26 hours in, exploring Velen. I have to say I didn't like Gwint at first (dice poker was so simple and required much less thought, so it was a nice break from more complicated aspects of the previous games as opposed to Gwint), but now that I played more of the game I'm starting to get into that as well. I wouldn't be surprised if one day CD Projekt released a standalone digital version of Gwint, maybe even going as far as making physical decks. I'm not that much into these things and they usually end being quite expensive in the long run anyway (same as stuff like Warhammer), but I'm sure there would be plenty of others who would grab it. Not sure if I got your invite, as I have 3 of them from: "feartheend", "infinitez3ro" and "seth5051" only. I really hope GOG eventually adds a proper friend-adding system where you can just type the person's username in and select from the results. Nice. :lol: Though this reminds me of some of the drawbacks of the English translation - the translated names of some things are just silly. In this case, in the books Geralt has always named his horses "Płotka". In the Polish language the only meaning of the word "płotka" is that of the "roach" fish. In English however, that noun has several different meanings and arguably the most common one would be the shortened form of "cockroach". In this situation, wouldn't it just be best to leave the original name? Also, isn't it a general rule of most translations that names of characters (well, in this case a horse) are not supposed to be translated? Moreover, the English translated names of the various monsters actually remove a significant part of the context and atmosphere of the series. Utopiec (or topielec), południca, północnica (or nocnica), bies, and leszy are all very old creatures/spirits from Polish folklore (many of them appear in the mythology of other Slavic countries too, especially other North Slavs). Yet in the English version they have been translated as drowner, noonwraith, nightwraith, fiend, and leshen respectively. It's understandable that some names just have to be altered to make them easier to pronounce for the English-speaking actors, but to completely translate them and thus partially remove the ties to what they were inspired by? They actually left vodyanoi (another species in the Witcher world that is inspired by Slavic legends) as it is in the English dub, so why couldn't they have just changed what I mentioned earlier into: utopyets, poludnitsa, pulnotsnitsa, byes, and leshy too? Phonetic spelling is a better solution since it leaves more or less the original names without making it impossible for Anglophones to remember and pronounce them. Yet what they chose is puzzling and inconsistent.
No, I just finally got around to adding you. And yeah, Gwent's fun. I like how simple it is to get into, whereas the depth comes from counterplay and card synergy. They also did a good job keeping the number of major cards to a minimum, so you're not being constantly surprised by tons of bullshit (unlike anybody who tries getting into Magic: the Gathering). It is a little bit unbalanced, though. Especially how with no mana costs, there are plenty of cards that are really just worthless and objectively bad to have in your deck. There does seem to be an interesting sense of balance, like how Monsters have lots of low-power cards you can stack a deck full of to play all at once, or how each race seems to have specific strengths in some areas (like Northern Kingdoms having good siege units, Nilfgaard having good Archers, etc.). As for the translations, eh. It makes more sense. There are already plenty of names and things to keep track of in these kinds of games; it's a hell of a lot easier to remember names based on actual words than it is to remember some transliterations of a bunch of slavic names.
Most of the side quests in the whole game? Are you sure? My brother has spent 70+ hours on it now and he still hasn't yet set foot on any of the Skellige Islands. He has it on Steam. I've heard GOG Galaxy has been eating up hours played in W3 for many people. All I've personally been getting were delays in how it updates, that is up until now - "GOG Galaxy has stopped working" just after I quit the game. Looks like I lost about 5 hours of game-time tracked as it's still on 26 hours. I wouldn't be surprised if it ate some of your game-time too. And I really hope they fix this as it's one of those Steam-like features that I really love. With open world games especially, it is nice to see how much time you spend playing them. Ok, got it and accepted now. Yeah, that sums it up pretty well. I once got a free copy of one of the video games based on Magic: the Gathering and had absolutely no idea what was going on. Well, when you put it that way... you have a very fair point. I wrote about the voice actors, yet I didn't even think about how it affects foreign gamers. I never looked at it like that since to me it was always just translators (in some aspects) butchering the source material. Though I do think the acting is top-notch in the English version, the idea of hearing all those characters speak English instead of Polish (with British, American or German accents) is baffling to me. It's a lot like translating a game or movie set in the Wild West to another language and getting rid of all the accents, regional dialects and jargon. On the one hand it's awesome because more people from all over the world get to experience it, but on the other it takes away part of the work's native soul. The only reason CD Projekt can even manage to pull off so many translations of the game into various languages is firstly because they're brilliant and secondly because the original books are fantasy that the vast majority of foreign audiences are simply not familiar with in the slightest (minus the few continental European countries that got translations of the full series).
