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[Denton]

This is amazing really.

There are two maps - one is of Skellige Archipelago, huge map full of islands.
The other is Novigrad and its surroundings + No Man's Land.

These two maps are not seamless because in lore, they are huge distance from each other, so it makes zero sense to make them seamless.

However, SKY IS FALLING! WITCHER 3 LIKE DRAGON AGE 3 CONFIRMED! CANCEL YOUR PREORDERS!

 

[benny_a]

It doesn't have to be like Dragon Age Inquisition.

It could be like Divinity: Original Sin, Shadow of Mordor or Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning where you just transition to a different zone because they have fixed exit and entry points.
That's certainly what I thought about when I saw the first E3 trailer.

Dragon Age Inquisition is forcing you to fast travel because they are not attempting to make them connected.

Edit: Oh Denton just clarified. Within those two main zones you could still have the interconnectedness of the games I listed or was it confirmed there are two regions? (With different seamless biomes?)

 

[MatrixMan.EXE]

This is amazing really.

There are two maps - one is of Skellige Archipelago, huge map full of islands.
The other is Novigrad and its surroundings + No Man's Land.

These two maps are not seamless because in lore, they are huge distance from each other, so it makes zero sense to make them seamless.

However, SKY IS FALLING! WITCHER 3 LIKE DRAGON AGE 3 CONFIRMED! CANCEL YOUR PREORDERS!

Thank you.

 

[Enigmatic Rainbow]

I'm fine with it, it wouldn't have affected my purchase either way.

 

[Hoo-doo]

I'm really worried it's going to be like Dragon Age Inquisition. I just don't really get engaged by a big open hub arena world that doesn't link to other parts of the game in a logical, in-game way and is littered with dull side quests I have to do to level up. :\

With their talk of the world being triple/quadruple the size of Skyrim, there's literally no way that it isn't either empty and lifeless, or filled with repeatable throwaway sidequests. It's simple logistics at work here.

 

[Gurgelhals]

I still fail to understand what the issue is here.

- Skyrim had a seamless world but it sucked, because the developer's didn't bother with filling it with interesting things for the player to do.
- Dragon Age Inquisition had a segmented world but it sucked because it had the same problem as Skyrim.
- Fallout New Vegas had a seamless world and it was excellent, because the developers actually made an effort of giving it structure and filling it with sufficient interesting content.
- Baldur's Gate II had a segmented world and it was excellent for the same reason as Fallout New Vegas.
And so on...

So, again, what seems to be the problem here?

 

[lazygecko]

The thing that bothers me the most by far in single seamless open world design is how overly compressed individual regions end up feeling due to design compromises. A world like Skyrim has no real majesty to it. "The great plains" surrounding Whiterun can't really live up to its name when you can always see the city close by within walking distance. Overall such a design just fails to capture the majesty needed to properly convey a northern region like that.

Zoned off instances have a better chance of giving the impression of a realistic world scale.

 

[Seanspeed]

I guess I was under the impression it was all one map, too. Which I honestly prefer.

But that's ok. Not even close to a deal breaker.

The thing that bothers me the most by far in single seamless open world design is how overly compressed individual regions end up feeling due to design compromises. A world like Skyrim has no real majesty to it. "The great plains" surrounding Whiterun can't really live up to its name when you can always see the city close by within walking distance. Overall such a design just fails to capture the majesty needed to properly convey a northern region like that.

Zoned off instances have a better chance of giving the impression of a realistic world scale.

Zoned off area design often has the same problems along with others when it comes to the believability of the world.

 

[Denton]

The thing that bothers me the most by far in single seamless open world design is how overly compressed individual regions end up feeling due to design compromises. A world like Skyrim has no real majesty to it. "The great plains" surrounding Whiterun can't really live up to its name when you can always see the city close by within walking distance. Overall such a design just fails to capture the majesty needed to properly convey a northern region like that.

Zoned off instances have a better chance of giving the impression of a realistic world scale.

