Witcher support group

King of Posters
62

TES did a game where you’re actively involved as a participant in the world, where not everything is clearly laid out for you, where you become a figure of legend and a mover-and-shaker among gods and delve into the mythology of the world to gain insight into the decisions you make in its present. It’s called Morrowind and it owns bones. it’s also about as unlike Dark Souls as you can get.

The only thing i really want these games to rip off from Souls is kinetically satisfying combat. Their value comes from being a big huge messy sandbox where you can help someone then rob them blind, or collect every volume of a steamy argonian romance novel and then meet the author, or drink a potion and jump across an entire island. I adore Souls games but their value lies in static, eerily quiet worlds with carefully placed monster ambushes and characters who almost seem to exist as decoration. Not that i wouldn’t love to see some sort of weird mashup of the two, but saying one approach is inherently superior seems silly to me.

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63

The combat could use work too - the ploddingness is much appreciated but I can’t honestly say the clash of bodies and weapons is perfect, more like stabbing fat ghosts

You lop off a gargoyle or whatever’s tail and I’m like uhh how

64

It’d be nice if enemies reacted more to your hits, for sure. Swinging through a crowd of little skinny zombies with a giant zweihander and watching them all reel in place then flop over is a lil silly. i think the great animation on your PC and the sfx do a lot of the heavy lifting for combat feel. The use of stamina to measure and pace your attacks is the real hotness in Soulsfights and probably the simplest thing a TES-style fantasy game could take away (i’m sort of talking around The Witcher because i ain’t played it). The systems are basically already in place.

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It’s definitely a boon to have to commit to big frame-hungry, uncancellable attacks, though I always wonder if stamina cooldown (and any other resource) can be communicated by something other than a fucking meter

66

I guess I’m just not impressed that a developer was able to adapt a story from a book only idiots would read on a plane trip.

Here’s a clip of President Obama talking about the Witcher games because Poish representatives gave him Witcher stuff as a point of national pride.

I’m not saying that counts it as high literature or anything, but the writing has to be pretty good for that to happen.

Your comments on the Witcher screen cap just show it’s NOT YOUR BAG. But if ur bitching about mini maps and button assignments in an RPG game then fine whatever it’s hard to take you seriously. Much like if I was to rant about everything I find intolerable about Dark Souls you’d find it stupid. I’d just be nit picking about every little problem (oh and there are many) and every little thing I didn’t like in the game. Clearly that doesn’t mean it’s a bad game, but it’s not my style.

Not saying things couldn’t be cleaned up for the Witcher either, but jeez man. Pump your breaks.

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What’s wrong with meters??
Love a meter.

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69

To me, Dark Souls is “what if Monster Hunter had open world level design?” and the story is just atmospheric wallpaper. Animation priority and a speed-over-power gradient are a big part of why I like them. Monster Hunter also is pretty light on story and exposition, but has a breezy atmosphere that doesn’t really take away from the pleasure of playing it.

Regarding story, I don’t understand how item descriptions and loading screens are substantively superior to a book in the game. If anything the book/letter/etc. at least exists within the game world. In Dark Souls the player character doesn’t know half of the information the player is privy to. Sometimes (I’m looking at you, Fallout 4, jeez) the text you find isn’t even consistent with the game’s tone, but, again, The Witcher does a pretty good job.

@jodeaux I guess what I’m getting at is based on your entrance you’d think we were talking about Huniepop, a game that is explicitly pornographic and marks your progress by notches in the belt. Give The Witcher some slack.

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I only like them in sci-fi scenarios really, find them sort of incongruous anywhere else that isn’t tonally about wacky goofcore bluesky funtimes etc

And they’re just boring and I want novelty

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Now I’m sad I can’t fill up a love meter, learn to min/max love.

72

That Obama video is cracking me up, thanks for sharing.

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If you look there’s a WEEEIIIRRRRD internet hole of Witcher/Obama that I hope I’ll forget about by tomorrow.

74

I guess. When it comes to mechanics like stamina in Souls i prefer my UI to be utilitarian. A meter is boring, but easy to read and understand.
DkS2 added tired animations when your stamina was depleted, that was a nice touch. As was the “i’m in a menu” pose.

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75

I don’t think the novels even have much to do with the writing in the game. It’s the game designer written dialogue that’s great. Also you got to play these things in polish. I think in english you have to listen to the same two voice actors for every npc for 80 hours. and if you got to put up with videogame voice acting foreign languages are better anyway.

and I never bought the argument that bad writing in books has anything to do with videogames. there’s too many other things going on in games, even if you directly transfered the text from the book to the game

76

Having now read this, I can only say that while stray sentences and paragraphs put some valid criticisms well, as a whole this article is bunkum. He gives away the game immediately when he says Morrowind is unplayable and Oblivion is totally great.

“Souls games tell story without all the dramatization. Skyrim has too much dramatization and it doesn’t work. Although it certainly can’t do the same thing as the Souls games because the games are completely different. And I don’t want Skyrim to be like Souls. But it should have less story though, like Souls. But not really like Souls. Someone get me another drink.”

