Alby_da_Wolf said:
OK, it won't be perfect, but I'd say what I read is more than enough to confirm TW3 in my wishlist.
About Gothic, just a few things I don't like:
- although I like the attack control scheme, not having shields I'd have preferred a one-button control to parry;
with the mouse button + direction key attack scheme, circling and attacking with melee weapons makes only possible to do attacks with sideways slashes, as you need to hold a side direction button to circle the enemy facing it, this also makes impossible to circle and strafe the enemies with ranged weapons, as they require the forward key to attack , and unlike melee weapons, they require to prepare the bow first with the mouse button, THEN shot with forward direction key, so you cannot start an attack with them while still moving, not a terrible flaw, though, as circle and attack is only really almost necessary with trolls and they are immune to arrows;
- another little flaw is that non-human and non-humanoid enemy attacks can only be dodged, not parried, and if you don't time your dodging move well, they have a 100% chance to hit you, while you don't get that even with 100% weapon proficiency, and dodging isn' perfect in another way, at least with orcs, skeletons, snappers, dragon snappers and fire lizards, unlike what would be logical, stepping back gives a greater chance to dodge the attack than stepping sideways (actually maybe that's true also with other enemies, but when you have the longest reach and most powerful one and two-handed swords and axes, you can disrupt their attacks and quicly kill them attacking first, a thing impossible with the strongest enemies, as they have longer reach and they are still alive and able to quickly strike back even after receiving the strongest blows).
Naturally I don't complain having enemies still challenging even after becoming very strong, neither I complain about complex controls, I just complain about a few design choices that make dodging less realistic and some attacks or defences more difficult or impossible, wasting a little of the potential the game has with its combat where stats only influence the damage dealt, but once reached master proficiency with a weapon class, it's the player's skill that really decides success against the strongest enemies;
- another flaw is that, at least in Gothic II, the latest unofficial patch, while fixing all the worst bugs remaining, broke some sidequests, or in some cases, just some steps of them;
- final flaw for me, I'd have liked GII world to be larger, when you're still weak it looks larger, but when you're strong, and you can take shortcuts without being killed by the strongest enemies, you realise the world is quite small, and if you have played Gothic I before, in the Valley of Mines you'll see they cut away quite large parts of it, you can still reach them climbing over mountains, but they are totally empty and deserted, what a waste!
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The combat in the Gothic series takes a lot of getting used to and I dare say that most mainstream gamers of today who are used to more modern and "streamlined" combat mechanics (or no combat system at all, the "press button to mindlessly whack" recipe has become the biggest thing now) would not approve. In Gothic 1 and 2, it was very easy to side-step incoming strikes and charges from beasts, making it a circular dance with strikes to the enemy flank until they died, by my 3rd playthrough, I had the timing down so I could easily kill an Orc Scout a few levels higher than me using only a branch and no armor and this technique.
In Gothic 3, you are punished badly for missing the stride or distance and when a foe manages to land a strike, you are often staggered and open to several strikes in rapid succession. Enemies are also vulnerable to this though, which made almost every single arena fight, except the very hardest ones against the Hashishin, a breeze, beasts are a lot more challenging in G3 though, compared to G1 and G2.
In The Witcher 3, you can move faster and further than in Gothic and movements make more sense and are a lot more responsive. People who complain about the controls must be having trouble on the user end of things, I haven't had any issues with it. Combat is difficult and often frustrating but all the more rewarding when you down a challenging foe, whereas in TES games and even the Gothic series, murdering almost everything in your path becomes too easy at some point.
I enjoy the sense of peril, but I can see how some would not. The V.A.T.S system in the Fallout games also bothered me a great deal; it was way overpowered and enabled massive critical damage with poor weapons against rather tough foes, ammo is too plentiful and the healing is too simplified as well, I never got the sense that I was in mortal danger when I carried 150 stimpacks that could insta-heal any and all injury while the game was paused in the inventory.
Not unlike regenerating health in shooters, I find that it takes something away from the game, confrontations becomes nuisance or routine rather than a task that offers challenge and required thought and tactic.
This is the problem with developers who want their RPG's to attain a larger audience; they make these large scale, grand and expensive productions with plenty of mechanics and possibilities but then add a bunch off hand-holding, deus ex machina spells, gear or plot twists and decide that most gamers are either too stupid or too timid to accept a proper challenge.
Yes, there are higher difficulty modes in most of these games, but that doesn't change the fact that the game was designed from the core to appeal to a segment of gamers who would not want to play it on a higher setting, which makes the jumps in difficulty unfitting and unnatural in many cases, and they often rely on cheap tricks and downright cheats or exploits to make things harder.
I've never had this feeling in The Witcher 3, instead I see a game brimming with mechanics that were clearly intended for presenting the audience with a proper challenge, and the consequences from quest decisions and choices are also a lot more tangible and real than in any other title in the same genre I ever played, which only adds to this tension.
Mass Effect had the right idea in those instances where you were more or less forced to choose who dies, but it was also quite arbitrary at times and often didn't make a whole lot of sense on the whole, and the Paragon system was extremely black & white, which is among on of Bioware's biggest faults in game and character design, they seem to have forgotten that they ever made two of the best RPG's in history (Baldur's gate I and II).
Geralt of Rivia is not an evil character or a good character and there's really nothing you can do in the game to make him clearly either; instead he is presented as a gray character who is more unpredictable and not locked in a system where choices and consequences are always crystal clear, the same goes for a lot of other characters in the game; very rarely have I come across people I could classify in a sense of good or bad, or good or evil if you will.
This is not the case at all in Skyrim, Mass Effect or Fallout, but to a greater extent in Gothic (yes, I find the Gothic series to be superior to TES).
Again; I understand the complaints people have but I still find many of them hollow and even somewhat surreal when reading the alternatives and suggestions or opinions on titles that supposedly did certain aspects better. From any objective standpoint, The Witcher 3 should be admired and praised for what it is; a great open-world RPG from a studio that is going against norm and convention, whether or not someone likes it. I'm not a huge fan of the Gears of War games, but I still recognize their value and the deserved praise for what they are; great 3rd person shooters.
CDProjekt are in some ways the Piranha Bytes of Poland and we should be glad that not only the same old RPG's franchises from the same developers manage to sell decent numbers, breadth and variation is the key to a healthy industry and CDProjekt have even proven that you don't need a 50-100 million dollar budget to create something grand with high production values (yes, Polish salaries are obviously lower than American or English ones, but not nearly that much lower, there is clearly something fishy in the development process of some major developers).
PS: If anyone wants to use glitches and bugs as an argument as to why TW3 is below Skyrim or Gothic 3 or similar games; please don't. TES games are notorious for bugs, huge ones at that, Fallout is almost worse and Gothic 3 was literally unplayable until the second major patch came out.
