Motivation to play on in The Witcher 3
May be I get some professional help here ;-)
I had started the Witcher 3 soon after release, played for about a day in the first are and for some reason felt no motivation to play on the next day. So I played other things up to now and only came back to it yesterday.
Now I restarted it and managed to go through the first area, the second one (the palace) into the third one (the second "bigger" area).
Now I have motivation problems again….
I have to start by saying that I loved the Witcher 1 and played it several times. And I love open world games in general, like everything from Piranha Bytes, Morrowind, Fallout 3 and 4 or Horizon Zero Dawn.
My main reason that I like such games is immersion, i.e. I feel like I am in the game world and that I as a person am running around there, not simply an avatar of mine.
In TW3 I simply don't reach this immersed feeling. I always have the feeling that I am sitting before a computer playing a game.
I can't even describe exactly, what is different in this game compared to others.
So I try to list some things, which irk me, may be these together are the reason, but I don't know…
- The worst experience: Since it felt like open world, I thought I advance the main story to reach the second area before completely exploring the first area. When I did that, suddenly two of my side quests were marked as "Failed". So i had to skip and escape through a whole bunch of cutscenes starting in the inn of the first area until I came to the audience in the second area and only then I could reload an earlier save in order to finish the side quests before advancing the main story. What kind of open world design is this? I mean if there had been an in-game reason (e.g. after you leave the area a different army occupies the area and the original quest givers are gone- that would be understandable). But there was no in-game reason, other side content like looking for unknown places or for treasures were still active, only the two side quests were failed.
- the menus are so complex that I am tired after browsing through them to find something specific like inventory, alchemie etc. After I did something in the menus all remaining sense of immersion into the world was gone and I had the feeling like I had worked on a spreadsheet.
- In the first boss-fight (against that eagle thing): The game auto-locks me on this enemy. It is hard to unlock. (If you want to run away e.g.). Very annoying, I want to decide, when to fight and against whom. There is even an option (if I understand it correctly) saying that you only lock manually (by pressing Y). But it still auto-locked me on that beast. This makes it very hard to decide myself between melee and ranged fight etc.
- In a game like Elex I run around in the world, because I am curious, what comes behind the next hill or the next corner. That you can solve quests while you are on this exploration tour is a nice add on and adds naturally to the exploration because it adds aims. In TW3 I feel: Yes ok there is a map and you could go somewhere, but why? Ok so I go to solve the next quest and look for the next quest.. But I don't have the feeling to explore because of exploration, but only to run around in order to solve quests.
- The multiple cutscenes when first leaving the first area were not immersing for me at all. That was probably my fault, because I was only waiting for them to stop in order to reload, as explained above. But even trying to put this experience aside I found the audience scene and the following discussions with Jennifer more boring than anything.
- When I entered the third area I thought: Ok this map looks very similar to the first area, there are some quests to do, ok, but: Why? So I stopped playing in the middle of the road between the first and the second village of that third map yesterday evening and today I don't feel any urge to play on.
May be the examples don't make it clear, where my feelings come from and I can't explain it myself. This is a game, which I want to like and which I want to be one of the best RPG-experiences, but I simply can't feel it.
Can somebody give advice how I can feel immersed in the game and feel that I am in the game, instead of having the feeling to only sit before my PC and play a computer game? I even have more immersion and sense of exploration when playing an older game like Baldur's Gate than in this game.
I am very thankful for any suggestions since I want to love this game.