 2 and keep that quality in an open world setting. From roaming through a forest to exploring ruins and small villages, it's consistently beautiful. Only downsides would be texture filtering (you can see sometimes see texture and shadow resolution changing as you move) and a bit of pop-in when loading cutscenes or galloping through the world on your horse. Lighting can also look a bit bland during stormy conditions but running through a forest during sunset or a full moon is breathtaking. Overall any weaknesses in presentation take little away from the "feel" of the world. Presently the major downside is the day-one patch which causes cutscenes to stutter and this was quite obvious.

Gameplay-wise, they've gone for an intermediate between The Witcher 1 and 2. Player movement, traversal and combat is much the same as the Witcher 2 however there's now a much better lock-on, short doge move and many more combat animations. Unlike the previous games rolling and striking combat, you can now perform short dodges around and between opponents and strike back quickly without noticing any jarring animations changes. It really improves the feel of the combat. As positioning has always been important in Witcher games, combat is now quicker and deadlier for both the player and enemies. More so than previous games, The Witcher 3 focuses on the player being prepared - choosing the right potions, bombs, traps and blade oils can result in a tough fight being over in seconds. It's a satisfying feeling to have the preparation pay off.

Leveling, crafting and alchemy is much closer to the original Witcher game with multiple upgrade paths for each combat skill, magic sign and potion-type. There's dozens more ingredients and crafting components but it's well organised and they no longer bog down your inventory like the Witcher 2. You can now happily collect everything and ignore them until alchemy/crafting opportunities. What seems complex is eventually simplified as once you complete potion and bomb recipes, meditating will automatically restock your batch if you have the base component (alcohol/saltpeter).

Leveling involves accumulating ability points which can go to upgrading combat, signs, alchemy and general perks (which I haven't tried yet). As you level you unlock slots to place these upgraded skills in (4 sets of 3 slots, each with with an associated mutagen slot). Different abilities are colour-coded to mutagen-types which can be placed together in a set to enhance skills of the same colour (combat - red, signs - blue etc.). I'm not sure if there's a level-cap but this means you should focus on a few skills from each tree rather than trying to be a jack-of-all-trades.

The best thing about the game so far is the way it creates and fills the open world. There's breathing room between objectives and exploration markers, not just an endless string of junk to tick off as you go. You'll explore river beds, swamps, canyons and mountain paths on the way to objectives or points of interest, possibly coming along unmarked encounters or treasures as you go. CDPR excels at making the world feel more real and alive than any other open-world game I've played to date. The open-world setting does mean more barely interactive NPCs filling some spaces but it does little to distract from the overall feeling.

The amount of customization in both the HUD and map is incredible allowing you to turn on or off just about everything you can think of allowing the player to tailor their experience. Effects like losing health, running out of breath and horse stamina is all represented in game by a visual or sound effect, so in theory you could disable your entire HUD and play that way if you're attentive.

I'm really enjoying it so far and if you've enjoyed the previous game/s, they've managed to capture the same strong narrative experience in an open world while upping the complexity of the gameplay mechanics.

@Lurch did you have an insane load time on start up? A friend who bought this version said that it took 15 mins or so for the game to start from the initial loading screen.

Magius said ...

@Lurch did you have an insane load time on start up? A friend who bought this version said that it took 15 mins or so for the game to start from the initial loading screen.

Didn't notice any issues on my side. I stuck in the disk and just left the PS4 for about an hour to finish installing to the HDD and download/install the patch. So far, the load times range between 5-15 seconds - longest if you've died/reloaded, shortest if you're just fast-travelling.

@Lurch just read an article on LAGZ and yep they report some PS4 owners have had his problem, though noone is sure why. As usual the PC version seems to be the one most prone to crashes, but again that is normal given the multitude of hardware configs out there.

Magius said ...

@Lurch just read an article on LAGZ and yep they report some PS4 owners have had his problem, though noone is sure why. As usual the PC version seems to be the one most prone to crashes, but again that is normal given the multitude of hardware configs out there.

You say that, but within 30 min of play you get to a tutorial on the card game ""Gwent". Every time I wanted to "pass" my turn, it would crash to the PS4 OS. Apparently this is also a known bug.

However, after about 6-ish hours of play, that was the only crash. Only other occasional issue seems to be your damn horse getting stuck behind trees if you summon him.

Lurch said ...

Magius said ...

@Lurch just read an article on LAGZ and yep they report some PS4 owners have had his problem, though noone is sure why. As usual the PC version seems to be the one most prone to crashes, but again that is normal given the multitude of hardware configs out there.

You say that, but within 30 min of play you get to a tutorial on the card game ""Gwent". Every time I wanted to "pass" my turn, it would crash to the PS4 OS. Apparently this is also a known bug.

However, after about 6-ish hours of play, that was the only crash. Only other occasional issue seems to be your damn horse getting stuck behind trees if you summon him.

Yeah the article mentions that bug as well. A bit worrying that there are these bugs on a standardised system given that the game was delayed for so long. I know that you will never, ever squash all the bugs pre-release, but these two seem common enough that they should've been picked up...

My horse got stuck in a house when I summoned him. He had been behind me, but I was lazy and called him... he teleported into a house, and got stuck in the doorway. It was absolutely brilliant. Still the only issue I've had.

Mr Hat Thing said ...

My horse got stuck in a house when I summoned him. He had been behind me, but I was lazy and called him... he teleported into a house, and got stuck in the doorway. It was absolutely brilliant. Still the only issue I've had.

My best one so far is one of the finishing moves after combat -

Normally Geralt strikes an opponent on the leg (dropping them lower), then swings back across the neck decapitating them. Normally the body drops and head flies off but sometimes the physics goes wrong and the head just drops and the body goes flying off.

That's not one I've seen... glitches can be fun provided they don't get in the way.

Neglecting sleep, I've put another dozen or so hours into The Witcher 3 and currently exploring the major landmass of Valen. The lack of level-scaling can be quite brutal if don't save frequently but makes exploration both dangerous and rewarding if you can defeat a higher level opponent.

Having restarted a campaign and playing a little more, I'm starting to notice one or two things... the texture thing is slightly annoying, even working its way into the cut scenes.

This game is bigger than the time I've had for it.

Lurch said ...

Neglecting sleep, I've put another dozen or so hours into The Witcher 3 and currently exploring the major landmass of Valen. The lack of level-scaling can be quite brutal if don't save frequently but makes exploration both dangerous and rewarding if you can defeat a higher level opponent.

Saw review that said that this is the first RPG in a long time time that doesn't require grinding. Good prep can help you take down a much higher level enemy.