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CDPRED: "RED Engine 3 is a revolution in RPGs"
- Thread starter Ciastek3214
- Start date
The comment about Skyrim is only really accurate if you think stats are what make an RPG (and you'd be wrong). Behavior is what makes an RPG, and Skyrim allows players to create a hugely diverse behavior set through both the hybridized class system, and, more importantly, the massive open-ended world. I like just going around hunting things, for instance. That's how I roleplay.
Whether I can do 6 damage with my bow or 20 isn't important.
CDProjekt seems to treat things the same way: roleplay is about interaction (in their case, though The Witcher 2's MASSIVE amount of choices), rather than silly numbers.
Complistic
Member
It just needs to be tweaked. It was silly geralt couldn't' back pedal, and people bitched up a storm about it. So I'm sure it'll be revised.
Well their fighting system has interesting prospect when will be done right. Good execution is what lacked in TW2. Idea is great.
-tetsuo-
Unlimited Capacity
Did you not play either Witcher game? The Witcher 2 is WAY harder than the first one.
AcceptableGhost
Member
Derrick01 can you make a bullet list of features that you deem necessary for Derrick01's Perfect Game (TM)? I am increasingly wondering what would be on that list.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
For me, role playing needs to be more about given a breadth of possible play styles, to "role play". It needs to be about reactive play: the choices you make, whether they be dialogue and quest related or simply how you build your character, need to resonate with the game world, and the game world needs to respond accordingly. Part of why I get bored fairly quickly with games like Skyrim is that while they succeed at giving players options in how to play, the world itself feels sterile and placid. I take from them an adventuring sandbox quality, where I can explore at my own leisure and play how I want, but I never feel anything I do or any choice I make is recognised anywhere outside of my own little bubble.
The best RPGs, for me, are the ones that find a synergy between "cause" and "reaction": a freedom and diversity of play on the player's end, and a game world that believably responds to play. I pick a role, the game allows me to play it, and the game world responds in a way that makes my role seem authentic and cohesive with the design, both in ways that benefit me and ways that don't.
And I don't even feel that numbers and stats are necessary to accomplish this. I think with the above philosophy in mind, the only reason table top RPGs have dice rolls and stats is because that's the way they can convey this style of design. All you've got is pen, paper, words, and numbers. How do you create a reactive world from that? With dice rolls. Spreadsheets. And so on. We make decisions for our character builds and they are represented with statistics. The world responds to our decisions through dice rolls and variables. With games, I don't think enough appreciation is given to the math going on behind the scene. I think you can comfortably develop a true "role playing game" with an incredible scope of play styles and an extremely reactive world while burying the stats and number crunching behind the act of play. The adherence to spreadsheets and numbers to define "role playing" in a video game is in my opinion one of the most closed minded and uncreative attitudes in regards to digitalising CRPGs. It's a tried and true method that works, but I don't think it's necessary.
I don't know if I'd call Geralt's skill set all that reactive, not like Fallout or so, but again I'm not sure that is intended. Crafting Geralt the spreadsheet is really about finding a play style that suits you. The Witcher series' role playing comes from the story telling and dialogue, and that's where I feel the series succeeds more than anything. It might be illusionary for all I know, but CDPR have an excellent handle on quest lines and narrative progression that makes you feel involved and important in outcomes. So even if I'm slashing my way through a linear cave, or hacking at some cinematic boss, I'm not bothered, because all of this is likely part of a quest line that will still develop and be shaped by the decisions I made, and the decisions I make, outside of combat.
There are lots of ways to create role playing, and I don't think that always needs to be a traditional CRPG that perfectly emulates table top gaming.
The best RPGs, for me, are the ones that find a synergy between "cause" and "reaction": a freedom and diversity of play on the player's end, and a game world that believably responds to play. I pick a role, the game allows me to play it, and the game world responds in a way that makes my role seem authentic and cohesive with the design, both in ways that benefit me and ways that don't.
And I don't even feel that numbers and stats are necessary to accomplish this. I think with the above philosophy in mind, the only reason table top RPGs have dice rolls and stats is because that's the way they can convey this style of design. All you've got is pen, paper, words, and numbers. How do you create a reactive world from that? With dice rolls. Spreadsheets. And so on. We make decisions for our character builds and they are represented with statistics. The world responds to our decisions through dice rolls and variables. With games, I don't think enough appreciation is given to the math going on behind the scene. I think you can comfortably develop a true "role playing game" with an incredible scope of play styles and an extremely reactive world while burying the stats and number crunching behind the act of play. The adherence to spreadsheets and numbers to define "role playing" in a video game is in my opinion one of the most closed minded and uncreative attitudes in regards to digitalising CRPGs. It's a tried and true method that works, but I don't think it's necessary.
I don't know if I'd call Geralt's skill set all that reactive, not like Fallout or so, but again I'm not sure that is intended. Crafting Geralt the spreadsheet is really about finding a play style that suits you. The Witcher series' role playing comes from the story telling and dialogue, and that's where I feel the series succeeds more than anything. It might be illusionary for all I know, but CDPR have an excellent handle on quest lines and narrative progression that makes you feel involved and important in outcomes. So even if I'm slashing my way through a linear cave, or hacking at some cinematic boss, I'm not bothered, because all of this is likely part of a quest line that will still develop and be shaped by the decisions I made, and the decisions I make, outside of combat.