I have to quote this legendary write up again:

You are Krutor, a wild barbarian from the land of Morkroch. You have travelled a very long journey, across high mountains to the famous imperial city of Lhota, the capitol of the world and largest agglomeration in the known universe, whose fame touches the stars.

The city consists of precisely fifteen buildings (one of which is the imperial palace); the town is inhabited by 30 NPCs, including Emperor Lojza, Archmage Lotrando and all of the members of the guilds of thieves, mages and warriors.

You visit the emperor, who sits alone in the throne hall, and he assigns you with an quest. The land is terrorised by an evil dragon from hell and Lojza is powerless. He has sent an entire imperial army against it, but the monster has killed all five soldiers. Now, he needs a hero like you! You have to find and climb the mystical mountain, Lohen, on which no human has ever set foot, and behead the dragon.

You accept the quest and set out from the town gate. The mystic mountain Lohen is precisely 150 metres from the gate and is about 50 metres high. All of the inhabitants of the city are either retarded, blind or crippled if they have not managed to notice it for centuries. After an approximately 30-metre walk to the mountain, you come to ‘no man’s land’ and are attacked by bandits. During another 120m walk to the peak, you also notice an ancient fortress Rumloch, a secret dungeon of doom and a bandit hideout. At the peak of the mountain, you kill a one-hundred-metre dragon by beating its foot with a rusty sword and drinking potions. Then, you rob the corpses of the imperial army (all five) and on the way back to the castle are killed by a wild boar.

Welcome to an average RPG.

http://warhorsestudios.cz/index.php?page=blog&entry=blog_011&lang=en

 

[geordiemp]

so like Dragon Age Inquisition
I'm ok with that as long as minimal fetch quest like DAI

Prefer areas more than open world - probably helps the game run better as they can load in each map so no streaming.

Would be happy if all games had say 10 maps like dragon age Inquisition - the view on the collectables is a totally different argument

 

[blueteainfusion]

With their talk of the world being triple/quadruple the size of Skyrim, there's literally no way that it isn't either empty and lifeless, or filled with repeatable throwaway sidequests. It's simple logistics at work here.

20% bigger than Skyrim is all they ever claimed. As for the interesting stuff density, we shall see. I myself remain optimistic after reading the demo impressions.

 

[lazygecko]

I guess I was under the impression it was all one map, too. Which I honestly prefer.

But that's ok. Not even close to a deal breaker.


Zoned off area design often has the same problems along with others when it comes to the believability of the world.

I think generally with zones it's easier to fake a good sense of scale over the distant inaccessible areas, and I think especially if you use something like a world map travel system inbetween zones it leaves more to the imagination which goes a long way. Fallout 1 and 2 felt a lot more grand to me compared to 3 and New Vegas.

 

[His Majesty]

Alright, here is a map to clear some things up. Novigrad and No Man's Land are one map, Skellige is the other map and fast travel is the only method of going from one map to the other. People are undoubtedly very sad that they won't be able to reach Skellige from Novigrad by sailing five minutes at the speed of light but that's how it is for the sake of geographical realism. Besides these two main maps, there's also the prologue map and probably some instanced areas part of the story.

I'm really confused as to what the problem is here.

 

[HK-47]

I cant sail at relativistic speeds? Fuck this game.

 

[immortal-joe]

Yes this was mentioned way back when the very first trailer was revealed. You basically take the concept of "zones" as defined by the previous 2 games, then increase their size many times over.

 

[Turin Turambar]

Yeah, no so fast people.

I doubt it's going to be like a map pieced into 12-13 "very big" areas like DA:Inquisition.

I think it's more

1. tutorial-prologue area. It seems it's separate from the rest. And even then it's sizeable, journalists couldn't finish it in the 3 hours they had in the past event.
2. Main continent area. The real map. 2/3 of the game.
3. Skellige Archipelago. The other part of the game. 1/3 of the game. You take a boat from the continent to go from the continent to the islands. That's the only "loading area" separation between level the game will have.

That magazine? They just played what every other game journalist played: first they played the prologue area, and then later the devs switched them to the main island in Skellige. They don't even got to see the main map, the continent. I think the writer just jumped to conclusions.

