The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[bellow]

On 06/02/2022 at 13:20, bellow said:

I copped a cheap copy of the game on the Xbox deals page recently. I'm looking forward to a replay when the XSX update hits

 

So said I many months ago. And tonight I began my return to the world of Witcher 3. A bit previous you might say. The update doesn't land until Thursday. But I thought it would be fun to play out the opening 2 or 3 hours with the game in its original state.

 

And fun it's certainly been. I've fought ghosts and ghouls, quested, cast magic, made potions, oils and bombs, arrested an arsonist, brought a dozen deserters to heel - all in the first hour. The game certainly wastes no time getting going, something I'm extremely thankful for after my recent playthru if the torturously slow RDR2.

 

I'm up for it.

[Nag]

2 hours ago, bellow said:

The update doesn't land until Thursday.

 

It's out now, isn't it?

[bellow]

Have I got my dates wrong. I'll put my Xbox on and see what happens. I definitely didn't get it yesterday.

[bellow]

Mo'fecker! You're right, it's doing a 53 gig upgrade (which is strangely the size of the full game).

[one-armed dwarf]

It is incredibly demanding on PC, harder to run than Cyberpunk. Brutal, unplayable performance on a 3070 if you turn on RT, DLSS wont save you here. I couldn't figure out how to check VRAM usage but that's a suspect I think. I didn't even bother checking what RT shadows and RT reflections would be like, cause RTGI by it's own was so much (and you have to turn on GI before turning on the other two)

 

Maybe the terrain makes RT work a lot harder or something. I saw someone say that a lot of the foliage and trees and shit in an open world could be a greater challenge to process for RT's data structures than light bouncing around a city in Cyberpunk

 

Think running this with RTGI may be a strictly high end experience, if you have the VRAM and are ok with 30fps. Or you just happen to have a 4090 lying around

 

It does look very good though. I was really impressed by it, while holding in the urge to vomit from the constant image jumping and stutter. Witcher 3 still somehow manages to be one of the most impressive things to play on a PC

 

Steam wouldn't take screenshots for some reason so here's a video which shows what differences RTGI makes here, so much more cohesive

 

 

[bellow]

I'm not sure what I'm expecting on console. It's very smooth and crisp in it's original state and if it's just a case of tuning it up to 4k 60fps, I'm not sure I'm going to notice that much.

 

The thing I don't like a lot in the game certainly won't be addressed by a graphical update, and that's the 'lightness' of Geralt. There's not a lot of heft to his general movement, and he feels very light in combat. Of course that could still be a hangover from RDR2, which felt like moving around in treacle.

[one-armed dwarf]

For whatever reason when I played this game Geralt's movement made more sense on M&K than on controller. That doesn't seem intuitive, because Geralt basically has a similar combat system to Batman but with some cooldowns. Yet the way you space enemies and take your turn felt like it made a lot more sense with WASD and was also a lot more fun, but that is probably mostly a subjective thing. People say the combat in this game is 'bad' but it always just struck me as requiring a very deliberate approach in spite of the nimbleness of Geralt. A little bit of a Gothic touch, maybe, which the devs were apparently big fans of.

 

I'd like to give it another try at some point but with this update I might try and wait (again), I really liked how the visual upgrades looked but I just can't run it well.

[bellow]

Had a good go with the update. Graphics mode is not viable in my opinion, it's a judderfest on XSX. But on performance I'd say it's exactly what I was hoping for. Everything looks better, very current, in fact it's a lot like AC Valhalla If you ask me. And it's got a stable frame rate.

 

After the hour or so I had last night I'd say it was well worth the effort and a good time for a replay. (On console, anyway. It seems to me that PC gamers have need to hang on for a patch or 2).

 

[Nag]

Reckon I'll go for performance on PS5 when I get around to it... Ray tracing seems to be this console generations achilles heel and games would probably be better off without trying to force it.

[bellow]

Apart from the very high end of first party games I wouldn't be surprised if it was the Achilles heel of the next generation too.

[one-armed dwarf]

imo, I think RT is like the way 1080p was in the PS3 gen. 

 

The thing is tho, the basic idea is in the long run is it should make implementing lighting in games more easy than it currently is, so it should theoretically be of even more use with more budget constrained games also. But the hardware isn't ready yet

 

edit I think what frustrates me here is the RT solution isn't remotely scalable, and it feels like the promise of RT is becoming this moving target to get people to keep buying new hardware. That said, there's devs who implement it in much more highly scalable and impressive ways like the Metro Exodus people, so perhaps CDPR just fucked it up. Even Cyberpunk is more scalable.

[DANGERMAN]

It wasn't even appearing as an option to download for me on GOG last night. I'm kind of hoping that's because there's a new patch replacing this one that runs better 

[bellow]

This game has just improved by a whole 50%. I don't know if this is an update addition or it was done ages ago, but you can now turn off that horrible sick inducing fish eye effect for Witcher sensing.

 

I hated that so much back at launch it ruined my appreciation of the game. Now I can just focus on all the magnificent RPGing in the game, and stop worrying about being knocked sick every five minutes. Belter.

[bellow]

More or less exhausted the first area in this after a magnificent 45 hours. There's some high level quests and hunts left (and loads of Gwent quests that i avoid. I don't really like card games in real life, so I'm loathe to start doing it here), but the game has been asking me to move on in the main quest for ages. 

