Errorist76 said:
JinxRake said: I'm on my NG+ now, Deathmarch run for the platinum...and doing every single sidequest and POI on the map that I've already done the previous playthrough. I love little bits of follow up quests that just take a few minutes but complete a bit of the story in a way that I do not expect. I tell some peasant to start burning bodies taken by the plague or he'll get sick and later on run into him in some remote part of the world, sick of the plague because he didn't listen to me. I heal some girl by giving her a risky potion of mine, and her boyfriend tells me later on that she's alive but vegetative, which is an awesome way of building a persistent, believable world. I find an old couple somewhere in the woods and they're perfectly well and happy, thriving. I explore their home and discover they're cannibals preying on the lost and weary. It's all so engrossing and absorbing. I got bored of Skyrim in the first ten hours and I gave that game so many chances. I played it on the PS3, played it on PC, modded it, retried it on the PS4. It feels as if I need to dig out my fun from the Elder Scrolls games, piece by piece. Same for Fallout 4, even if I did enjoy Fallout 3 previously. I got bored with Dragon Age: Inquisition in just a few hours, even if I did enjoy Origins in the past. The Witcher 3 is the first Witcher game that I've fully enjoyed of the series, and the first RPG that I feel so engrossed in since Gothic 2. There's, of course, no accounting for taste in this. Yours is just...bad, I guess. (The above is a joke, of course). |
Exactly...that's what made the Witcher games always so encrossing. They were the first were your actions have actual consequences, sometimes severe ones, which you find out many hours later sometimes. Huge example being the Red Baron quest line, one of the best quest lines in RPG history imho. I had to replay hours of the game because I couldn't cope with the consequences of my decision. The Witcher, unlike most other "western RPGs" doesn't paint a black and white picture, good and evil, it shows, like reality, there is mostly a grey area and what is right or wrong always depends on the perspective.
One of the reasons why I like this series more than most other games on the market.
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Exactly.
And yes, some quests lead nowhere once you finish them, but that's what makes them great. Worldbuilding is supposed to feel natural and seamless, and you just discover little by little how the world works, how the people live, how the nobility live, how the nonhumans are treated. It feels great to just slip under the waters of the story and enjoy the mood.
Also, after my first playthrough on Normal I was a bit disappointed about how overpowered I felt by the middle of the game. Just doing random POIs on the map got me so overleveled that I simply couldn't find a challenge anymore.
Now, on NG+ Deathmarch I run from a pack of wolves as if the whole of the Wild Hunt is chasing me through Hell and back. Even a simple bandit encounter feels great when I know I can get swarmed easily so I need to move, use my bombs, use my potions, use my oils at all times.
Sure, the mechanics of the game aren't terribly complex, but I fail to see how a more indepth fighting system would have improved the game significantly. There's Kingdom Come on the horizon for those people that prefer their RPGs on the technical challenging side, but that doesn't seem to be for me.
Also, I'm back in Witcher after a long stay in Dark Souls 3 and a replay of Bloodborne...and I'm still enjoying the combat. I find it strange that so many people seem to have trouble with it.