Same goes for the Witcher 3 tbh. Sites love them big open world western rpgs.
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Witcher 3 has won over 240 GOTY Awards so far.
- Thread starter Crossing Eden
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Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It's probably the most unintentionally hilarious game this year.am i the only one who's explanation for enjoying fallout 4 is the same as jessica rabbit's explanation for why she loved roger: 'he makes me laugh'? because fallout 4 made me laugh (both deliberately & inadvertently) more often than pretty much all the other games i played in 2015 put together. & i consider that an accomplishment. for me, not necessarily a goty accomplishment, but, to the extent playing a game's supposed to be fun, i can easily see others considering it so...
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
Well for one it seemed like you were saying that The Witcher 3 didn't have one if not the best art direction of a medieval fantasy game. It certainly raised the bar on that regard.
His Majesty
Banned
The lack of a character creator is what makes The Witcher series such a huge success. You'd never see the interactions Geralt has with people like Yennefer, Dijkstra and Ciri in games with blank slate characters. This is also my main worry with Cyberpunk, CDPR taking the character creator route.
Quality of the combat mechanics is debatable but the art direction in The Witcher 3 is stellar for a medieval-inspired RPG. Bloodborne of course does art direction also extremely well but you can't compare the grounded medieval tone of The Witcher 3 to the bombastic Victorian style in Bloodborne.
Psychoward
Banned
Yeah, nothing like those great stories within Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition huh
silvermember
Banned
That isn't a good enough reason for a game to win awards. I mean fallout 4 doesn't actually do anything better than any other game. It's package is not greater than the sum of its parts. The graphics, animations, combat, story/plot and characters are not special. The world is very big but uninteresting.am i the only one who's explanation for enjoying fallout 4 is the same as jessica rabbit's explanation for why she loved roger: 'he makes me laugh'? because fallout 4 made me laugh (both deliberately & inadvertently) more often than pretty much all the other games i played in 2015 put together. & i consider that an accomplishment. for me, not necessarily a goty accomplishment, but, to the extent playing a game's supposed to be fun, i can easily see others considering it so
This shoukd probably go in a LTTP thread, but I just started Witcher 2 yesterday and I'm not really enjoying the combat. I got my ass whooped in the tutorial. I'm playing this with a PS4 controller on my PC. Maybe I'm approaching combat the wrong way...
Am I supposed to be roll dodging all the time? Is this game really that tedious where I have to find potions and oils I need to apply before each battle? Does the spell/meditate selection wheel get easier to use over time? To me it just feels clumsy. I don't know if it's the settings for my controller, but it's impossible to use my joystick with making selectons so I'm forced to use my dpad after bringing up the selection wheel.
Please tell me that Witcher 3 improves upon the things I'm describing. Again I've only started, but comeat has left a bad taste in my mouth. Same with the shitty inventory menu.
Am I supposed to be roll dodging all the time? Is this game really that tedious where I have to find potions and oils I need to apply before each battle? Does the spell/meditate selection wheel get easier to use over time? To me it just feels clumsy. I don't know if it's the settings for my controller, but it's impossible to use my joystick with making selectons so I'm forced to use my dpad after bringing up the selection wheel.
Please tell me that Witcher 3 improves upon the things I'm describing. Again I've only started, but comeat has left a bad taste in my mouth. Same with the shitty inventory menu.
His Majesty
Banned
The combat in The Witcher 2 relies heavily on rolling, yes. And they fixed that in The Witcher 3. You can also drink potions during battle. Don't get surrounded, get a few hits in and roll away. Roll, roll, roll.
GifGafIsTheBestGaf
Member
that's a lot of Yennefer
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Dodging is important but parrying is important too. Yes W2 is a game of preparation. Making potions and finding ingredients is generally easy. A 360 controller would be a better alternative. Combat in W3 has a shit ton less animation priority.
Aha, like a "new benchmark"?
I see your point. No worries.
