Witcher 3 Share your first impressions

[crpgnut]

Just use the autoharvest and autoloot mods from the Nexus…oops, that's Skyrim.

I played a little last night. I took the quest to help a villager find his brother after a battle.

Spoiler

When you get to the battlefield your witcher senses kick in and allows you to hone in to the general area. After that, the brother will mention a specific thing to look for and he has the missing person's dog. When you get close enough the dog will find tracks, which I thought was a very neat little idea.

I played on the "don't hurt me" level of combat, which works fine for me. On that level monsters basically die in two hits and I don't have to dodge much at all; at least in the beginning of the game. If it gets too easy, I'll bump it up once.

The spoiler area above has a bunch of weapons on the field. I grabbed several, but haven't sold them yet, so I'm not sure if it's a good early game resource for gold, but it might be.

 

[JDR13]

I played a little last night. I took the quest to help a villager find his brother after a battle.

Spoiler

When you get to the battlefield your witcher senses kick in and allows you to hone in to the general area. After that, the brother will mention a specific thing to look for and he has the missing person's dog. When you get close enough the dog will find tracks, which I thought was a very neat little idea.

That was the first notice-board quest I completed.

The Witcher sense is implemented well. I remember thinking I wasn't going to like it when I saw it in the preview trailers, but it's actually pretty cool. It reminds of the detective mode in the Batman games.

 

[crpgnut]

Yes, I love that it doesn't take you to the exact spot, just a rough area. The search area was 20 meters in diameter and so there was a lot of looking around before the trail was found. Also, I liked that it wasn't Geriatric that found the trail, but the dude's dog. Makes a lot of sense.
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I never could loot the horse that highlighted on the field. I even tried an upgraded Aard to clear the area around it. I'm not a big fan of movement at all in the game. I found Skyrim to be lightyears better, both walking and on the horse.

I haven't tweaked anything though. I loaded the game and just played, except for making dodge mapped to a mouse button. I don't know if I have the hair stuff turned on, what level of detail I'm playing at, etc. The game looks fine. I'll tweak it once the ladies start showing up naked

Memorial Day weekend gives me four days to really sink my teeth into the game and then I'm off most of the 3rd week of June. I should get some serious hours into the game by that time. My plan is to explore every inch as I go, leaving no stone unturned. If I lose the main girl because of this, GeeI'mOld, will have a backup I'm sure.

 

[sakichop]

I just found the guy before I knew it was a quest. Sounds like more fun your guys way though.

 

[azarhal]

I find the witcher sense cooler than Batman detective mode. You can use the witcher sense to spot farther away stuff via sound only (I found a peasant foraging in the woods while using it). The side effect is that it makes walking the woods a little creepy with all the wood cracking being amplified.

Wouldn't surprise me if it can be used to eavesdrop on people too.

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About movement, I've seen many people (a little everywhere) suggest to reduce camera sensitivity to 0.75-.80 and that it helps a lot.

 

[Luckra]

About the markers on the map, it seems the notice boards unlock the white POI (likes places of power and stuff) and some quests but you still have to find the remaining quests on your own.

Spoiler

In the first village for example you get 2 quests from the board I think (the missing brother and the hunted well) but you have to find the other ones in the area like the murder in a hut.

I really like the Witcher Senses but being colorblind with a huge red deficiency I really hate not having an option to change the color of important items in this mode. When you have to follow huge tracks it's ok but I spent 20mn finding a small box in the middle of a swamp and ending up turning it off to find it because I couldn't see the box anywhere.

 

[crpgnut]

Luckra, I hope you posted on their official boards about this. Something like 1 in 7 men are at least partially colorblind so they should have had something in the works.

 

[Thrasher]

They should have a setting to change it to bright blue instead of yellow. That should cover the bases as I'm also similarly afflicted.

 

[Luckra]

There is an option in the HUD tab called something like "Witcher senses in minimap" that shows these red and yellow objects on the minimap but it ruins the fun of the detective minigame.
I will post on their board if I don't find another thread about this, thanks for the suggestion crpgnut!

 

[Roq]

Really nice that mouse/keyb and controller is changed on the fly.. if you touch the mouse it will say its changing to mouse/keyb and same with controller.