 

I'm not that sure the upgrade is all it's meant to be tho. I'm playing on performance mode, and while the game looks something on a par with AC Valhalla I'm not sure it's making 60fps. It certainly doesn't seem as smooth as some of the other games I've played in performance mode (which is basically everything on the XSX). It's not bad by any means, but a little jarring after a couple of years tuning my eyes to this new standard (can hardly bear to put on the Switch these days).

 

I'm enjoying this playthru a lot though, more than my first go when the game launched. I don't remember that much from the game, just occasional locations and story beats, so it's pretty fresh. What's made a big difference is the option to remove fish eye lensing from Witcher sensing. I hated that back in the day and remember doing nought but moan about it on games TM forum. And there's a lot of Witcher sensing to be done in this. More or less every quest. 

 

But I'm taking a bit of a break now to start Tales of Arise. Bloody decent RPGing start to 2023 for me😃

[one-armed dwarf]

Dunno if bellow is still on this one, or what kind of madness possessed him to spend 45 hours pottering around in White Orchard, if I got that right. But I'm making another attempt at going through it after my Cyberpunk return earlier in the year, figured I'd try and draw a line under Geralt's adventure too. But starting again from the start, this time on 'Death March'.

 

What I like about high difficulty levels in RPGs is they aren't really about skill at all, it's quite easy to execute what the game wants. But things like bestiary entries, enemy weakness, oils and potions, all of that becomes more important to study. It integrates the preparation aspect of being a witcher into the role playing fantasy in a more immersive way, cause if you ignore it then the enemies are tanky and kill you straight away. The game still feels pretty of its time in terms of gameplay with the boring batman combat but handles all elements outside of that pretty well. The questlines have more fun and interesting outcomes than Cyberpunk (which is no slouch in the writing department either, incredibly overlooked in that regard in fact), with some of the 'goody' options leading to more dour consequences than the 'mean, greedy bastard' ones. Which makes the world pretty convincing

 

The ray tracing update looks fine, I dunno. Not got a lot to say about it really other than it makes some of the more dated blemishes more cohesive now. It's a decent looking game without those blemishes. Anyway I want to really focus on the 'green' skill tree for Geralt and make him a potion junkie, and spend a few points here and there in the red and blue trees. You can respec apparently so no worries

[bellow]

I am indeed still playing, although I think I was talking about the main first area rather than that little bit at the beginning.

 

I think I'm well over 70 hours at this point, and I've had a fabulous adventure. As a game I would say I was slightly more inspired by Cyberpunk. That game had a freshness which a sword and sorcery RPG like the Witcher can't really offer the player at this point. It's still bloody great though.

 

I am on a break at the mo. I left off at what I remember being a rather pivotal moment in the plot and will resume when I've put my current GTA exertions to bed.

[one-armed dwarf]

It's a bit OT so I won't go too much into it, but while I think it gets an unfair rap for its story telling, when it comes to its setting I thought Cyberpunk was pretty toothless. The angle they could have went with the bodily augmentations and cyberpsychosis was a missed opportunity imo to really integrate that aspect into both story and gameplay. 

 

What Witcher 3 does really well I think is just let a setting tell its story, 2077 is a bit of a paper tiger in that respect. But the continent in Witcher tells and shows a story about occupation and ransacking a country, and the difficult deals people make to live with the aftermath of it, and that is also communicated really well by the consequences of the stories in some of the missions. It's just a very dark and fucked up world and feels properly filled out in a way 2077 doesn't really come close to. That said, it is the third game in a saga so CDPR had a lot of practice at figuring it out. I really should play Witcher 2 as well I think.

[bellow]

I allowed myself to become immersed in the Cyberpunk world because I was really enjoying the gameplay. I think that's the main thing for me. When you really love what the game is asking of you the world and it's stories become believable because you want them to be, even when the old 'suspension of disbelief' has to kick into overdrive. 

 

Not that I'm down on the Witcher 3. I love that too, but it has a certain annoyance for me in the gameplay department that was absent from Cyberpunk. Fucking Witcher sensing. Every fucking mission. 

 

Plus, I had a talking smart gun in Cyberpunk called Skippy. Surely that counts for something!

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

It's a shit gun that randomly spooges bullets, gorilla hands and shotty or gtfo.

 

Anyway sort of on topic, but not really, I went and ordered the Witcher novels off book depository cause it's shutting down, and I wanted to get something from them before that happens.

[bellow]

So, with @one-armed dwarf opening up the thread recently I decided to go back in, and went and wrapped up the main campaign earlier today, closing out with Geralt about level 38, which is rather high for the endgame. The final bosses keeled over easy, but I don't mind that. It's payoff for getting deep into the game and trying to see everything.

 

I feel I have to mention just how amazing the last few hours of this game are. It's a hell of a spectacle, possibly the greatest endgame in gaming. I had a great time playing it and, thankfully, I still have the 2 Dlcs to look forward to. I think I'll leave it for a good while, though. From what I remember those dlcs are pretty much a sizeable RPG in their own right when played together. They'll be nice to get into after Zelda.

 

Excellent playthru, and I hope they get back to this franchise sooner rather than later.