134 réponses à ce sujet

[Malanek]

The world size and combined maps are bigger, but playing time is probably too diverse to measure. And it should really be quality playing time and story content measured, not just elapsed time.

 

I am a bit apprehensive about this change in approach for both DAI and TW3. I hated Morrowind and Oblivion and never played Skyrim. Far too unfocused, crap stories, and I simply don't like exploring for the sake of exploring. I need a solid reason/motivation to do so. I think Bioware will pull it off but I have more concerns CDPR. Their emphasis on authenticity could make it end up in a mess if it takes minutes (or even longer) each time to get from A to B.

[Fishy]

Fetch quests must be obliterated. Or at the very least prettied up to the point that I don't realize it's a fetch quest.

 

 

Inquisitor Prep to save the world !! Oh yeah ... Oh look . .A damsel in distress .. The call of the Hero ! Here I commmme.

Damsell : Sir Sir can you help me

Inquisitor: Sure.. i am your hero .. What do you need from me

Damsell: Please I need  special mushroom for my stew ... But a giant spider is guarding them. Please gentle hero ?

 

Inquisitor Reaction .. Not sarcastic

 

[DanielCofour]

It will be multi-region. So it's actually quite possible.

 

It doesn't matter if it's multi-region, or if it's next-gen, new-gen, PC only... it doesn't matter, the size of the map is not limited by hardware, and being multi-region doesn't matter either... a square-meter is a square-meter, it doesn't matter if it's in one huge map, or a lot of smaller maps. Skyrim's map was insanely huge, and as a result, the texture and graphics quality wasn't all that good. Why? Because if it was, the game would never have made a profit. The amount of work and money required to make it happen, would turn it into a flop, no matter how well it sold. With the texture quality of the Witcher series, I will be surprised that it's as big as Skyrim.. not 3 times bigger!?...

 

besides, that has never been said by the devs. I only heard, 20-30% bigger. Which is still big, but within the bounds of reason. 

[Hanako Ikezawa]

No argument here.  It was a wasted opportunity.  Then only to have Aria still hanging out in the same booth at the club? LOL! It was all just a dream...

*insert Indoctrination Theory reference here* 

[TurretSyndrome]

Witcher dev said that Witcher 3 will be 35 times Witcher 2.

[Deflagratio]

Witcher dev said that Witcher 3 will be 35 times Witcher 2.

 

 

That makes a lot more sense. I saw someone say "35% larger than Skyrim" and, even though I kinda hate The Witcher series, even I could tell that was selling the game tragically short.

[TurretSyndrome]

You hate the series? For me personally, it's not as intriguing as Dragon Age(I played through Witcher 2 and it wasn't that great, only looked good), but why hate?

[Deflagratio]

You hate the series? For me personally, it's not as intriguing as Dragon Age(I played through Witcher 2 and it wasn't that great, only looked good), but why hate?

 

It's a mechanics thing, the encounter design clashes with the combat mechanics. Particularly in the Witcher 2 where you're encouraged to use traps and alchemy to prepare for battles, but they never give you the opportunity to really prepare. Springing deadly ambushes on you before you can employ all the cool tactical stuff. It then falls back on the melee.

 

It's less of an issue on second and third playthroughs when you already have the most of the dangerous encounters memorized.

 

It's a very refined kind of hate... You know that kind when if only they'd change that one thing it'd skyrocket the experience to the bar the rest of the presentation puts itself up to. Like breaking your ankle a meter before the finish line and a new world record.

 

Because of The Witcher 3's open world, I think this issue will solve itself unless they create some ridiculous aggro range in enemy AI. Having those moments to observe and prepare will make all the difference in opening TW up to how good it should be.

[TurretSyndrome]

Nah... this time they said they're focusing on hunting monsters because that's what Witchers do, which means some sort of monster tracking system, so I'm looking forward to it.

[dutch_gamer]

It doesn't matter if it's multi-region, or if it's next-gen, new-gen, PC only... it doesn't matter, the size of the map is not limited by hardware, and being multi-region doesn't matter either... a square-meter is a square-meter, it doesn't matter if it's in one huge map, or a lot of smaller maps. Skyrim's map was insanely huge, and as a result, the texture and graphics quality wasn't all that good. Why? Because if it was, the game would never have made a profit. The amount of work and money required to make it happen, would turn it into a flop, no matter how well it sold. With the texture quality of the Witcher series, I will be surprised that it's as big as Skyrim.. not 3 times bigger!?...

