The Witcher 3.... Why is it so popular??

Hi all - Just looking for some opinions from people that love the Witcher franchise and people that are like me and are new to it.

I got a code for Witcher 3 with a new GPU I purchased a few months back so was looking forward to playing it after the reviews it received and the all mighty hype train that followed the game. I never played the witcher 1/2 but made sure I wasn't totally clueless by reading up the "must knows" and watching a few recap vids on you tube,

So i played 2/3 hours last night of the Witcher 3, and personally, what is the big attraction? Yeah it looks pretty and the combat mechanics are good, but the story etc from what I know just doesn't seem that interesting? Like its a load of..... nothing with no big climaxes?

Compare the Witcher to Shadow of Modor for example, Shadow of Mordor is a clear winner, in MY opinion.

Thoughts?

it's an open world game with 60+ of gameplay and you want big climaxes after 2-3 hours of playing it? Witcher world is huge, and this is open world with emphasis on exploration with many self contained stories, some good, some not that good, but main story should be quite long.

I'm not expecting anything after 2/3 hours to be honest, but after watching the recaps etc, there seems to be nothing major that has happened?

2-3 hours? That's like not even taking off the shrink wrap. Put in more time.

AAA titles are becoming increasingly staggered in release due to the necessity of longer developer cycles and are increasingly released with extremely noticeable technical problems. People are excited about the Witcher 3 because it's an open world next generation title with high production values and it's from a developer that people put their trust into releasing a finish product.

i haven't played much of the 3rd one yet, but i enjoyed a lot the previous one and i do think a lot has happened, don't know why you would get this idea, anyway the game is hard to get invested to for many people, but i personally think it is worth it.

2-3 hours in huge open world game like W3 is not enough time

As other people have mentioned you're going to have to put a lot more then 2 to 3 hours in.

If W3 was a liner game I would understand your complaints after 2-3 hrs of playing. But it's a BIG open world game, you gotta explore and make your own story.

The simple answer is the media told "us" to look at it and like it.

As mentioned, big RPGs with a 60+ hour experience tend to take the first few hours introducing you to the world and the game mechanics before they really open up and let you loose on the full game. The Witcher games specifically are big and complex games (even before the move to open world with number 3) that give the player a remarkable amount of narrative choice based on their actions. Some of the consequence of choice that you encounter in the Witcher games is on par with the sort of stuff you'd find in the Telltale adventure games, but wrapped up in a huge action RPG.

For example, (no story spoilers) in Witcher 1's second act there is a murder mystery that you have to try to solve. The game doesn't tell you who did it as you progress through the mission; you have to decide that for yourself. Whether or not you are even presented with the option to accuse the correct person is determined by how well you investigate, what your character learns, what research your character does on things like autopsy and poisons, etc. The game will absolutely let you progress having accussed the wrong person and you don't find out you were wrong until later. That one mission is on par with the kind of stuff you'd see in a Sherlock Holmes game.

In Witcher 2, there is a choice that happens about a third of the way through the game that just gets dropped on you in the middle of a battle and it changes the entire course of the rest of the game down two pretty majorly different story paths. Even within those branches, there are additional choices and story branches that you can take that make that have significant differences in how the story plays out. Towards the end of Witcher 2, I got stuck on a rather epic boss battle with a dragon that has been making appearances throughout the game. I actually got frustrated and never beat Witcher 2 because the dragon was kicking my ass, and while I could beat it, my character was not well prepared for that fight and beating it would have been pretty tedious. I -just- found out this morning from a prep article for playing Witcher 3 that this epic, multipart dragon fight at the end of the game that I naturally assumed was the finale is not a given and happened specifically because of the choices I had made in the game. How cool is that?

-Byshop

I'd agree Shadow Of Morder has better combat, Witcher 3's is frankly, bad.

@uninspiredcup: Mordor was fun and the combat system solid but it felt way too much like a carbon copy of Batman.

-Byshop

I think it's partly because with this gen, AAA titles aren't produced as often as they seemed to be with the last gen. Just my theory for what it's worth. I haven't picked up W3 yet so I can't express an opinion on gameplay. However on paper it looks pretty appealing with the 60+ hours of game play with an open world environment.

Because there isn't anything else to play. It was the same thing with Destiny, popular because there was a lack of any other new games.

Doesn't bother me, Diablo style games, doom style games, command and conquer style games, if a games good it's good, Batmans combat system isn't really at the point of over-saturation.

