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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - CDPR on open world gaming, and comparing to Skyrim
- Thread starter EatChildren
- Start date
Wanting to make a better game (or to iterate/enhance upon a given mechanic) is a concept of its own. It is fairly unrelated from sales, really.
Else, everyone would be rushing to implement Just Dance or Fifa features into unrelated genres.
Skyrim has shown that open world games have a place in today's market, but it still carries over the same flaws from other bethesda-made games = extreme shallowness.
There have been games in the past who did player vs open world better, a more concentrated experience, without so much dispersion, induced from wanting to flex your "hey I can create a huge world, with no way to entice the player to explore it all" muscles too much.
Case Study: Gothic series. An example of a smaller, but richer overworld.
To this day, I still prefer Gothic over its much widely successful competitor of the time, Morrowind.
In my heart, I hope CDPR ends up with something similar in W3.
Else, everyone would be rushing to implement Just Dance or Fifa features into unrelated genres.
Skyrim has shown that open world games have a place in today's market, but it still carries over the same flaws from other bethesda-made games = extreme shallowness.
There have been games in the past who did player vs open world better, a more concentrated experience, without so much dispersion, induced from wanting to flex your "hey I can create a huge world, with no way to entice the player to explore it all" muscles too much.
Case Study: Gothic series. An example of a smaller, but richer overworld.
To this day, I still prefer Gothic over its much widely successful competitor of the time, Morrowind.
In my heart, I hope CDPR ends up with something similar in W3.
I stand by that comment, trying to lure casual fans into the series will lead them nowhere. They are smart enough to realize that and this is why I'm not worried by their decision to make TW3 more "accessible".
Precisely, they're honest and not hiding behind PR bullshit. They observe and analyse the competition and work out what does work and what doesn't, and shares that information with their fans.
Can't fault them, really.
NinjaTehFish
Banned
I think he's trying to say CDPR are also looking at emulating Skyrims numbers as well as its open world.
I for one say good luck
EDIT: Or Not.
I dont see how any of this= More casual like
MrGreencastle
Member
I wish more revs were this straight up. They were just like, yo we love skyrim, but here's what we didn't like about it, and here's what we want to change to make our game cool.
Its nice when they're that transparent.
Its nice when they're that transparent.
Trust but Verify.
New Vegas had two big faults in that matter:
-not portraying the big moments of the story with big enough splendor. Important events (eg. the battle on the dam) just didn't have enough resources put into them. Fallout 3 did better job of make the big moments feel important
-quest glitches towards the end of the game, that made the entire illusion of the nonlinearity of the game's story collapse. More playtesting would have solved that, I had to use console commands to be able to finish the game
Fallout 1/2, Arcanum yes but those were 2D games where you could sopy paste almost all buildings and it wouldn't be out of place. Ultima was probably the best case imo (but still 2d). VtMB is hardly big open world more like Witcher 2 hubs with small area to explore and DX ? What is DX ?
Skyrim was a colossal bore, they should be talking about good open world RPGs like Ultima VII.
Deus Ex and it wasn't an open world game like charsace said.
Deus Ex and it wasn't an open world game like charsace said.
I think most of problems with open world comes to Voice acting. For example Morrowind had ton of text to read. Even if it wasn't voiced it felt like people live there.
Now try to do VA for every character line in Baldurs gate or planescape. Cost would be massive imo.
That is one of the reason why modern AAA oper world arpg have problems with dialogs. If game is in 3D and it's FPP when you meet someone you want to hear it not read it (because it brakes immersion). I love VA but it is limiting factor to big RPGs.
I wonder how TW3 will deal with that. I expect even more butchered dialogues.
You had it right the first time. You don't need to dumb a game down to sell to casuals. But to sell 10 million plus you do have to appeal to some of them.I think he's trying to say CDPR are also looking at emulating Skyrims numbers as well as its open world.
I for one say good luck
EDIT: Or Not.
I don see how any of this= More casual like
I'm glad they note just how bad Skyrim is in almost every way. When they started this reveal and was using Skyrim as an influence that set off immediate warning bells but thankfully they admit it's basically trash as a RPG.
They have a lot of work to do to dethrone New Vegas as the best open world RPG in recent history.
They have a lot of work to do to dethrone New Vegas as the best open world RPG in recent history.
What does that mean? I never played Xenoblade so how exactly does the game reward the player for exploring?
shinobi602
Member
Skyrim was an incredible experience for me, so if they can deliver on all these points, this will seriously be a day 1 purchase for me.
Well yea that's obvious. Guild Wars 2 rewards exploration with map unlocks, achievements, hidden "dungeons" puzzles, jumping challenges and the like but that's an MMO. Xenoblade being a jrpg I'm interested in how Monolith handled rewarding exploration.
Skyrim has dungeons and well pretty much just that which bores me unlike in Morrowind finding a dungeon was a genuine surprise for me. I do hope that CDPR is taking a look at not only Skyrim but Morrowind, Fallout 2 and Ultima games for some inspiration.
indigo-cyclops
Member
Love this point, as it shows me they are truly interested in making a better game. How much of an improvement, or pursuit to evolve is Skyrim over the other ES games? It's valuable to be able to see the glaring issues, and address them publicly. I like the attitude, and agree there needs to be less political correctness in this industry if developers want to make better games.
Can't wait, because this is my favorite RPG series/lore.
