The Witcher Game Series

[There Is Light At The End]

Posts like this makes me wonder if the whole book series is just smut.

Well, initial printing caused somewhat of a scandal with batiste panties

 

[trolled across concrete]

I always thought that if there ever had to be a Witcher 4, it’d be a good time to finally make it into a proper RPG where you get to create your own character. Witcher 3 was such a satisfying conclusion to the cast I honestly don’t even have an interest in seeing them again. You can include Dandelion as a cameo for some random side quest, but don’t bring back the main cast. At best it’d just be a pointless exercise in nostalgia. At worst it will ruin the characters and my memories of them.

I’m already sick of the argument “but it makes sense! Geralt retired so of course the next game would be about Ciri.” Sure, on some kind of story structural level it makes sense. The adopted daughter of the retired hero takes the reins in the next chapter of the saga. But that argument ignores what a bad idea it is on every other level.

Ciri is not a witcher, she is in fact one of the most powerful beings of the universe. Witchers are strong, sure, but they’re essentially just a bunch of wandering contract killers on steroids. Geralt can be killed with a pitchfork, while Ciri has healing abilities. She’s also not a vagabond, she’s the empress of a great empire, depending on your choices during Wild Hunt. She’s a magical macguffin with a personality, turning her into the protagonist turns the whole balance into complete wack. You’d have to make a lot of retcons, nerfs and removal of previous player choice to make it make sense to be playing as her. But leave it to game developers and fanboys to completely handwave the lore of the world they supposedly love.

Her abilities aside, I don’t believe she’d make for a fun player character personality wise either. Geralt's cynicism and disdain for politics is what makes him work as the main character of a (pseudo-)RPG even as an established character. His insistence on being the neutral party in most situations lends itself to great moments when he is forced to choose between two sides with their own pros and cons. Ciri, on the other hand, is very much on the “good” side of the moral alignment chart.

Let’s create a stereotypical witchery scenario. Geralt is hired by a bunch of villagers to hunt down a beast that’s been destroying their crops, maybe maiming and killing some of them. Geralt tracks the beast, and it is then revealed that the beast has only been doing that because of [insert sympathetic reason here]. You are given two options: Either kill the beast as you promised, since that’s your job and monsters are dangerous anyways, Or go back to the village and tell them to shove it and not provoke the creature any longer.

With Geralt, it’s reasonable to argue that both of these options could be something he’d canonicaly do. With Ciri, she’d choose the beast over the villagers every single time. A lot of player agency has to be cut because it would simply not make sense for Ciri to do some of the things Geralt would.

The big draw of the series is getting to be a travelling monster hunter in a slightly grimy fantasy world. You might be an absolute badass, but you’re also broke and the people hate you. The whole world is in political turmoil, but who the fuck cares, give me my coin. Get me a vodka, and a hooker to sleep with while you’re at it.

You can’t play the kind Lady of Time and Space, Heiress to the Throne, the Child of Prophecy with Elder Blood coursing through your veins in a game like that. The mood is all wrong.

Thanks for reading my blogpost.

 

[SIMIΔN]

I watched the tech demo, and one thing I liked was the dwarves didn't just look like scaled down humans.

One of my bête noires is human looking non-humans. I love the look of DA2/Skyrim/DoS2 elves. Sometimes male dwarves look distinct, but females are scaled down women.

 

[Nameless One]

The tech demo is another filler nothingburger. Game won't look anything like it and I gurantee the 60fps target will be cut down to 30fps if they keep their promises. Or just force dogshit TAA and upscaling from 600p solutions

 

[Nameless One]

Ciri's face is fixed like I figured. The CGI cinematics for some reason always have fucked up ogre faces.

 

[regalterry]

Ciri's face is fixed like I figured. The CGI cinematics for some reason always have fucked up ogre faces.

Let's not pretend it was a mistake. CDPR backpedaled when they saw the backlash.

 

[Jace on ice]

Let's not pretend it was a mistake. CDPR backpedaled when they saw the backlash.

Yea this was 100% CDPR miscalculating and not realizing most gamers are fiercely anti woke now.

Look at the proportions. Her new face doesn't even have the same bone structure as the old one.

I wonder how much period blood and tears flooded the break room when some executive told the design team "no you can't make her an ugly ogre, throw that shit out and make her pretty."