 

[antisoulless]

I like video games.

 

[GravityMan]

This has been known from the beginning. There is no "false advertising" and no "problem" of any kind...CDPR was clear from the start that there would be a few huge zones.

The only "fail" here is the folks on this forum who haven't been paying attention. Perhaps they should look in the mirror and get their eyes and ears checked.

 

[HeelPower]

why do people put so much stock on technical seamlessness ?

It doesn't have to be one giant blob of land to be "open world".

Would GTAV not be open world if there is slight loading between areas every now and then ?

And then you got truly seamless games like Dark Souls that people refer to as "metroidvania" and not "open world"

Useless,meaningless terms.

 

[erawsd]

With their talk of the world being triple/quadruple the size of Skyrim, there's literally no way that it isn't either empty and lifeless, or filled with repeatable throwaway sidequests. It's simple logistics at work here.

I'm sure there is some empitiness. They've said that they are trying to create a game world that is both large and believable. For instance, the Capital City of Skyrim where the kingdom and the majority of the worlds people live is represented in the game with like a dozen buildings and maybe 30 people.

By comparison the largest city in Witcher 3 is this:

I doubt you'll be able to enter ever home but their goal is to create game worlds that aren't completely contrary to the lore. Its more similar to the Rockstar approach to world building than Skyrim or Dragon Age.

 

[Daffy Duck]

This has been known from the beginning. There is no "false advertising" and no "problem" of any kind...CDPR was clear from the start that there would be a few huge zones.

The only "fail" here is the folks on this forum who haven't been paying attention. Perhaps they should look in the mirror and get their eyes and ears checked.

Care to point that out?

As a newbie to the series, and reading about this game this year, from the hands on previews and the videos I've seen so far they said its a massive open world, in my eyes that equals one thing.

Sorry I've not followed this game from day 1 announcement.

 

[MattKeil]

Alright, here is a map to clear some things up. Novigrad and No Man's Land are one map, Skellige is the other map and fast travel is the only method of going from one map to the other. People are undoubtedly very sad that they won't be able to reach Skellige from Novigrad by sailing five minutes at the speed of light but that's how it is for the sake of geographical realism. Besides these two main maps, there's also the prologue map and probably some instanced areas part of the story.

I'm really confused as to what the problem is here.

Quoted for emphasis.

So much nonsense sparked by one badly phrased sentence in a German gaming magazine.

Care to point that out?

As a newbie to the series, and reading about this game this year, from the hands on previews and the videos I've seen so far they said its a massive open world, in my eyes that equals one thing.

Sorry I've not followed this game from day 1 announcement.

See above, as has been mentioned numerous times on each page of this thread. There are two main areas, one being the size of Skyrim and the other being the size of all of The Witcher 2 combined. You cannot ride a boat in realtime from one to the other. That's it. This is not Dragon Age 3, this is not Baldur's Gate, this is not any of that. Both areas are bigger than many other "true" open world games. It is a non-story.

 

[MatrixMan.EXE]

Care to point that out?

As a newbie to the series, and reading about this game this year, from the hands on previews and the videos I've seen so far they said its a massive open world, in my eyes that equals one thing.

Sorry I've not followed this game from day 1 announcement.

It is open world. It's just that one of the regions you're exploring is so far away from the other in context of the worlds law that it only makes sense for them to make it a place you fast travel to. No point adding miles upon miles of empty woodland just in the name of technical seamlessness.

 

[Jac_Solar]

But, according to most game play videos shown so far, you're playing on at least one huge landmass that's easily the size of Skyrim's world - the one with the huge tree in the middle. It sounds as if that's not an open world area, though, so how will that work? Will there be invisible walls? Or is multi region just referring to the 3 landmasses?

 

[Blastoise]

I just want to be able to walk to the mountain in the distance.

 

[ScepticMatt]

But, according to most game play videos shown so far, you're playing on at least one huge landmass that's easily the size of Skyrim's world - the one with the huge tree in the middle. It sounds as if that's not an open world area, though.

wrong. It's open and without loading screen.
Edit: saw your edit:

Or is multi region just referring to the 3 landmasses?

