![]() ![]() It feels much more fluid and strategic than before. The one area that I really like a lot more than the last game is combat. And maybe I'll like it more as I go-there's so much more of this world to explore-but right now I'm feeling like at least a few of my concerns about the big, open-world approach are coming true. I've stopped to take snapshots of its lovely sunsets and sweeping vistas, admiring the work that must have gone into creating such a beast. Update: Here's a brief clip of the odd-looking trees and grass in the breeze: I'm really quite surprised by all of this. Some of the trees look like rubber others like paper cut-outs. They're nowhere near as good-looking as the second game's forest around Flotsam (though partly that's a matter of art design.) The wind is always blowing, and the grass and trees are always blowing with it, and quite frankly it's super distracting. Lots of great detail, too, in faces and armor and so forth.īut the trees and foliage look almost flat. The character models all look fine, in spite of some stiff animations and clunky controls, and the sunsets and big-picture graphics are all stunning. But no matter what I do, I'm left feeling like the graphics in this game are super hit and miss. Fiddling with the dials a bit I can get to a steady frame-rate. If I turn off Nvidia Hairworks (which eats up about fifteen frames-per-second or so) and turn everything up to max I can get around 45 fps, pretty stable, on my 2560 x 1440 monitor. I'm also not really thrilled by the graphics. The game is doing a lot of it for me now. But I also never quite feel like I'm doing as much of the work myself. There's some great exploration to be had. I can go just about anywhere now, which can be fun. The open-world nature of The Witcher 3 changes all of this. All of this grounds us even deeper in the place, in the universe, in the characters, in the monsters, and so forth. Not challenging necessarily because you aren't Level 33 yet (I have a lot of quests in my quest-bag that are way, way over my level which is irritating) but because you have to do some real digging, real reading and exploring to navigate them, to discover how to beat a tough monster. Perhaps this changes over time, but one of the things I loved about the previous game was how challenging it could be just to unravel a quest-line. (I will note here that I worried The Witcher 3 might suffer from "Assassin's Creed Syndrome" and while I think it does everything far better than that game series, I'm sad to say it really does suffer from this malady, nonetheless.) I find myself looking at the mini-map far too much, following that damned dotted line to wherever I need to go, missing out on the world in the process. At times I feel like I'm in a very well-designed, very lonely MMO. Then there is the mini-map, populated with question marks exclamation points and myriad little leaf icons, and fast travel markers and.I hate it so much. Still, nothing comes close to as interesting as Flotsam (so far) or its characters and miniature conflicts, age-old racial tensions, and so forth. The various villages themselves are fairly forgettable, though White Orchard at least has a white orchard outside of it. ![]() The first two taverns you visit are literally carbon copies of one another, designed by some cookie-cutter tavern architect. ![]() In some ways, this is because the latest Witcher game is simply quite vast. There's a sense of place-grounded in history and conflict-to Flotsam and the surrounding area that I have yet to discover in The Witcher 3. The forests around it remain quite possibly my favorite environment in any video game. The small hamlet of Flotsam feels like a real and distinct and unique place. It also introduces you to a world that's steeped in lore and history, that feels real and inhabited. From that game's powerful opening cinematic (perhaps the best in any video game) through its cleverly-directed opening segments, to the arrival at Flotsam, The Witcher 2 is simply breathtaking. For one thing, the opening Act is nowhere near as powerful as in Assassin of Kings.
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