 

[Miller]

The leaked concept of Cyberpunk 2 actually sounds really interesting. You apparently play as a cop in an even shittier version of Millitech controlled future Chicago.

I'd rather them work on that than waste resources on a rule 63 version of TW3 that few people want.

Thank God Silverhand won't be in the sequel.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

Thank God Silverhand won't be in the sequel.

we get morgan blackhand in the sequel but he's played by dwayne johnson instead

 

[regalterry]

I'm genuinely more excited for discount vampire Witcher than anything CDPR will shit out, even though it looks cheap and janky, with the same dogshit, Diablo-esque itemization of Witcher 3.

The very fact Cyberpunk 2 is being made by urbanite Americans should make everyone give up on the game.

Witcher 4 being a girlboss simulator is just icing on the cake.

Congratulations to CDPR for speedrunning down the path BioWare laid.

 

[Asian tech support]

I'm genuinely more excited for discount vampire Witcher than anything CDPR will shit out, even though it looks cheap and janky, with the same dogshit, Diablo-esque itemization of Witcher 3.

The gameplay reveal looked better than expected. I'm a huge fan of slavjank anyway so as long as there isn't any niggertrannyfaggot shit, I'll play it eventually. There are ways to do "colored" loot correctly (see: Voin) so I'll withhold judgement on that for now, though TW3 absolutely did it incorrectly as you said.

 

[regalterry]

There are ways to do "colored" loot correctly (see: Voin) so I'll withhold judgement on that for now, though TW3 absolutely did it incorrectly as you said.

I hate randomized loot with a passion. I don't want to constantly switch around equipment every five minutes because some random critter dropped a sword he had hiding up his asshole that is slightly better that the one I currently have.

I'm not against tiered weapons - a magical sword you found deep in a dungeon should be better than whatever weapon you can buy from the local blacksmith, but it should also be a unique artifact with a bespoke model, some interesting gameplay quirks and preferably some lore attached to it.

Also, there should be more horizontal progression. Instead of always doing the "numbers go up" autismo, the player should instead get a wider selection of tools with which to approach a problem. This should have been a thing in the Witcher - different swords or other weapons for specific monsters, along with different armors, basically adapting your equipment for the challenge ahead (based on information you could glean from books or NPCs).

Cyberpunk suffers from the same issue. You don't feel yourself growing stronger because everything scales with your level, and the guns don't feel particularly unique or interesting because you're heavily incentivized to use the gun with the higher tier color, instead of using whatever weapon is best suited for the current combat scenario.

CDPR have likely learned nothing from W3 and 2077 and will continue pushing the cancerous itemization system they've pozzed their games with. Fucking Poles.

 

[Jace on ice]

I hate randomized loot with a passion. I don't want to constantly switch around equipment every five minutes because some random critter dropped a sword he had hiding up his asshole that is slightly better that the one I currently have.

I'm not against tiered weapons - a magical sword you found deep in a dungeon should be better than whatever weapon you can buy from the local blacksmith, but it should also be a unique artifact with a bespoke model, some interesting gameplay quirks and preferably some lore attached to it.

Also, there should be more horizontal progression. Instead of always doing the "numbers go up" autismo, the player should instead get a wider selection of tools with which to approach a problem. This should have been a thing in the Witcher - different swords or other weapons for specific monsters, along with different armors, basically adapting your equipment for the challenge ahead (based on information you could glean from books or NPCs).

Cyberpunk suffers from the same issue. You don't feel yourself growing stronger because everything scales with your level, and the guns don't feel particularly unique or interesting because you're heavily incentivized to use the gun with the higher tier color, instead of using whatever weapon is best suited for the current combat scenario.

CDPR have likely learned nothing from W3 and 2077 and will continue pushing the cancerous itemization system they've pozzed their games with. Fucking Poles.

If you're actually engaging with the randomized loot system in either game you're playing them wrong.

In TW3 the only swords worth using are the unique Witcher set ones and in Cyberpunk the only guns worth using are the iconics you get from completing quests.

It's not like Borderlands where some random trash mob might drop the best gun in the entire game.

 

[Asian tech support]

I hate randomized loot with a passion. I don't want to constantly switch around equipment every five minutes because some random critter dropped a sword he had hiding up his asshole that is slightly better that the one I currently have.

I'm not against tiered weapons - a magical sword you found deep in a dungeon should be better than whatever weapon you can buy from the local blacksmith, but it should also be a unique artifact with a bespoke model, some interesting gameplay quirks and preferably some lore attached to it.