2 big landmasses. 64 km^2 and 72.25 km^2 map size - compared to 37.1 km^2 in Skyrim.

I just want to be able to walk to the mountain in the distance.

you can do that.

 

[markot]

No. Itll be an open world game with combat even worse then elder scrolls.

I mean, ive always thought elder scrollses combat was just too fluid and not crap.

 

[RedSwirl]

As I understand it, other than the tutorial area, Witcher 3 will have two separate "main" maps, and each one will be of a size comparable to Skyrim.

The maps in this game however will be less dense than Skyrim in terms of settlements and the empty space between them. That No Man's Land map is probably only going to have one "city" -- Novigrad, surrounded by wilderness and a bunch of small towns. That one city however is supposed to have like 2,000 NPCs as opposed to the cities in Skyrim that each have like 50-100. It's supposed to make the scale of the game feel a little bit more realistic.

It's also probably because the scale of the map is balanced around horseback travel instead of on-foot travel. A good comparison might be Red Dead, which has a lot of empty space between each town, just enough to where one isn't visible from another, but it doesn't feel boring because you get from place to place on horseback.

 

[silvermember]

With their talk of the world being triple/quadruple the size of Skyrim, there's literally no way that it isn't either empty and lifeless, or filled with repeatable throwaway sidequests. It's simple logistics at work here.

Not that I don't disagree with you, but considering the amount it cost to make games in NA vs Poland, theoretically they could have a small team designed to make less DA I quest.

It seems to me that bioware did not have the resources aka money to make an open world game.

 

[Gurgelhals]

Not that I don't disagree with you, but considering the amount it cost to make games in NA vs Poland, theoretically they could have a small team designed to make less DA I quest.

It seems to me that bioware did not have the resources aka money to make an open world game.

The developers have stressed that their approach to world design wasn't "let's just create a huge open world and worry about filling it with things for the player to do later" (this is clearly the way Bethesda and Bioware did it with Skyrim and DA:I respectively and it shows).

Instead, they went the other way around: Define the major plot points and developments as well as the associated quests and sidequests first and then determine the kind of world you need to be able to realise all of that. So I'm still cautiously optimistic that they're going to fulfill their promises. I also wonder, however, whether it is logistically possible to create such a huge world and not have it feel empty and lifeless. Still, they have cited New Vegas and Gothic as examples of open world design done right, so at least they've chosen the right games as their role models.

 

[Seanspeed]

I think generally with zones it's easier to fake a good sense of scale over the distant inaccessible areas, and I think especially if you use something like a world map travel system inbetween zones it leaves more to the imagination which goes a long way. Fallout 1 and 2 felt a lot more grand to me compared to 3 and New Vegas.

I suppose it depends on your imagination. For me, my imagination isn't quite fooled by warping to a different zoned off area. I am well aware it happened and I subsequently cannot get the 'I'm in cordoned off 'x' zone' out of my mind when I think about my location in the world. It feels very deliberate and somewhat immersion breaking and I don't think my imagination really helps fill in the gaps very well.

 

[Loakum]

They said repeatedly in various videos, that to get from point A to point B, would take anywhere from 15-20 minutes on horseback at full gallop. That sounds like a pretty big ass map to me.

 

[Varna]

I'm praying for the combat to be good. Great quest and nice areas to explore can only do so much. I haven't been able to do a second run of TW2 because as soon as any heavy fighting starts I lose all interest.

Say what you want about DA:I, but the combat is nice and responsive. It has good hit detection and feedback. It's serviceable. Leagues better then anything TW series has provided.

 

[plasmawave]

What does that mean?

It's going to be more like STALKER.

 

[Ostinatto]

So it's bigger than Skyrim but is not an open world game?

I will wait for the quick look.

 

[tuxfool]

I suppose it depends on your imagination. For me, my imagination isn't quite fooled by warping to a different zoned off area. I am well aware it happened and I subsequently cannot get the 'I'm in cordoned off 'x' zone' out of my mind when I think about my location in the world. It feels very deliberate and somewhat immersion breaking and I don't think my imagination really helps fill in the gaps very well.