There are lots of ways to create role playing, and I don't think that always needs to be a traditional CRPG that perfectly emulates table top gaming.
grosvenor_92
Member
Are they going to use the same engine for Cyberpunk 2077 ?
Yes.
Yeah, progression system is not what makes RPG. It is game in which you can play a role making decision and live with consequences.
There can be absolutely no stats at all and still game can be called RPG if you have means to actually play a role.
Sentenza
Member
Yep, well said.
To put it shortly: roleplaying in a videogames isn't just about giving you the option to "kill or save the granny", it's about having someone who notices what you choose and offers a proper reaction to it.
grosvenor_92
Member
Cyberpunk 2077, the second project the studio is working on, will have prime examples demonstrating that REDengine 3 is the perfect tool for creating immense universes filled with exciting, nonlinear adventures.
Guess I skipped this part of the article but sounds very interesting
What's the difference of getting it on Gog.com and Steam?
Ciastek3214
Junior Member
No DRM.
AcceptableGhost
Member
Wherever you buy The Witcher 2 (or Witcher 1) you can get a GOG version through this webpage:
http://www.gog.com/witcher2/backup
http://www.gog.com/witcher2/backup
Not even close. It's one of the easier games I can remember playing. Again, abuse the roll and slash when there's an opening. You've won every battle right there except for a couple of bosses.
Escape Goat
Member
with next gen is there any excuse for reused dungeon assets? I love RPGs but after teh 1000 cave that looks just like the other 999 (DA2 and even Skyrim) you just dont want to do it anymore.
Sentenza
Member
Usual hyperbolic bullshit, while fairly easy even on the hardest setting is leagues harder than the original game. At least it's the kind of game where if you don't actively defend yourself even low level mosnters are dangerous.
In The Witcher 1, at some point in the second chapter, after a steep initial difficulty curve it was literally possible to stop paying any attention to the combat and wipe out of existence anything just setting the group style and mashing the mouse button rhythmically (while sleepily sustaining your chin with your palm).
OfWhiteSkinOnRedLeather
Member
God damn. CDPR is just too fucking awesome.
There won't be an excuse but they'll do it anyway.
Minimum effort, maximum rewards.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
The first one is still easier IMO, the combo against many opponents is very easily exploitable. Once you have them around you they will fall after a few blows. The only moment I remember having some challenge was fighting some drakes in the swamp.
Does digitally downloading it from steam give you a product key?
NinjaTehFish
Banned
I remember reading they made TW2 for something like $20Million. Guys know how to use money effectively it seems.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I'm not sure what you guys expect? It's a video game. Assets are hand made, by people. If you want more assets, you need more people, or more time, or both. And in all cases you also need more money.
Unless they've got a really nice variety of assets and can creatively hide their reuse, or some magical algorithm that generates assets, you're always going to get reused assets. The onus is on the developer to reuse assets sparingly and in ways that is far less obvious than 1000 identical caves.
I don't really know what other options there are, not without getting into theoretical programming level asset generation. More assets = more content = bigger game = more money/time/manpower. It's not always feasible or economical.
The Hermit
Member
I wonder what kind of PC will run this at full power... Ubersampling TW2 is barely doable with my GTX670
-Pyromaniac-
Member
I've said it before and I got a lot of heat but I'll say it again. The game feels pointless and the word feels "placid" "sterile" "soulless" whatever the word of the day is. I feel no desire to keep playing or to do anything really. I don't "get" it.
IMO a successful RPG is one with constant goals. Whether it's statistical goals (gotta boost my character and equipment and so on, geographic goals (gotta visit this place NOW), and a world that doesn't feel like anything is happening anywhere, especially when the world is designed more realistically like a game like Skyrim. I give leeway to more fantastical worlds. Obviously Fallout doesn't count since the point of that world is to be desolate but even there there is a fine line between capturing the atmosphere and feeling nothing at all.
I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore. Just reading that opinion on skyrim made me want to vent.
You're arguing with a brick wall mate.
With next gen the re-use of assets would be of higher importance since creating higher quality assets takes more time and therefore more money.
What kills the Bethesda games for me is three-fold.
1. Pre-fab dungeons/houses/castles. You can only clear the same cave/crypt so many times before you get fucking sick of it. Oblivion was their absolute worst in that regard. There were like 3 unique dungeons, but 150+ dungeons overall.
2. World is TOO big. Laege swaths of empty, barren, lifeless nothingness. 90% of the world is filler.
3. Game is TOO open world. Having nothing ever really nudging me along the narrative path really hurts these games for me. They feel completely without focus or direction.
I buy every single game they make, and I am disappointed every single time by the same exact things. Guess I am a masochist.
So what you're saying is it remains a tougher game for a longer period of time than TW2, since that becomes easy in the prologue after learning the controls.
