You could try The Witcher 1. Gameplay there is…unique. A little dated today but IMO has the best writing of the three.
Comment on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — 10th Anniversary Trailer
ramble81@lemm.ee 1 day ago
I really had trouble getting in to that game. May try it again but it seemed a bit too… generic?
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 1 day ago
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 8 hours ago
I feel like you could only think that if you’re more interested in learning the setting than seeing the characters interact.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
What I appreciated with the first Witcher is seeing the story from all sides and I dont recall it feeling black and white. Humans were shown as hating elves for their attacks, but then you get to the elves and learn their part of why they were attacking. The writing feels raw with hints of racism, vulgarism and the like. It felt right for the setting.
The Botching story line (the barron) in W3 was probably my favorite and that was a side quest. I didnt feel the same momentum going forward in the main story of W3.DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 2 hours ago
I’d argue that there’s plenty of that in 2 as well, and by 3 it’s more about taking things to their conclusions as all the characters we’ve built relationships with start bouncing off each other but fair enough.
winety@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I really enjoyed that the setting is more grounded than other games. Personally, I wouldn’t describe it as generic.
Gameplay-wise it doesn’t do much interesting.
who@feddit.org 1 day ago
IMHO, its gameplay is mediocre-to-bad:
- Sluggish controls
- Character movement that is unrealistically limited without bringing something to make up for it
- Fiddly object interaction problems (e.g. candles often getting in the way of more important things)
- Bland combat mechanics
- "Open" world populated almost entirely with copy/paste combat encounters
- Little reward for exploration, since practically everything worth discovering has a map marker
- A tiny handful of side quests re-used over and over with different mini-stories to make the quests seem distinct (but the tasks to perform are mostly identical)
This game’s strengths are not the gameplay, but the lore, characters, and story, all of which could presumably be had from reading the books or watching the live action adaptation.
Oh, and Gwent. Gwent is remarkably well-designed for a mini-game within another game.
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The live action adaptation took a steaming dump on the original story sadly, some episodes are still worth watching but it’s not made by people who understand what made Witcher special, no wonder Henry Cavill left
TacoSocks@infosec.pub 23 hours ago
What would you suggest for better open world games?
who@feddit.org 16 hours ago
It depends on what aspects of an open world are important to you.
Exploration is at the top of my list, and Skyrim is a good example of doing it well. Its world is full of unique things to find, whether through an NPC’s directions, or a roughly sketched map picked up while adventuring, or by following your curiosity toward an area that looks interesting, or simply by wandering off the beaten path.
Map markers appear after you’ve already been somewhere, so you can find it again, but since most of them remain hidden until then, they don’t spoil the experience of discovery.
And, when you find something, it’s often genuinely interesting. Not yet another copy/paste monster fight or “hold the button to follow your witcher sense to the lost item” quest.
Mind, I have criticisms of Skyrim as well, but it did environments and exploration very well, and I wish more open world designers would learn from it and build upon its strengths.
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 14 hours ago
I feel CP2077 does great with regard to storytelling and exploration (plenty of nooks and crannies in and around Night City), wildlife is nonexistant though. A Witcher game played in first-person would be cool though.
ruko24@programming.dev 1 day ago
I played through it once and really liked it but didn’t see myself going back because of the generic gameplay. Apparently, the hardest difficulty forces you to use all of your oils and potions depending on the monster/situation. I think that might solve the gameplay problem since that was pretty much optional in easier difficulties. Not to mention make it a lot more immersive since you have to strategize like the witcher
BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I know exactly what you mean. I started it 3 times before I got into it
In my opinion, a lot of the gameplay is fairly generic. Attacking a wraith feels the same as attacking a human
It really shines in the immersion and story, though. The first two times I played it, I was skipping all of the dialog and cutscenes (depression is a bitch), so I missed all the good parts
Once you get into the mindset of “hunting” one of the monsters and selecting the right oils and potions, it can be really fun and feel almost like “strategy”. For example, there’s a potion that turns your blood poisonous to vampires
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 14 hours ago
Wait so you can let yourself be bitten ? I played it in 2018 but never really did the oils and stuff
BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Yeah! Although, it’s more of a preventative measure than a trap card. A lot of the oils are pretty boring, but some can be fun to use
I ended up almost exclusively doing the Witcher missions since you usually learn what you’re going to fight