 

besides, that has never been said by the devs. I only heard, 20-30% bigger. Which is still big, but within the bounds of reason. 

As far as I recall the developers of the Witcher 3 have never said 20 - 30 % bigger but always the number 35 %. Also, in a rather recent presentation they showed that the Witcher 3 is actually much bigger than that. You can see the slides for yourself with the actual numbers and compare it with Skyrim, which makes it more than 3 times bigger. Or you can read the following thread about it: http://forums.cdproj...s-by-Themselves

 

I don't even see Skyrim as being a big map. It may be for the gamers who have no experience with even previous Elder Scrolls games and for gamers who have no experience with MMOs but it really isn't that big. As far as I recall it is only 14 square miles. I do believe that hardware does in fact limit the size of a map. The whole map has to be loaded somehow and memory is a limitation. Only now with the Witcher 3 and probably other games streaming technology has come so far a big map doesn't have to mean worse textures. Better textures doesn't have to mean a game can only be a flop if big maps are used. Even creating a big game can be done faster nowadays with the right tools without it suffering in any department. Just look at DAI, there is a reason why Bioware is now creating a multi-region open world type of game because Frostbite 3 makes it much easier to do.

 

An open world game also doesn't mean quest lines suffer from pacing or other issues. I think people believe this because of the Elder Scrolls series but I believe that is just Bethesda. I can say I have never loved Bethesda games because they aren't that good at creating good stories with the right amount of pacing. In my view Bethesda's only strength is in the mod tools so gamers can make their games better. Even in creating open worlds I see Bethesda as being mediocre because they try to cram every step you make with content. I believe that if you want to make an actual open world game you should make the distances between true content believable as well. For the gamers who don't like traveling they can always offer fast travel or instant travel between points. If it were an MMO I would feel differently though because meeting players is what makes those games, and if you can zip back and forth, you pretty much never meet a soul, which is no issue in a single player game.

[Araceil]

All this talk of bigger map sizes is all good and well, but I fear the game will end up suffering from Skyrim syndrome if they try and make the map larger than they can handle just for the sake of the PR guys. 

[Deflagratio]

All this talk of bigger map sizes is all good and well, but I fear the game will end up suffering from Skyrim syndrome if they try and make the map larger than they can handle just for the sake of the PR guys. 

 

 

Skyrim's map was too small for Bethesda. The overland felt unreasonably dense, and that was even with burying 4/5ths of the dungeons under ground in their own dimension, to say nothing of the hilariously small "Cities". I feel Skyrim was only small because they couldn't work with any more land loaded in with the low X360/PS3 memory, they probably could have spread out that density with something 50%-100% bigger on surface area. With a forgiving Fast Travel system like ES has, there's no much of a case against a larger size.

 

 

I don't perceive that problem so far with DA:I though. It looks as big as it needs to be so far. It is hard to find that balance between reinforcing scope with size, while not being tedious. I personally think Skyrim failed to reinforce their scope through their game's size. I won't be able to make that call on Dragon Age without playing it, but it looks good so far. Dragon Age does have the advantage of level partitioning though, which can give the illusion of size while only allowing a fraction of what's presented being explorable. (Not necessarily a bad thing)

[Araceil]

Skyrim's map was too small for Bethesda. The overland felt unreasonably dense, and that was even with burying 4/5ths of the dungeons under ground in their own dimension, to say nothing of the hilariously small "Cities". I feel Skyrim was only small because they couldn't work with any more land loaded in with the low X360/PS3 memory, they probably could have spread out that density with something 50%-100% bigger on surface area. With a forgiving Fast Travel system like ES has, there's no much of a case against a larger size.

 

 

I don't perceive that problem so far with DA:I though. It looks as big as it needs to be so far. It is hard to find that balance between reinforcing scope with size, while not being tedious. I personally think Skyrim failed to reinforce their scope through their game's size. I won't be able to make that call on Dragon Age without playing it, but it looks good so far. Dragon Age does have the advantage of level partitioning though, which can give the illusion of size while only allowing a fraction of what's presented being explorable. (Not necessarily a bad thing)

That's interesting, when I was playing Skyrim I always got the impression that they spent far too much time making the map big, pretty and filled with random dungeons that they ended up running out of time and skimping out on everything else. Especially the towns and quests. Sure there where loads of them but they where mostly something along the lines of Mr generic (Who also seems to be suffering from a chronic lack of personality) wants you to go find his legendary sword of fantasy cliche from another bland, albeit pretty dungeon filled with generic undead enemies. Maybe if you're lucky you'll find the undead whose been stealing Arnold Schwarzenegger's steroids and fight him for a bit before heading back loaded with 500 year old fruit. With the more interesting quests being few and far between. For me at least, along with the lack of variety in the npcs and small lifeless towns made the game world feel dead and empty. 