AHA-Lambda
Member
I'm loving what I'm hearing here, CDPR gets it ^_^
Sorry if I didn't go into detail. Fallout 1 and 2, and Arcanum did what CDPR wants to do, just not in 3d.
The other games did parts of what they wanted to do.
I like Skyrim, but the complaints of CDPR are valid. Though some things in Bethseda games I like even though people don't like it. The main characters not sticking out too much is something that I'm a fan of. It adds to the cohesion of the world IMO and isn't really the problem with Skyrim lack of unique characters. The first Fallout games had sprites that looked similar too, but the characters felt unique. Bethseda relies too much on their in house character editor when creating characters. So instead of unique characters feeling unique, they come off as being bethseda dynamic AI character #xx, with quest script #xx. I love the AI in bethseda games, but they need to find a way to make the unique characters stand out.
I can't wait to see how CDPR handles this type of game. IMO it is one of the harder games to make. Giving all the characters lives outside the main story seems to throw people off.
Their assessment of Skyrim's flaws were pretty spot on (as much as I loved Skyrim, it's hard not to agree with their points). I'm sure that they're going to be able to knock this out of the park. CDPR is one of the only developers I have absolute faith in (the others being Rockstar and Platinum).
I don't think Bethesda's very critical of their games since each RPG they make strips out more and more RPG stuff in favor of boring "immersion" crap. At this point the only reason anyone even plays the game is to get lost in a big empty world.
GravityMan
Member
Nearly everything in that interview sounds great. The Witcher 3 seems like a very ambitious project. I'm a little concerned that it may be too ambitious for CDPR. We'll see.
I also hope that they've improved their QA processes, especially since TW3 is open world. The Witcher 1 was very buggy when it first came out, and to a lesser extent The Witcher 2 was also buggy early on. Testing and debugging an open-world game is not easy.
I also hope that they've improved their QA processes, especially since TW3 is open world. The Witcher 1 was very buggy when it first came out, and to a lesser extent The Witcher 2 was also buggy early on. Testing and debugging an open-world game is not easy.
Sentenza
Member
While I really don't like Skyrim, I honestly don't think Morrowind was any better.
Actually, when it comes specifically to dungeons, probably far worse.
And yeah, I hope they are going to take very different games as inspiration. Gothic, Risen, Ultima. Even several action adventures (Zelda, Darksiders and so on) could offer good suggestions about how to handle dungeons.
The Last Wizard
Member
They can keep the game as is but they need to change how they do the tutorial, cause its so much information thrown at you it gets overwhelming.
Sentenza
Member
I find these recurring complaints stupid, to be honest, because *NOTHING* strikes me as "overwhelming" in TW2. If anything the game is even a bit dull at places.
That said, they already addressed this point clearly in one of these videos.
bigboss370
Member
I thought Skyrim was flawless for the most part, but best of luck to CDPR.
There are many things one can do to improve on the Skyrim formula, but if their approach is to be more open-world they also must be really careful not to fall in the over-scripted full of roadblocks, all seeing-eye style that New Vegas took .... that was a real open-world experience killer.
Sentenza
Member
bigboss370
Member
^^
for me it was. its a great thing to enjoy games like i do ^_^
for me it was. its a great thing to enjoy games like i do ^_^
Sentenza
Member
Uh, they already did, since the first day this sequel was announced.
Of course, that doesn't mean they also have the *right* solution in mind, but time will tell, I guess.
Ah OK, guess I haven't been keeping up.
I'm sure they'll do something different, W2 was very different from the first game. Let's hope it's better.
You and I can be good friends.
Yeah, I always hated how TES handled weapons. I'd much prefer a whole bunch of generic looking yet diverse weapons.
I also hate how impractical they all are at higher levels. I want something to become sleek and intimidating.
Sentenza
Member
Yeah, well, that, but also: I don't want to loot crap every 20 seconds, especially in a game where looted items seem to be virtually devoid of any value.
I prefer to loot even just a single item every few hours, maybe after a significant achievement, if that means it's going to be a valuable, relevant reward.
Well, they already claimed they are trying, no?
Yep, that's exacty what I expect fro ma good open world game; it's also one of these things that Piranha bytes games do very well and the very reason I always point at them as a model.
If The Witcher 2 is of any indication, armor and weapon design should be the last concerns in this sequel.
The previous chapter is just *unmatched* in that sense.
loganclaws
Plane Escape Torment
Funny, for me, Bethesda makes the worst open world RPGs. I hope CDPR follows Pirhana Bytes and does the following:
- No quest markers, the world building should be distinguishable enough for the player to the point where NPCs can give a description to the player of where to go and the player can explore on his own without having to follow a marker. The player should be able to buy maps and guide himself in the world with landmarks and sign posts.
- Improve the atrocious UI of the witcher 2. I think Witcher 1 had a great UI they should either revert back to that or make it even simpler, like Gothic 2 for example.
- No random loot, everything should be hand placed.
- No level scaling, already confirmed.
- Ability to scale the world vertically, similar to gothic 2 or thief. Climbing is always a fun way to find hidden locations.
- Improved combat system with no button mashing.
- Skills should be unique and never percentage increases; Sneak, Back stab, evading roll, sign upgrade that changes the behavior of a sign are good examples. Bad examples: 10% increase to weapon damage, 50% chance increase to lockpick a chest, 20% to block more damage.
You will notice that all the above points are either missing from Bethesda rpgs or in the case of the bad examples, all are present.