-Pyromaniac-
Member
I feel exactly the same about most WRPG whereas a game like Dark Souls has a pretty huge world but it's filled to the brim and varies greatly and there are always things to do/find and goals and all that. I hate saying every game should be dark souls lol because it comes up in every game topic (like zelda), but hey when a game does something right, it should get credit.
professor_t
Member
This. I have no idea how people can claim that Witcher 2 is one of this gen's best looking games in light of this horrific draw distance problem. It's about as distracting as a terrible framerate.
Dark Souls is great, and I felt The Witcher 2 absolutely nailed it too - it was a linear game in open-world game's clothing. It was open.......but only to do a limited number of things, and you were always being pushed forward through the narrative.
-Pyromaniac-
Member
agreed. Highhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 5.
Yup, and they both were released the same year (and by the same publisher). It was glorious.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
By changing the .ini file after the first 10 minutes of playing, I honestly don't remember noticing it much.
Sentenza
Member
No, I'm saying the exact opposite, as TW2 even in its easiest moments never becomes so trivially easy as the first one.
But this is a pointless clarification, as you are clearly playing dumb on purpose.
Play more of them and then come back.
No way it hits this year. Think May 2014.
Oh it does, when the stories are interactive. They are not talking about engines in a graphical sense as far as stories are concerned, I think.
Felix Lighter
Member
That's an excellent point that I hadn't really considered until now and is likely one of the reason I enjoy the Witcher 2 so much. I never let myself get completely distracted from the narrative with superfluousness side activities that didn't make a lot of sense when you consider the typical urgency of the main quest and when I did do the trivial activities it was during a natural pause in the storytelling. It kept the story moving at a more natural pace and I didn't have that disconnect that I typically feel when I delve into every side quest while the next NPC is desperately waiting for me to trigger then next story mission. I never really felt like I was searching for some meaningless trinket while the world was burning around me.
I enjoy side quests and when given the opportunity, I do as many as I can but they can negatively impact the pacing of the story and I always appreciate it when the side quests feel like they are either as urgent as the main quest, contribute to the main quest or the main quest has natural breaks that give you realistic time to dig into lesser activities. Mass Effect 3's side quest were a perfect example of how not to do it. The urgency of the main quest was so ridiculously high the entire game that any time spent searching for some weird artifact I randomly heard 2 civilians talking about seemed like an insane waste.
Also, that diagram reminded me of the great verbose dynamic quest log. The codex and quest logs were very impressive. You could stop playing for weeks in the middle of the quest and comeback, read the quest log and know exactly what happened up until that point and what you needed to do.
Personally, I use stats to describe RPGs only because every single game that uses them is described as having "RPG elements." However, I can understand the opinion that stats are just a means to an end -- a way to let the player make choices with their characters and with the world in a game. I just can't think of very many games that do this without using stats. Depends on how much they hide stats behind a curtain though.
The part about the degree to which the world reacts to the player's actions though is very dependent on school of thought. It's the norm for CRPGs, but JRPGs are far more linear -- in most of them you either complete the objectives or you don't.
As for CDPR, I think the reason they're so loved right now is because they seem like one of the only truly honest developers left in the realm of full retail games. They're one of the only ones not infected by the ills of current generation trends (DLC practices, game design, communication to the player, etc.). They're also one of the only ones who seem like they're trying to appease their devoted fans and not shareholders. Basically, they're representative of the way retail games used to be: designed for the love of game design (largely), aware of the true size of their audience, and attentive to it.
CDPR certainly isn't Naughty Dog or Nintendo EAD-tier, but you can tell that they care about making good games at least as much as how they do commercially. On top of that they certainly know how to handle writing better than most devs, and TW2 shows they've certainly got their tech down.
The part about the degree to which the world reacts to the player's actions though is very dependent on school of thought. It's the norm for CRPGs, but JRPGs are far more linear -- in most of them you either complete the objectives or you don't.
As for CDPR, I think the reason they're so loved right now is because they seem like one of the only truly honest developers left in the realm of full retail games. They're one of the only ones not infected by the ills of current generation trends (DLC practices, game design, communication to the player, etc.). They're also one of the only ones who seem like they're trying to appease their devoted fans and not shareholders. Basically, they're representative of the way retail games used to be: designed for the love of game design (largely), aware of the true size of their audience, and attentive to it.
CDPR certainly isn't Naughty Dog or Nintendo EAD-tier, but you can tell that they care about making good games at least as much as how they do commercially. On top of that they certainly know how to handle writing better than most devs, and TW2 shows they've certainly got their tech down.
I believe this too.
How do you feel about most JRPG's? I've always personally struggled with lumping them into the RPG genre. Most of them you don't have any control over how the story plays out.
Hargenx
Member
That's something that bring deap to a game for me, TES for example, always give you "nickname" after some point in main quests, but in Skyrim, this gone LOST, you save the fucking world you are the "only" dragonborn in sight, but still treated like a beggar.
Compare this to Nevarine or Champion of Cyrodill is even funny.