 

I thought if they had made the map a little smaller, removed some of the cites and put more effort into the ones that remained, doing the same for the quests, environments and added in more meaningful NPCs then the game would have been more interesting. 

 

So in short that's what i'm worried about, is Bioware focusing too much on the map and then not having enough time to make sure that all the npcs and quests are up to scratch, but yeah as you said with partitioning it should hopefully work out a lot better.  

[llandwynwyn]

A big map is nothing if you have nothing to do in it. Go A to kill enemy X gets boring after a while.

 

TES/Fallout aren't popular because of the size of their maps. But because people can explore, collect, destroy and make small decisions that don't break the illusion of choice for most players.

[Olmerto]

The world size and combined maps are bigger, but playing time is probably too diverse to measure. And it should really be quality playing time and story content measured, not just elapsed time.

 

I am a bit apprehensive about this change in approach for both DAI and TW3. I hated Morrowind and Oblivion and never played Skyrim. Far too unfocused, crap stories, and I simply don't like exploring for the sake of exploring. I need a solid reason/motivation to do so. I think Bioware will pull it off but I have more concerns CDPR. Their emphasis on authenticity could make it end up in a mess if it takes minutes (or even longer) each time to get from A to B.

 

Yep, I bought and played Morrowind long ago and couldn't stand its shallow and diffuse brand of content. I've shunned all Elder Scrolls games because of it, greatly favoring Bioware's more linear and purposeful style of RPG. (I really barely consider Elder Scrolls to be RPGs.)

 

The move by Bioware and CDPR to mimic ES is of great concern and I sincerely hope that the pacing of DAI continues in the Bioware tradition.

[DanielCofour]

As far as I recall the developers of the Witcher 3 have never said 20 - 30 % bigger but always the number 35 %. Also, in a rather recent presentation they showed that the Witcher 3 is actually much bigger than that. You can see the slides for yourself with the actual numbers and compare it with Skyrim, which makes it more than 3 times bigger. Or you can read the following thread about it: http://forums.cdproj...s-by-Themselves

 

I don't even see Skyrim as being a big map. It may be for the gamers who have no experience with even previous Elder Scrolls games and for gamers who have no experience with MMOs but it really isn't that big. As far as I recall it is only 14 square miles. I do believe that hardware does in fact limit the size of a map. The whole map has to be loaded somehow and memory is a limitation. Only now with the Witcher 3 and probably other games streaming technology has come so far a big map doesn't have to mean worse textures. Better textures doesn't have to mean a game can only be a flop if big maps are used. Even creating a big game can be done faster nowadays with the right tools without it suffering in any department. Just look at DAI, there is a reason why Bioware is now creating a multi-region open world type of game because Frostbite 3 makes it much easier to do.

 

There was only one map larger in the Elder Scrolls series: Daggerfall. And that was because it was randomly generated to a huge extent(and they didn't try that again for a reason). Skyrim wasn't and neither is the Witcher. And again, map size has nothing to do with hardware, except for disk-space. The whole map is never fully loaded into memory, it's procedurally generated, meaning the objects within your radius(how big that is depends on the game) are loaded into memory, and the rest sit idly on the HDD. MMO-s have huge worlds because: A:they can return profit(think WOW's 10 billion$ of it), and B: they aren't that great graphically either, because that's not the focus of it. Open-world or no, new engine or no, you still have to create the textures, you still have to fill the space with content... and above all else, you have to iron out the bugs. And the bigger the game, the exponentially more bugs it has. 

 

35%. Yeah, ok.. sure. 3x bigger. No. Still not buying it. 