Hahaha. Well, I do generally start fast traveling once I've been through an area a few times, skim my way through the occasional mundane non-critical conversation, and I'm generally a pretty fast player when I set my mind to it. I haven't quite checked every nook and cranny for the quests in Velen and Novigrad, but there are plenty of ones that you just can't do (level too high) unless you go to Skellige and get the crazy amounts of XP that story missions give, or spend a stupid amount of time grinding towards. Unless he's literally going to every question mark on the map and clearing out literally every monster den, every bandit camp, etc. then I can't imagine myself taking 50+ hours before Skellige. All I can really say is that I skip a lot of the treasure hunts (only fully upgraded one set of Witcher gear, and I have plenty of coin to not need every level 10 goose chase I run across), I did all of the side and Witcher quests within my level, didn't do the Gwent quests yet, and chased just about every exclamation point I found, and I was still at about 40 hours when I went to Skellige. Well that's the point; you guys still get the Glоґюцs Slavic "soul", the rest of the world gets a game that actually makes any sense to them without having to take a preliminary online Slavic Mythos course to prepare for the game. We're still getting a vibrant world full of an active and detailed culture; a lot of the sayings ("A witcher never dies in his own bed") and ideas still come through, and they're still great games for it. Maybe it's sad that the rest of the world might not get to appreciate the relatability that you get, but to be honest, they probably would never appreciate it like you would, since it caters to you in the same way that having a Clint Eastwood Geralt caters to Western audiences. Also, just as an example of stuff that doesn't carry over well, I had to look up what the hell the "Law of Surprise" was the first time I heard it, along with probably everyone else who doesn't study Slavic Mythology. Also, probably nothing new, but ZP naturally reviewed the game. Entertaining review, gave it the rare recommendation. Click the image. Spoiler "Ride here, kill the monsters, craft that, punch these blokes, drink this, wipe that on your sword, wipe your cock off on a bedsheet, fight a Griffon we have practically nailed to the floor for you, any fucking questions?" "Just one. Why do you keep trying to make me play Magic: The Gathering?"
Ahh, well that explains it. Though if you ever had the GOG Galaxy client failing on you during or just after a session, you did lose all the game-time tracked during that session, but the more you play the less of a difference such errors make in the total time spent anyway (assuming you even encountered such issues). Indeed, but if the English version was truer to the original and consequently less accessible, imagine how rewarding it would be to play with all the background knowledge? On top of that add reading the books. Side characters like Keira Metz (and probably many others I'll encounter later on when focusing more on the main quests) or even key characters like Emhyr and Ciri are almost completely alien to those who haven't read the books, even if they played both of the previous games. It's one of those things that does require some previous knowledge to gain a better understanding of regardless, but if you dedicate the time needed for that you get a significantly deeper and more engrossing experience. I guess so, although I can't say I agree 100% with the comparison at least when it comes to Geralt's views. Though your reference to Clint Eastwood reminds me of how the gameplay of W3 is an awesome mix of Red Dead Redemption and Gothic 3 (though with a different combat system, more focus on choice & consequence and of course its own world). I've probably already said it, but it's worth repeating. :lol: Cool, does it have spoilers? I don't really look at the Escapist much anymore ever since Jim Sterling and Bob Chipman departed from it, but some of Yatzhee's reviews are still pretty fun to watch.
I just checked back on the forums here since I remember there was a threat about this game and I just want to say I think it is amazing, easily the best RPG I've ever played and sitting at 3rd place in best games ever after the two obvious ones. The atmosphere, the characters, facial expressions, the graphics, it's just absolutely amazing. It really has this great vibe to it. I remember riding out into the Velen woods at night with the gloomy ingame music and a full moon, wind and wolves howling as the grass bends in the wind... It's just so immersive and full of atmoshphere. Damn. On top of that it was produced by an amazing studio that seem to really care for the game, selling through gog and releasing free dlc. It's great to see that business strategy working out for them and being viable in these times of publisher-enforced exclusive day-1 unlocks and cut content.
Around 40 hours in and I still haven't even been to Novigrad. :lol: EDIT: Good to see you here Dark and I'm glad that you are enjoying the game as well, also Potarto I quoted your post to respond to a part of it and then accidentally read the first line on that list... Judging by story of the books, I guess it's not at all surprising that this is one of the options, but nevertheless I hate myself for spoiling that part. I'm a fucking idiot for forgetting that the formatting goes when you quote someone. Thankfully I didn't see anything else.
Aww shit, I had a feeling that somehow somebody would somehow get spoiled from that. I'll add a warning not to quote it just in case. And at least that's not too bad of a spoiler; the possibility is mentioned pretty early on, and there are still multiple endings.
Indeed, but it's only due to my sheer stupidity. Though if anyone else has a stupid day then it's probably best for that warning to stay.