Also, there should be more horizontal progression. Instead of always doing the "numbers go up" autismo, the player should instead get a wider selection of tools with which to approach a problem. This should have been a thing in the Witcher - different swords or other weapons for specific monsters, along with different armors, basically adapting your equipment for the challenge ahead (based on information you could glean from books or NPCs).

TW2 had what was almost a good system. Almost every weapon was unique and had theoretical niche, though they couldn't be upgraded and the game wasn't really expansive enough in its combat encounters to justify including an upgrade system. All roads lead to the Forgotten Vran Sword.

Cyberpunk suffers from the same issue. You don't feel yourself growing stronger because everything scales with your level, and the guns don't feel particularly unique or interesting because you're heavily incentivized to use the gun with the higher tier color, instead of using whatever weapon is best suited for the current combat scenario.

Cyberpunk's itemization got a lot better after the 2.0 update. The rng affixes were gone, which meant that there wasn't really much reason to not use the iconic variants once you got them. That might sound lame but it was for the better (remember that iconics used to have rng affixes before). The real issue was that your build dictated what weapon you used for every encounter and there was no downside for using the same type of gun forever once your build was off the ground. The game was designed in a way that the player could approach any scenario with any loadout and still come out on top without changing their approach.

In TW3 the only swords worth using are the unique Witcher set ones

It was possible to get high enough level where the random drops would circle around and become stronger than the witcher gear items, though it still wasn't worth giving up the set bonus for the most part.

 

[regalterry]

In TW3 the only swords worth using are the unique Witcher set ones and in Cyberpunk the only guns worth using are the iconics you get from completing quests.

So why did they even bother implementing such a shit system to begin with?

Mind you, the current itemization mechanics in 2077 are new, at launch the game did play like a dogshit Borderlands.

If they were going with tiers, then they should have just categorized different weapons to different tiers and called it a day, instead of having every weapon go up in tiers as the characters keeps leveling up.

It was possible to get high enough level where the random drops would circle around and become stronger than the witcher gear items, though it still wasn't worth giving up the set bonus for the most part.

A system I have always hated. I much prefer the approach FROM takes with their games - a broadsword is always going to have the same stats, and every +4 version of it will be the same.

This should have been the case with W3 and 2077 - every longsword should have had the same stats, unless it was magical, and every gun model should have had the same performance unless it was modified in some way - be it via attachments or by being a unique.

 

[demicolon]

I liked Two Worlds approach - if you find an identical piece of equipment, you can "combine" them into 1 item with improved stats, one which "inherits" the other's special properties like stat boosts or resistances. That way you could keep using your favourite weapon/armor for the majority of the game and even if you weren't lucky with random loot you still got something out of it.

 

[Asian tech support]

I liked Two Worlds approach - if you find an identical piece of equipment, you can "combine" them into 1 item with improved stats, one which "inherits" the other's special properties like stat boosts or resistances. That way you could keep using your favourite weapon/armor for the majority of the game and even if you weren't lucky with random loot you still got something out of it.

This is what makes Nioh tick and there's a lot of that in Voin as well.

 

[dustnight]

All roads lead to the Forgotten Vran Sword snares

 

[Snekposter]

So why did they even bother implementing such a shit system to begin with?

Mind you, the current itemization mechanics in 2077 are new, at launch the game did play like a dogshit Borderlands.

If they were going with tiers, then they should have just categorized different weapons to different tiers and called it a day, instead of having every weapon go up in tiers as the characters keeps leveling up.

I hate those dumb-ass MMO-like systems where everything's a fucking sidegrade except for its tier or level. Gear absolutely should be segregated by cost and effectiveness. A top-of-the-line Arasaka marksman rifle should be straight-up better than some Slavshit that's been horribly maltreated by its Scav owner, to say nothing of the DESIGNATED SHITTING WEAPONS from Darra Polytechnic.

 

[regalterry]

I hate those dumb-ass MMO-like systems where everything's a fucking sidegrade except for its tier or level. Gear absolutely should be segregated by cost and effectiveness.

My running theory, at least for Cyberpunk 2077, is that CDPR had designed the system specifically for the canceled multiplayer component, likely because it was some live service shitfest, which would also explain the overabundance of clothes in the game.

No clue why Witcher 3 had the stupid itemization system it did other than CDPR being the usual incompetent Polish developers.