[AkiKishi]

There was only one map larger in the Elder Scrolls series: Daggerfall. And that was because it was randomly generated to a huge extent(and they didn't try that again for a reason). Skyrim wasn't and neither is the Witcher. And again, map size has nothing to do with hardware, except for disk-space. The whole map is never fully loaded into memory, it's procedurally generated, meaning the objects within your radius(how big that is depends on the game) are loaded into memory, and the rest sit idly on the HDD. MMO-s have huge worlds because: A:they can return profit(think WOW's 10 billion$ of it), and B: they aren't that great graphically either, because that's not the focus of it. Open-world or no, new engine or no, you still have to create the textures, you still have to fill the space with content... and above all else, you have to iron out the bugs. And the bigger the game, the exponentially more bugs it has. 

 

35%. Yeah, ok.. sure. 3x bigger. No. Still not buying it. 

 

 

Yep, I bought and played Morrowind long ago and couldn't stand its shallow and diffuse brand of content. I've shunned all Elder Scrolls games because of it, greatly favoring Bioware's more linear and purposeful style of RPG. (I really barely consider Elder Scrolls to be RPGs.)

 

The move by Bioware and CDPR to mimic ES is of great concern and I sincerely hope that the pacing of DAI continues in the Bioware tradition.

 

It's more likely to work with The Witcher3 since Geralt does not have companions most of the time. I wonder if the NPCs in DA:I will just run out of things to say over the these large maps. 

[AkiKishi]

Obsidian already writes very good characters.  Anything from Planescape Torment and Kreia from KOTOR2. It's just that far less people have played Obsidians games. 

 

Oblivion I found boring but people keep saying how good Skyrim is. 

[ladyoflate]

Say what you will about Bethesda (their character/story writing has gone significantly downhill after Morrowind, bring back Mike Kirkbride!), but completely pwns in the in-game lore department (because of Mike Kirkbride). Bethesda games are about setting the player loose in their sandbox which is the main character that tell it's own story. The actual quest writing is garbage though and they know it because of the forward measures they took with their dlc.

 

Give me a world designed by Bethesda, a story written by Obsidian/CDProject Red, and characters written by BioWare and that would be the greatest game of all time.

 

Sans the CDProjektRed, as I know nothing about them since the 'sex cards' thing has sort of poisoned me to the experience, and we are in agreement. (bethesda is SO BAD  at people on so many levels. not only are they mostly boring but half of them are utterly generic and the other half are utterly terrifying)

[ladyoflate]

Obsidian already writes very good characters.  Anything from Planescape Torment and Kreia from KOTOR2. It's just that far less people have played Obsidians games. 

 

Oblivion I found boring but people keep saying how good Skyrim is. 

 

I've clocked a lot more hours in Skyrim than Oblivion, but I haven't bothered to finish either. I just burn out with no real story motivation. Skyrim's prettier and you're less likely to turn out radioactive in the CC, so I've just explored it more. So, yes, it's better, for a given value of better.

[AkiKishi]

Sans the CDProjektRed, as I know nothing about them since the 'sex cards' thing has sort of poisoned me to the experience, and we are in agreement. (bethesda is SO BAD  at people on so many levels. not only are they mostly boring but half of them are utterly generic and the other half are utterly terrifying)

 

They don't do sex cards anymore. Genius move though since it got a little known game a ton of attention. 

[ladyoflate]

They don't do sex cards anymore. Genius move though since it got a little known game a ton of attention. 

 

Oh, I know they don't. And yeah, good for hype. But the fact they went into it with that sort of attitude doesn't make me trust them not to activate Feminist Hulk, so I just avoid it. Even if it's so fashion I could cry from the looks of it, and that one scene linked in the 'preferred sex scene' thread seemed like they got that not all romance has to be the ~dramaz~.

 

It's like those yellow cakes that are sliced into really thin layers with the chocolate frosting. The overall effect is nice but I can never fully enjoy it because it could have been so much better.

[ladyoflate]

The Witcher series has exceptional story-telling. For one reason or another (sub-par gameplay, fixed protagonist, ridiculous misogynistic argument) people just don't give it a chance. I could only hope that every main quest from every AAA title going forward is as well thought out and executed as AoK .

 

Well, that's why I mentioned the cake as a metaphor. It doesn't matter how good the story-telling is if I don't like the story, and clearly I don't think the mysoginistic argument is ridiculous. If I get confirmation from a source I trust that the attitude was only present in the first game or they've made up for it or whatever, then yes I will check it out because fashion.

It's also the fixed protag as another point against it for me, so.