Yes - This is a big improvement over using a controller with DA:I. Whilst using a controller, you can use the keyboard for quick access functions, such as saving games, viewing the map etc. Aim isn't important in this game so using a controller works fine and I found the key binding for M&K very difficult to work with left handed. I don't see why they need to flash a huge message at the bottom left of the screen every time you switch though - that seems completely unnecessary.

 

[Arkadia7]

Combat is overall superb, and I'm really picky about combat in rpg games. (I thought combat sucked in the Witcher 1, for example, to the point that I decided not to buy the game after playing the demo)

It's fun, feels weighty, and has a heft to it. The animations are well done, and it's just plain entertaining to engage in combat. This is very important to get right in a rpg game, where combat plays a heavy role, and I think they finally got it right. It kind of reminds me of Gothic a bit, (though I still think the combat system in Gothic is superior)

The only nitpicks I would say is the combat might be a wee bit too fast, and could be slowed down just a tad. But it is definitely not hyper speed and too arcadey like other recent rpg games, which is a very good thing.

And also I think the combat might be a little too easy on "normal" difficulty. I think it might be a game where you want to turn on to the higher difficulty level, perhaps the difficulty level one notch below the maximum setting, but this is just based on early impressions, and maybe the combat gets tougher further down the road.

 

[Thrasher]

Yeah, ghouls and wolves are too easy on normal. I played Witcher 2 on Dark difficulty, and perhaps I should pick the hardest here too.

 

[DArtagnan]

I'm playing on Blood and Bones (or whatever) - and it seems too easy, so far. Using the Igni sign, I've been able to defeat level 6 bears and stuff at level 1. I'm not using any buffs, I just picked the passive medium armor ability, which boosts magic a lot.

That said, it's way too early to tell how it's going to play, later on.

 

[JDR13]

Am I the only one who thinks the merchant prices seem a little out of whack? Some things are really cheap while items of similar value can cost 3-4 times as much. 45 crowns for water?

 

[hiciacit]

There seems to be quite a big difference in what different shopkeepers offer for the same goods as well. It can be really worth shopping around a bit.

 

[vurt]

Seems a bit strange that his senses reduces the FOV (which is already kind of bad) "behold my inredible Witcher senses which makes me see less of my surroundings!"

 

[zahratustra]

Oh for Christ's sake! "Witcher senses" is another word for "focus" meaning that Geralt focuses on details and not on surroundings.

 

[you]

For what it is worth here is my initial comments (cut and past from another post):
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Of the three (skyrim, da:i and witcher 3) I have to say skyrim was best out of the box with regards to 'play-ability' (I'm talking about strict user interface/interaction with keyboard/mouse and on screen action). It was very responsive and I really didn't have any complaints until I played a while and saw how shallow the actual game was - where as DA:I and witcher 3 are both really annoying out of the gate (I've finished DA:I but already comment on it - witcher 3 I'm going to wait for a volume path and hope they improve the keyboard/mouse UI (not so much key binding but there is some latency and imprecision in movement that I find very very annoying).
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And yes I think witcher 3 implementation of "witcher senses" is fine - and it removes a bit of annoying 'find hidden item puzzles' which I never loved.

 

[crpgnut]

More on Witcher vs Skyrim:

I agree about most things movement related being much better in Skyrim. Witcher wins on rolling and climbing though However, I love where W3 has gone with face gen. Some of the early NPC's have amazing detail in the face and just awesome facial expressions. I wouldn't mind if Bethesda borrowed the tech. So far the basic NPC in Skyrim has much, much more to say than the peasants in W3. You can give the lame excuse that everyone hates witchers, but it's still an excuse. I think both games are amazing. If you could freely mod Witcher it would be a Skyrim slayer. Even without that, it is a worthy competitor. We'll see if that impression remains after 50 hours though. I'm not sure how deep this game goes, but I'm excited about finding out.

 

[Thrasher]

(not so much key binding but there is some latency and imprecision in movement that I find very very annoying).

Agreed. I wonder if movement is more precise with a controller? And any lag really exacerbates it, pushing me to max framerate at all costs.