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77

Yeah, also the outright dismissal of the fantasy lore in these games despite their being a great gulf in quality between Morrowind and what came after (a few sparse exceptions to be found in Skyrim)

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If you have no idea what the Elder Scrolls franchise is, you are probably either (a) an adult woman, or (b) the sort of person who once beat up the sort of person who likes the Elder Scrolls franchise, so herewith a quick primer: Bethesda Game Studios made it; its genre is the genre that has elves; and its subgenre is the open-world RPG.

Did this guy go to Sterotype high?

Behind you, though, is a dense, mysterious forest. Check that shit out. In the north, however, looms a range of Led Zeppelinly misty mountains. I want to go to there. Open-world games existed before Oblivion, but none had ever seemed so detailed or comely.

I live in Colorado, digital mountains hold no sway no mystery for me. I can’t relate to this at all. Like if this is what you wanna do go for a friggin’ hike. Why do this in a game? I just can not wrap my head around it.

Remember how you then crept around the house stealing all the bowls, spoons, paintbrushes, and bread you could carry?

Nope, you creepy fuck.

What The Legend of Zelda felt like when I was 12, Oblivion actually was.

Given what this guy says he does in Oblivion that would seem to speak to his deranged mental state more than it does Zelda.

Topic sentence:

He said half way through his article, a blood vessel kicked in from my editing days of college past and immediately made me want to throttle this guy.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours playing Elder Scrolls games and never been intrigued or compelled by a single character’s emotional predicament,

THEN PLAY ANOTHER GAME, nobody is holding a gun to your head, shooting an arrow in your knee.

I can hear you: Who cares? None of this has to do with what makes Skyrim so great

I submit to the jury, proof he hears ‘the voices’

Dense expositional lore has no place in video-game stories

But, this is the only tool Soul’s uses if you count bizzare ass descriptions of random items as expositional.

Maybe some of you love Skyrim‘s expository lore

MAYBE some people have different opinions!

Why make every character a walking lore dump when lore can be more effectively embodied in the world and environments?

Because people are social creatures that interact with others, and by not signposting which people are the most important it makes the process of dialogue and listening more rewarding. It allows one to get engrossed in a world that is fleshed out.

I read the other day that Dungeons & Dragons has been making a comeback, and not just among ironists. If you don’t believe it, head down to your local comic-book store.

Or you could go to a a GAME store where they sell that and have room for people to play. But to know that you’d have to talk to someone or bother to pick up on IRL ‘lore’ ques when you go outside.

The problem with this guys article at it’s heart is that it ignores 3 realities.

  1. This dude is fucking nuts.
    He talks about all this time he spent in Skyrim and he clearly hated most of it. He says he’s trying to be fair but as seen above he’s just frustrating.

  2. Skyrim and DarkSouls are different games.
    Because of the theme he’s pairing these two games. That’s like saying Halo and Starcraft are basically the same game with three races in the story and marines get along with the pretentious Aliens they once fought to band together against a race that is basically a biological onslaught. However, no these GAMES are way different. As Skyrim is accomplishing things that Dark Souls doesn’t even attempt and vica versa.

  3. Skyrim was a big moment in games. Sure it was stupid popular. But it was also a popular game that had people talking about quest lines or moments they found that were different than what someone else found. But if you don’t like the story of course you’re not going to like it.

But all this aside it has nothing to do with the Witcher, because again different games. Though Witcher 3 and Skyrim are in the same arena. But Witcher 3 bothered to learn it’s lessons from Skyrim and I think is superior in nearly every way. I’m sure people could find aspects they appreciate more in Skyrim, I’d wager most of them have to do with the fact that you’re playing a blank avatar whereas just Playing Gerealt has strengths and weaknesses. Overall I think the experience is better for actually putting a character in there.

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79

Well the real thing is, Skyrim basically sucks, including for the reason he says it sucks, but also for a whole host of other reasons which are why he claims it’s great. Watch him disclaim, over and over and over: I know Skyrim is the Greatest Game Of All Time, it’s really seriously super great and I played it for like a billion hours guys, I did! I’m a GAMER like you. But I just have this one tiiiiiiiiny criticism…

That his article is couched like this delegitimizes it from the outset. “Skyrim with a story that is quieter, and works” already exists, it’s called Morrowind, except he doesn’t want to mess with the clunky mechanics. Fine: but Skyrim doesn’t really improve these mechanics so much as make you wish you were playing a Starbreeze game.

And, actually, “Skyrim except with dramatization that actually works and decently fluid combat mechanics” IS Witcher 3, allegedly (I’ve played like the first hour), to bring it back to the topic.

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80

skyrim looks much liver than mwind
but not as liver as w3?

81

if you’re going to do the souls posturing thing demon’s is the cool one

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82

Would a depiction of non-consenting sex for purposes of story be any different than a depiction of consenting sex?

I’m assuming you mean non-awkward as in the execution of the scene, not in the internal depiction of it (as real-world sex has plenty of potential for awkwardness, and there’s narrative value in depicting such a thing) but what would you classify as “tasteful”?