Massive wall of text (rant) below... you have been warned. Spoiler So it looks like the debate about people of colour (or lack thereof) in W3 has sort of spiralled out of control. I think (but I may be wrong) that it all started with Polygon's review, which I read and remember was in parts very silly and simply not truthful about many of the gender/race issues in the game. CDP can be accused of being sexist in W1, but W3 is a completely different story and should be assessed on its own merits/drawbacks. Now we have even more articles about saying W3 is racist or exclusive, even one by Forbes. I'd be lying if I said I read all those arguments for the inclusion of more coloured people in W3, but from the ones I have read I can go as far as saying that some of them are downright offensive towards Poles. Those who assume that all "whites" are the same are just as bad as those who say that "blacks" are the same. All of this is very ethnocentric. Poland and much of Eastern Europe in general had almost no contact with black Africans throughout its history, we had no overseas colonies and we did not take part in the slave trade. Is it so surprising that something that is largely inspired by our medieval and pre-Christian roots doesn't fill Western "racial quotas"? The most visually distinct groups we had were some Middle Eastern merchants and Turkic peoples like the Tatars. The former did not settle in Poland and actually traded their technology/goods for Slavic slaves from Polish tribes before Poland was formed as a kingdom, whilst the latter mixed with the population and became a fairly integral part of it - they were never of a particularly dark complexion as to call them "black" like an African American (today most of them are "white" too and if not for some Turkic facial features, you would not be able to tell them apart from ethnic Poles). We don't have the "white guilt" of the "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" world and they have no right to force it on us, because we are a completely different culture. Although I can sympathise with the author of the article "Colorblind: On Witcher 3, Rust, and gaming's race problem" in that he feels underrepresented and marginalised in entertainment media and mass media in general, I've gotta say he is wrong in choosing W3 as an example. Here we finally have a game trilogy that is truly Polish, even though it is set in a fantasy world with inspiration from various different cultures, but the native language version of the game is as close as we have gotten to something that truly represents our culture in worldwide pop culture. So, in a world dominated by Western European and North American media, we finally get something that caters for the Polish audience, and Tauriq Moosa decides to pick on that? Seriously? Does he not realise that there are dozens of "white" nations that are sometimes just as underrepresented in the media and games industry as the many more "black" groups? The entire concept of grouping people as "white" and "black" is ridiculous to begin with as it ignores the huge degree of variation between the various cultures of the world; is South African "black" the same as Aboriginal Australian "black"? Is Belarusian "white" the same as French "white"? Do all the ethnic groups of the world that are slightly too dark-skinned to be considered "white" or slightly too pale-skinned to be considered "black" exist in some kind of void and should just never be talked about (like some Tatars, Native Americans, Romani, Kurds, Turks, Chinese, etc.)? Why can't we stick to referring to where individuals come from geographically and which sphere of culture they belong to, such as Southeastern European, North African, Southeast Asian, Central American, etc.? Sure, there are always exceptions and those are generalisations too that vary with context, but it's certainly better and more accurate than grouping us all into three or four abstract categories like "yellow", "white", "black" or "red". I could go and on about how wrong and insulting such arguments about W3 are, how all these people should give it a rest with their frankly quite insulting attitude (intentionally or not) towards Polish culture, but Bleja gets practically all of my points across in a much calmer and prettier manner in his article: "The Melting Pot and the Salad Bowl: Why the Witcher 3 is a step forward for ethnic diversity in games". Despite his self-image as a liberal, I actually agree with his view of multiculturalism (that it should be about embracing diversity and definitely not about making everyone look and act like the richest nations of the West) and I think he understands the whole concept better than any other "liberal" person I can think of. If anyone who hasn't been on this forum long enough to know some things about me reads this and misinterprets it, I have to point out that I say this as a libertarian socialist - not as a far right-winger who doesn't like seeing people of colour in his or her country and wants all borders to be strictly controlled. To be clear: I have absolutely nothing against the inclusion of "black" Africans in the Witcher 3. They exist in Sapkowski's world - most probably in Ofir and Zangwebar (to the Northern Kingdoms and Nilfgaard these two are distant lands on a distant continent that are basically the Witcher version of Africa). However, the only mention of a person of such skin colour in the books is as part of one character's wild fantasy. There are also people of a darker complexion in Zerrikania to the east, but they are not "black". So the inclusion of someone from a mysterious southern continent in the Northern Kingdoms would have to be a pretty damn unique event. The only way to do something like that in-game without fucking with the source material would be to make such an occasion feel very different and alien to the locals (not necessarily in a negative way but definitely as something exciting), as it would be to any North Slav in the Middle Ages and, hell, many Poles to this day who have never seen a black person in real life and can only rely on television or the internet. But then those who want us all to be the same kind of "white" or "black" would argue that it would be xenophobic and singling out! :lol: So the problem with marginalisation isn't exclusive to "black" people, it's an issue for many different nations of the world regardless of skin colour. I'd love to see more games based on Hindu or Native American culture and their mythology (and many other groups), but I bet that if we were to see such games no one would complain that they have no Europeans or Africans in them... but yeah, since Slavs are "white", we are automatically assessed by the same rules Western cultural imperialists set. So when we have our game, we get called racist because we didn't put enough black people in it. Jesus fucking Christ.
