Id say Witcher 3 brought the action RPG back to the forefront. Hopefully Cyberpunk 2077 will be just as good.

I liked the story, inovations in quest design, good characters and combat in TW3 - but I didn't like too horizontal world design, especially flatish design of whole Velen, Novigrad felt quite uninspired, bad quest directions (which in Velen, given how overgrown yet flat is, pretty much forced playing with POIs on), restricted interactions with NPCs and most of all general feel that the game is missing a lot of proper RPG mechanisms of the old - the price for going mainstream I suppose.

On top of that, I find that TW3, with it's fairly structured story and characters, was not really suited well for open-world game in the first place and that it lost a lot of fine details that TW2 had.

I can't blame them much for going too mainstream though, they have to justify high production costs, but on the other hand, that's exactly what I mean by whole action-RPG genre, especailly of open-world variety, going downward...Skyrim and Witcher 3 have become role models for the industry, but honestly, neither of those games are really that good - TES loosing a lot, and I mean a lot of its good mechanisms from Morrowind onward and Witcher 3 being too restricted and not fully fledged as open-world RPG.

Now, I admit, I am pretty harsh when it comes to open-world action-RPGs - even my favourites, Gothic 1 and 2, had their share of flaws and I rate them "only" 9/10. But in the span of year and a half there were two Gothic games plus Morrowind and the genre seemed to be heading in the right direction - maybe action elements weren't as good as they could've been in those games, but RPG elements were quite good and promised bright future for the genre. Sadly, these days, I feel that future I was hoping for never came, and while there were fairly good games after, genre as a whole went too actiony and lot less RPG-ish.

In the end, I liked TW3, but I didn't love it. It was pretty good attempt from CDPR to bring Euro-RPGs to mainstream, while at the same time dipping their toes in open-world genre, but I honestly expected way, way more....sort of a genre renaissance, if you will. For some, it was exactly that, for me it was missed opportunity. And while I'm looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077, I'm hoping that CDPR will revisit fantasy setting, this time unrestricted with too structured character and story of Witcher and give it another go at trying to do proper open-world action-RPG.

But Witcher 3 is not an RPG, it's an action-adventure game masquerading as a Western RPG.

Witcher 3 plays exactly like Red Dead Redemption, and it's ridiculous how seldom such an obvious design choice is mentioned. The Polish Project RED guys took so much from thier beloved Red Dead.

Witcher 3 limits all the RPG mechanics so that it plays out just like an action-adventure game. There is no meaningful leveling up or customization because everything is restricted to the minimum by the developer (leveling, experience, skill tree, equipment options, skill options, loot, alchemy - it's all restricted and controlled by the developer).

Witcher 3 is an extremely controlled experience, just like modern game design dictates, but with the illusion of choice. Witcher 3's choice is only in the story path, there's nothing else. It's not an RPG.

Oblivion is an RPG, Skyrim is still an RPG, but Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 are not.

This is the scandal of game journalists, that they are unable to identify these things (about Witcher 3).

Skyrim is my favorite game. Fallout 4 was pretty darn great. Not sure why all the complaints.

I didn't like skyrim at all, despite multiple attempts to get into it. Though I'd enjoyed past games of theirs I felt that they were going over the same stuff and I had just moved on from their formula. However, as a present surprise, I ended up really liking fallout 4 and i believe it was because of a big improvement to their characters, plots and world creation compared to their past games.

I don't think he is, TW3 really lacks a lot of RPG mechanisms, but I (still) wouldn't go as far as to call it action-adventure - it's still action RPG, but very limited one.

As I said before, it is trully sad that in open world action RPG genre undisputed kings are still games old 14/15 years - Gothic 1/2 and Morrowind - even though they all have their share of problems. Industry is steadily watering down genre and although we're not there yet, I'd say we're very close to action-adventures masquerading as action RPGs taking over (well, Horizon being one of examples).

No trolling. It's a bit sad that after 400 hours with Witcher 3 you haven't discovered how meaningless the customization in the game is, and how it plays out the same no matter what you choose.

Witcher 3's strength lie in the excellent quality of its quests and that you have meaningful choices with true impact. But that doesn't mean that the game excels on these other fronts, and it's definitely not this revolution in RPG design that sets a new high standard everyone else will have to follow.