But you're ok with fast travel systems?

 

[0.1.1.2.3.5.8.13.21.34.55]

Haters gonna hate
Players gonna play

 

[Gurthang]

Will Vizima be in it or not? I really want to visit it.

 

[Berserker976]

In Skyrim, everything within the actual world, such as caves, towns, etc... were all instanced, so I'm not sure what all the complaints are for. There was also a serious lack of variety between environments. You've got forest, and then you've got slightly covered in snow forest.

I know how cool it is to hate on Skyrim here, but come on. Skyrim was way more than "forest" and "snowy forest."On topic, this did actually surprise me a bit, I guess I haven't been following the game very closely, because I was under the impression that it was going to be fully open world.

I don't think that breaking up your world into several large "zones" is necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, it's just a design choice. It gives you some benefits (greater environmental diversity, the ability to make your game span more of the world, etc.) and it has some drawbacks (less cohesive world, divided sense of "place", etc.)

Personally I tend to prefer the large, immersive worlds more, but DA:I really did impress me, so I'm a bit torn on how to feel.

 

[tuxfool]

Will Vizima be in it or not? I really want to visit it.

No. It isn't in the same region. They have publicly stated that Novigrad is the only city in the game.

 

[swazzyswess]

With their talk of the world being triple/quadruple the size of Skyrim, there's literally no way that it isn't either empty and lifeless, or filled with repeatable throwaway sidequests. It's simple logistics at work here.

I can't believe how many people are buying into the hype and thinking that somehow CDPR is going to reinvent the wheel and avoid using boring/pointless quests to fill their huge world.

I want the game to be fantastic, but I'm also kind of looking forward to the fallout when people realize it was foolish to think a medium-sized developer could outdo even Bethesda and Rockstar and make a huge game with nothing but quality, can't-skip-it-because-it's-so-good content.

 

[Lingitiz]

This is actually good news to me. I really liked the way they set up the regions in TW2, so if they do that but bigger I'm all for it. It's different from Dragon Age since the large regions in that game had no main story quests in them.

 

[blueteainfusion]

No. It isn't in the same region. They have publicly stated that Novigrad is the only city in the game.

I recently heard them talking about two big cities, plus this.

 

[whatsinaname]

This is actually good news to me. I really liked the way they set up the regions in TW2, so if they do that but bigger I'm all for it. It's different from Dragon Age since the large regions in that game had no main story quests in them.

I'll have to agree. They could set up a quest like Mystic River with the "limited" area sizes across three chapters in Witcher 2. Imagine what they can do with the scale they have available in Witcher 3.

 

[Some Nobody]

Maybe is like Kingdoms of Amalur. Now I don't know how big Skyrim is but Kingdom is huuuuuge.

I can only hope. I also liked Kingdom's map better than Dragon Age Inquisition--one zone just loaded into the other instead of just taking you to a giant ass map. It wasn't seamless, presumably because of available memory, but it was close enough.

And, we've known this for QUITE SOME TIME. I don't know what the difference is (never played Skyrim), so I'm not sure why so many people are ticked.

Solstheim

I kind of prefer an actual open world.

I saw the map of Amalur earlier in the thread and felt genuine anxiety. Please no.

I....what?

 

[tuxfool]

I recently heard them talking about two big cities, plus this.

Well it could be, but it seems unlikely. I doubt they have the manpower to do two fully modeled cities. The Emperor scene may be a onetime story area.

 

[IdreamofHIME]

Saw this coming from the start, i still find it strange people expect it to be one seamless world.
That goes against the other 2 games and i just can't imagine the current consoles pulling that off...yet.

 

[StrongBlackVine]

I have my concerns about TW3, but this is such non-issue to me. Not sure why it is causing such disappointment. Is it just because you will occasionally have a loading screen?

 

[Kyoufu]

Not bothered by this. My concern is if the combat will be fun.

 

[CosmicQueso]

Nothing in either Witcher game felt constricting in any way. I trust these guys know what they're doing.