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SvennoJ on 23 May 2015
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Mummelmann said:


You didn't recall the lock-on button; that's not really the game's fault, is it?
The fact that you had no money, traps, bombs or oils just shows the nature of a true open-world game, one can stumble into encounters one can't handle, especially early on, I remember in Gothic 2 when I stumbled across two black Wargs when I was still only level 2; they tore me to shreds, same with the Snappers at the beginning. It had nothing to do with poor game design and everything to do with my ambition and lack of preparation.

If you had played the game on PC, you would be able to turn autosave off and you wouldn't suffer slow reloads.
This is the cost of getting ambitious games on inferior hardware on consoles, and I don't think we have much right to complain as long as we keep gaming on consoles, knowing these limitations. Rockstar games have huge technical limitations on consoles, yet people buy them in droves and it doesn't detract from the fact that they are great games.

As for starting at the bottom; this is the nature of almost all RPG's series, Mass Effect is the exact same, the story elements and past decisions carry over but you only get small bonuses for past games and essentially have to start over from scratch again, yet this wasn't really a huge point for complaints for this series.

To all those new players to the series with no save games or knowledge from the past two games, would it makes sense for an RPG to start you off in a brand new game at a higher level? Isn't a huge part of the whole RPG experience building your way up from the bottom and becoming something more? I know it is to me, I'd hate to have that initial part of development taken away from my control, they would also need to have made quite a few decisions for the player before you begin, such as assigning skills and signs, which would limit an already somewhat limited character arc since you can't make your own character for the game.
Most RPG's are full of NPC's and companions with flamboyant and impressive back stories, despite these characters being low level of perhaps even complete newbies.

I guess what I'm thinking here is that I don't really see that you're a lot of having huge issues that are the game's fault in and on themselves, but rather had an expecation that the game would be something it isn't. I know I told more than one friend that they should not buy this if they're looking for another Skyrim since the two are quite far apart besides both being open-world.

You've got to start somewhere...
Explaining all the buttons in the prologue, than not presenting any opportunities to use them for 2 hours, that's bad game design.
Relying on manual saves, reload on death, that's archaic game design.
Clunky movement, taking control away in cutscenes is not neccesary nowadays.
Sure starting out as a penniless lvl 1 is the usual fare in rpg's, that doesn't make it less immersion braking to play a hero that has all his abilities taken away. I did complete the witcher 2 multiple times (on pc though) and it simply feels wrong to start out at the bottom again. Have me beg for coins for doing simple tasks. I did opt to simulate a witcher 2 save, not sure if that did anything?

Graphics keep getting better yet gameplay remains the same old.
A map littered with repetitive points of interest, tons of mandatory sidequests to detract you from the story, it's all the same old busy work. Handholding you step by step on quests, it feels like Dark souls never happened.

I'm sorry for directing this at The witcher 3, yet when a rpg sits at 93 in metacritic, I merely observe it's not for its gameplay. For me this game does feel very similar to Skyrim.

It's hampered by being a sequal ofcourse, people don't like gameplay changes within a series. Mass Effect changed into more of shooter, and they lost me. But the witcher wasn't open world so they didn't really need to put all the standard open world busy work gameplay in there. Get rid of the reliance on the mini map, let me ask npcs for directions instead of quest markers. Use landmarks for directions, smoke rising out of the forest to indicate a place of interest. Sound to lure me somewhere. Instead of static ? locations with little groups of enemies, add more dynamic encounters. RDR was on the right path, W3 is a step back.

Anyway I'm enjoying the game as it is. It's just that I see this amazingly immersive hand crafted open world, and then the same old non immersive gameplay. If you keep moving your right foot forward while leaving your left firmly in place, at some point it's gonna hurt!