I do hope you realize that the main reason most people are even talking about this is because it's an absurd complaint to have. Also, might find this article interesting.
Indeed, but it doesn't help when some stupid Polish teenager leaves his very well thought-out response to the whole argument in broken English: "we dont want niggas in polish gaemz". Moreover, there are plenty of gamers from all over the world who are willing to defend W3's lack of black people but for all the wrong reasons - they are often the same people who harass game developers and journalists for saying something they don't agree with. It's nice, a very similar argument to what I linked to earlier in my post (this one). I feel the longer one gets the point across better and in greater detail though.
Open letter to the fans from CD Projekt RED co-founder Marcin Iwiński: Dear Gamers, May 19th was a crucial date for all of us here at CD PROJEKT RED -- we released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, our open world role-playing game that we had been hard at work on for over 3 years. Since day one, you have given us tons of positive feedback and support -- the sheer volume of emails we’ve gotten since launch simply congratulating us for our efforts is both epic and heartwarming, and I wish every developer comes to have such a fantastic community. In terms of media reception, we’re really humbled by the scores the game has received all around the world. With an average of 90+ on every platform, Wild Hunt is our dream coming true. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the four million gamers worldwide who bought The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in the first two weeks from launch. Four million RPG fans spending their hard-earned money on our game is a sign that we did something right, and you can be sure that we’ll harness all that positive energy and make the upcoming expansions worthy of the grand adventure that you’re telling us Wild Hunt already is! Until then, keep on enjoying Wild Hunt, do not forget to grab your weekly set of free DLCs, and stay tuned for constant updates and enhancement to the game we are continuously working on. Dandelion once said to Geralt that the world is changing, the sun is setting, and vodka’s running out -- go, play, and have fun! All the best, Marcin Iwiński Co-founder, CD PROJEKT RED Source: here. They also made one especially for Polish gamers, but I don't see much sense in posting it here since I am the only Pole who (frequently) visits this forum anyway.
I just started playing this game, and I'm really loving it! The world feels much more dynamic and open than skyrim so far.
Found this tidbit while browsing TW3 community stuffs: "Witcher 3 on PC reached 94% on Metacritic, and is now the second highest rated rpg of all time alongside Skyrim, Oblivion, Mass Effect 2 and Diablo. But their userscores are 8.0 (Skyrim, Oblivion) and 8.7 (Mass Effect, Diablo), while Witcher 3 has 9.1 so I think we can say it has overtaken them! Only Baldurs Gate 2 has a higher metascore with 95%. Congratulations CDP for this achievement!" TW3 PC Metacritic Page Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn Page
That's quite impressive, I was not expecting anything like that. Speaking of statistics and numbers and things, here is a short video that was uploaded by GOG today: [YOUTUBE]9vh5mxm5Jy8[/YOUTUBE]
Is your experience really that bad with it? I'm actually very impressed with how stable W3 is for me; considering the huge scale of the world and the amount of interactivity involved (along with the lack of loading screens whilst roaming), I'm tempted to say that this could be CD Projekt's most stable launch yet. Yes, there are some graphical hiccups every now and then as well as some minor bugs, and yes you will not be able to count them on one hand, but it's surprisingly more stable than Skyrim or Oblivion were on release (unless my memory fools me). And I haven't had a single crash yet - spanning over 60 hours of game time - which is something I can't say for any 3D Bethesda game released thus far without extensive patching. Though I'm aware that "your mileage may vary" with the amount of broken things you come across in sandbox games. However, one thing that has been very disappointing for almost everyone is how GOG Galaxy's game-time tracking keeps crashing (it has happened to me 5 times already). Back to the game itself, my biggest gripes with W3 so far are not related to its stability at all, they're actually just really minor but really stupid design choices or something that was overlooked (such as the lack of a quick-load feature - which becomes annoyingly obvious where there is a quick-save button, getting stuck in one of the sunken ships or not having any kind of storage available to stash all that awesome upgradable witcher gear). EDIT: Scratch that, today I just had my first one... and it wasn't one of those quick "back to desktop" ones but the same nasty kind that I used to get with Oblivion (required a restart) - only here it was after 67 hours of play in total (during a 2 hour session) as opposed to happening after the first 2 hours of the game like it did in Oblivion.