The only thing I think TW3 truly did set a benchmark in is the art direction - Velen, Novigrad, Kaer Morhen and Skellige are legit best-in-class works of art and design. Unprecedented even, in terms of scale and quality. Bloodborne had better designs at a micro scale, but I think TW3's detail and breadth across tens of square miles, with countless different 'tones' and styles (Bloodborne was still dynamic but all variations on a theme), sets it above. They really built a world, a real, believable world.
Aha: what this guy said:
Kurt Angle
Member
fully deserved
new standard for open world RPGs
new standard for open world RPGs
Not at all. The world is derivative and boring and pretty regressive in terms of open world design. It does absolutely nothing interesting with its open world gameplay. It doesn't create playful opportunities (such as finding an airport and flying into an airplane in GTAV), major characters don't roam about, in fact the entire war that's supposedly tearing up the country is completely static, and you can't spatially approach missions in different ways because they don't really use the open world either. If the game wasn't open world, it would play exactly the same. Saying The Witcher 3 raises the bar for open world design is borderline batshit territory for me. It's stuffed I'll grant you that. Great in the way Ubisoft game design is great.
The Witcher 3 raises the bar in the quantity of pretty good game stories, yes, but obviously that doesn't sound nearly as cool.
semiconscious
Member
but, as i pointed out, it definitely does: it does comedy better. which, as i also mentioned, can mean a lot to some people who don't take gaming quite as seriously as some others seem to?
...Violence Jack
Member
Very much deserved. Best WRPG I've ever played.
Yes, it's pretty important in the books, as well in the game. But I don't see why it's bothering you. Geralt chooses his sword automatically and accordingly, so it's a non issue.
Admiral Woofington
Member
You mean that's a lot of Triss
It directly comes from the novels and the universe. Witchers use two swords.
Exentryk
Member
I played Witcher 2 for a short period with a DS4 controller, and HATED the combat. Clunky mess, with preparing-before-combat tediousness. The political heavy story also wasn't grabbing me much.
Witcher 3 is ALOT better in terms of combat. I played the game on Death March (hardest difficulty), and I really enjoyed the combat. The only thing I would recommend is this insta-casting mod as an absolute must before starting.
RespectThySole
Member
The Witcher 1&2 won a grand total of 5 awards combined, while Uncharted 2 annihilated the competition in 2009. This is far more impressive to me.
For comparison, Dark Souls 1&2 won 20 awards combined.
Exentryk
Member
In Witcher 3, there is probably like one fight that has mixed enemies. Geralt automatically switches the sword, so nothing you need to actively think about.
I didn't know it was automatic..
The tutorial teaches you how to switch and it's a clumsy process, which is why I had ano issue with it.
Edit: oh you're talking about 3 and 2
The perfect Dark
Banned
Not sure if serious or salty...
Admiral Woofington
Member
In consoles it wasn't that clumsy. If I recall it was press opposite d-pad buttons. But maybe I'm not remembering wrong. But yeah he switches automatically.
His Majesty
Banned
Most of your criticism boils down to the game not being a sandbox. Which, indeed, it isn't. The game has all the qualities of a story-heavy linear game but on a much larger scale and with the element of discovery and exploration added on top of it. Creating such a world is an enormous undertaking because everything needs to be handcrafted.
Don't fault the game for something it doesn't strive to be.
What you're talking about is sandbox design, not open world design.
Open world: the game takes place in one large level. It's the same as a 'linear' game - pre-set things, locations, places - just in a very big area. The player can traverse it and explore it in a non-linear fashion.
Sandbox: within the game's large level (or its smaller ones) are overlapping gameplay elements and NPCs which roam, all of which interact emergently with each other. The player is free to approach any situation in any way they want and their actions can emergently trigger series' of events. The world is a 'sandbox'.
The Witcher 3 doesn't have a sandbox. It has an open world. That is, one large, pre-determined "level". If you're expecting a sandbox game, you're out of luck. If you're adamant about calling it a sandbox game, then fine - and it's a terrible one.