I just booted it up again after posting that, I have to say as well, the voice acting shits on the Witcher 3. It's really quite impressive, great cinematography during the cutscenes as well, seamlessly cutting to gameplay.

One of the things as well, it takes elements from Assassins Creed, but does it significantly better. No massive unbalance press X to win shit, the player can die a fair bit.

Graphically as well, it runs really good, I have the texture quality way above recommended for my card and it's almost hitting 60. By comparison even notching shit down on the Witcher 3, it runs abit garbage. Visually, it looks better to me.

It'll be mainstream now because open-world games with drop-dead gorgeous graphics are popular among the masses.

This is how most people are viewing Wild Hunt if you like it or not.

Are you a Michael Bay gamer?

Don't get me wrong, it's a great system but I liked it better in the Batman games. The system in Mordor isn't kinda like Batman, it's almost exactly the same down to the upgrades you get (a stun attack that allows you to unleash a combo increasing flurry that knocks out, "critical strike" that gives you two combo points per well timed button press, combo thrown weapons, standing finishers you can execute once your combo score is up that you're invincible during, ground takedowns that leave you vulnerable but allow you to takedown anyone on the ground provided it doesn't get interrupted, etc). That's not to mention and "alternate vision mode" that allows you to locate special targets and items you otherwise wouldn't see.

If I had never played Batman, Mordor would have probably been one of the most amazing games I had ever played but having beaten each Batman game 2 to 3 times per game prior to playing Mordor, Mordor isn't as interesting or special as it otherwise would have been. I love what they added with the Nemesis system and a few of the moves that they didn't directly lift from Batman (very few) but the setting (giant battlefield) was less interesting than Arkham or Gotham.

Don't get me wrong, Mordor has a great combat system, but that's because it stole from the best. :)

-Byshop

can any one in here help me out, im new to pc gaming and have just bought a Lenovo Y50-70 i5 4210h 2.9GH turbo 3.5GH with a GTX 860m grafik Card.

Will it run the witcher 3 in ok settings ? can anyone help me out ?

Was there ever a time where AAA titles were in abundance?

Hmm, you know what from the gameplay so far I am asking myself the same question and I think a lot of the popularity is hype and nothing else, because yes the game is good but i honestly dont see what Van Ord saw in it. From his review it sounded like the second coming of jebus.

But after playing it for a good 10hours i have put it away and i dont think i will return.

The Skyrim Effect.

The answer to your question. Because of the marketing campaign.

And why many players will be disappointed? Because it's not a copy-paste game, and because it has an actual story not aimed at children/teens.

Most popular games are not aimed at children and teens storywise. What so great about the Witcher story anyway? Currently for the past 5-7 hours of playing there is nothing particularly special unless swearing and polyporn is reasoning behind the implied "mature" story.

@Pedro: The most popular games have a story that a chimp can follow, and most of the times poorly written.

The Witcher story didn't start with this game... If you didn't cared about the story until now it was probably a waste to buy this game now. I like that it has lots of political intrigue, complex secondary characters and decisions that not only impact deeply in the game but also are far from being black/white. The personal story of your character, the story of the world and background lore are compelling to me.

A bit scary init?

I had that feeling from the start.

It looks like I need to invest a lot of time to the witcher 3 iv'e only played the first hour of the game but I'm loving it.

I only played SoM for a couple of hours and got bored. Never did play it again.

To each is own. For me it's the quest complexity. The dialog trees/options for quest resolution for even a lot of the minor side quests rivals that of the old Fallout games. A simple side quest might have four or five different outcomes and those outcomes may have consequences that create more events later. You can also fail quests or get less than ideal outcomes by not putting enough work in. That kind of interaction is something that you don't see in the AAA modern engined RPGs.

-Byshop

Challenging Combat, Story and Characters + rewarding exploration. Main focus: Story.

To many over grim dark story mean good story.

Then there another group that is all over open world/

Then there another group that can not stop looking at graphic.

After playing Witcher 1 and 2, I hate the setting and the characters. Too fake for my taste. THe combat has done nothing to impress me. I seen nothing about level up system. I do not care about the interactive story like dialog and branching story which I hate for hurting RPG.

2-3 hours. You haven't even begun to scratch the surface. Keep playing and you'll see what the hype is about.

Preparing Gerolt for battle/hunts is the defing characteristic, I think it's great that way.