The RPG-system of Witcher 3 is such a controlled, superficial and meaningless experience. These developers really decide a lot for you. It's just hidden in clever ways. But if you study the design you'll see. Skills, upgrades and items in Witcher 3 are mostly for show, with little impact on gameplay.

Have you noticed that Xp is almost entirely gained through the main quest? This is because the developer wants to to ensure the player is properly leveled whenever he decides to take on the main quest again. The result is that you can't be overleveled, you can't be underleveled, it will always play out the same way, just like an action-adventure game works, like Red Dead Redemption. So what's the point of levels? They're just an illusion in Witcher 33.

The developer put hundreds of restrictions in skills, items and upgrades to ensure perfect balance so that no player can choose "wrong". The effect: you go from RPG to action game.

Areas are locked, high lvl monsters are locked away, gear is locked away and the skill tree is artificially locked. They even have a "toxicity system" just to prohibit the player from becoming too powerful in combat. Limiting the amount of potions you can carry apparently wasn't enough.

Limited potion slots and toxicity are there only to control the player's health regen in combat. In Fallout you can eat as much food and drugs as you like.

Weapons in Witcher 3 are leveled which prevents the player from ever getting a powerful weapon relative to his level. 99% of the items you find are useless junk.

The skill tree is tightly controlled, and no matter what build you go for, it will play out almost the same way. You can't really specialize in something. There are small but nice looking skill trees in this game that you can carefully deposit points into, but even if you avoid them altogether the game will play almost identical .

Despite its open world, Witcher 3 even decides which enemies you can take on and when. Try to take on an enemy 7 or more levels above you, and the game artifically reduces your damage to literally 1 with each attack on that enemy! You're just not supposed to attack him until you've reached the developer's artificial threshhold.

Large parts of the world in Witcher 3 are closed off until the game decides you are ready to see them. In Fallout you can go everywhere you like.

A little about the world design too. I just don't understand how it has gotten so much praise. It feels simply artificial with these generic enemy nests conveniently sprinkled every fifteen meters. And the landscapes get borting very fast, it all takes place in a Medieval Polish countryside (until the expansion which is more Medieval France).

What upsets me is that our seemingly incompetent gaming press are unable to identify these things! They spent long time with the game getting wowed by the graphics and the edgy morality, the exciting quests and the alternate endings, so they played through the whole game without realizing that an RPG had been changed to an action game, into Red Dead Redemption in Poland.

And still now in hindsight almost nobody is discussing this! (I'm extremely happy and thankful that HoloDust at least partly seems to be with me on this)

Dragon Age: Inquisition used some of these restricion tricks with their last game, but my big fear is that the combination of Witcher 3's success and the criticism that Fallout 4 got, will pressure Bethesda to redesign its systems and mechanics from the ground up, and essentially take away all meaningful choice away from the player, streamline all the RPG systems and instead focus on a more engaging story, multiple endings and ensure that the characters show contemporary morality and awareness of social justice issues (ugh).

The problem is this: if journalists and reviewers ignore their role to scrutiny and analyze and therefore don't identify these tricks and limiting design choices, and don't inform the players about it, then players won't even know that their freedoms have been taken away. The only way to get change is if the market starts demanding more freedom, because it's very much in the developers interest to design the games with this tight, controlled experience for a multitude of reasons.

Sigh. We're witnessing the next step of dumbing down.

well hopefully we can all agree that doctor strange is one of the best mindf***s of the year right?

Yeah, I woudn't even know how to rate TW3 - for me it goes from 6.5-9.5 depending of the element in question. But overall, I was not very happy with it in the end - and while I enjoyed it, it really underdelivered for what I was expecting. But maybe I'll try it again in a few years, with no expectations and see how I feel then.

As for Fallout, I don't think we'll agree - FO1/2 are one of my all time favorite games, so FO3, while decent as non-FO game, was a huge dissapointment for me as FO game. But FO4, again for me, was not very good game no matter how I look at it, I don't even consider it to be RPG and it was really horrible FO.

Someday, someone will maybe make (though I doubt it would be AAA dev) proper open world action RPG again - something that mixes best parts of Gothic, Morrowind and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, augmented by good combat system - now that would be an actual revolution in action RPG design.

I know, right?

It sucks to stumble upon a wall of text when you're tired lol

Don't feel any pressure to reply. I wrote all that for future considerations, since analysis and debate about Witcher 3 as such an important and iconic game will surely come up in the future.