But as an open world game, which is what it is, it's best-in-class in terms of design. Every object was hand-placed and it shows. Every character was written to high standards and it shows. The whole thing is rich and unique. It feels like a real place while you're riding through it - even it The Witcher 3's world is broadly static and sometimes this is a bit obvious (although there are many moments where your actions impact townships around the game directly or indirectly). Regardless, it is designed, aestherically and meaningfully, to a fucking world-class standard.
It's basically not a sandbox, but for the record, I've had a few cool sandbox things happen. One time a bunch of Nekkers chased a flock of deer straight into a bear and all of them got in an awesome fight – but events like that are super rare.
Funnier still is that his game of the year is a remaster.
This is the right path for a game based on a P&P RPG.
Audioboxer
Member
It got my vote, especially with the awesome DLC. Bloodborne was a very close 2nd.
Admiral Woofington
Member
Nothing is stopping them from doing a Bioware, you record a male and female for the main character, and let folks choose the look and sex of the main character. Give them a nickname/last name you can't change and done. That way you can still evolve the character to have a relative set personality and history with some small variety, but give people what they like in customization.
RespectThySole
Member
Tbh I never really liked The Witcher 2's combat. The Witcher 3 is much better in that department.
Not necessarily, you don't need emergent systems to create interesting gameplay opportunities in an open world. You don't need a sandbox to have multiple paths in the completion of a mission, all of these exist in games that do not have emergent systems. All of these exist in open world games that are not sandbox games. (even though yes some emergence would improve the open world design, it's not like open world and sandbox games are diametrically opposed quantities, in fact they're quite naturally inclusive compound genres, much like all platform games share score attack and action genre trappings--it's okay to say Mario 3D world has shit power-ups even though power-ups are not strictly part of the platform definition, they are part of the broader compound platformer genre)
(last edit: and of course the Witcher 3 does have a number of emergent and sandbox systems)
The love that open world RPGs get in these lists is making me really wary of The Witcher 3. I thought these 4 games were incredibly overhyped (Inquisition being the worst offender here) and fear this is just another case of that.
The perfect Dark
Banned
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
I need to start playing this again. played it for a couple of hours, felt i was making no progress and quit. The patented witcher 3 combat, long exposition cutscenes and witcher sense bored me to death too.
GOTY isn't about quality though. It's about hype, on principle. If it was about quality then the GOTY every single year would have been different.
Open world games are also a lot worse in retrospect because the genre is evolving at a crazy pace. Final Fantasy XV (estimated to be 2000km squared) is set to dwarf The Witcher 3 and Just Cause 3 in world size and attention to detail after just one year.
texhnolyze
Banned
So, based on these 'open world rpgs are surely win GOTY rewards' comments, next year will be Final Fantasy XV's year. Or perhaps Zelda, but it's not an quite an rpg.
Edit: It's actually this year. Still not quite aware that it's 2016 already sometimes lol.
Edit: It's actually this year. Still not quite aware that it's 2016 already sometimes lol.
Surprisingly, it wasn't. It wasn't an incredible year but it had Dark Souls 2 and Alien:Isolation, two games far more deserving of the accolade.
Witcher 3 blows the everloving shit out of all of thoses games in terms of: combat, writing, characters, world-building, side-quests and content.
I borequit all of those except DA:I (never cared enough to play it) and I loved TW3. Generally I'm not a big fan of open world games as I tend to get sidetracked, overwhelmed or just lose interest. But after taking a break around the halfway point in the main story, I fell back in love again and finished it in like a week or so.
It's hard to point out the one thing that kept me hooked. I guess it's a bit of everything and the same things that made me love TW2. Although the main story is a bit more straight forward and less convoluted, there's still political intrigue, interesting characters, amazing side quests and that goddamn atmosphere. It's just that all those POI markers are a bit much and I set out to just do sidequests/contracts and occasionally clear a POI if I don't have to go too much out of my way. Completing every single marker on the map is borderline insane.
Coming from the guy who collected every Gwent card...
TheStruggler
Report me for trolling ND/TLoU2 threads
deserves it, ever since i got it for christmas I almost play six hours a day I have literally lost my life lol
A MMO will never be GOTY.
texhnolyze
Banned
You know what I meant, XV. A typo, my bad.
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