Witcher 3 hype thread: Reviews Roundup!

Because, my opinion of Pc gamers formed here on GameSpot. I was a console only gamer back in the day, these days I only have a gaming pc. Reading pc gamers posts over the years here made me think that. Hell I have seen it typed. Seriously I look down on most of you. Its a joke.

I have gotten older. I no longer get thrills out of arguing with strangers on the internet about BS.

Then piss off and don't come back, stop wasting people's time. You look down on us? You know what? you don't matter here.... just another troll that probably went from consoles to PC but could never afford to play the games on high, so now spends his time insulting those that can and with higher standards than you (which isn't hard to be honest)

In fact Witcher 2 looked better and better with every trailer and final game looked even better. In the case of Witcher 3 exact opposite thing happened because after the release of Consoles they realized how weak these Consoles are. People who accept these practices are the reason why we have DLCs, Pre Order bonuses, Microtransactions, Early Access and other crap in the game industry today. They were trying to shove paid mods down our throats as well but people spoke against it before it was too late. Some clowns were defending that crap as well "but but but don't like it don't buy it".

Here is how Witcher 2 evolved.

2009

2010

2011

And now look at Witcher 3.

I'll leave this here. This video sums it up nicely.

Thats it Felipe, let it all out...........feel like a man now?

Troll is obvious. Shame your species exist really.

So you are saying that you've no source and just "assumed" that?

@Advid-GamerIf you're here just to tell everyone you're better than them, please move along. That's posting just to pick a fight, and that's not compliant with posting guidelines. If you want to debate the downgrade issue without that, then feel free to hang around.

Thanks.

Actually CD Projekt responded to these claims in this interview:

TLDW: “Very unfair to compare trailers and gameplay demos”...

Also from WCCFTech:

The Witcher 3 Developers Promise Textures Are The Same from 2013; Sharpening Filter from 2013 Has Been Toned Down

We never switched the textures. On pc, you now have the option to activate “Ultra” quality textures with the full resolution. However, the difference that many people see with new and old footage was a strong sharpening filter in 2013 that looks awesome on screenshots and in short videos, but strains the eyes after a short while if there is a lot of movement (leaves and grass swaying in the wind as an example). That’s why it was decided to tone that effect down.

However, people who really want to have it can of course use the Redkit to change the environment settings. It’s just a matter of taste. ; )

...

OK, but, is anyone playing the %^*@ game yet? First impressions? :-)

STILL waiting for PC reviews, grr

Nvidia drivers with W3 optimizations are out. Get 'em.

Waiting for reviews??? C'mon, man! Jump on in.....be my personal beta tester....or something. ;-)

@attirex: I made that mistake for the last time with Watch Dogs. Now I wait for the truth instead of relying on suped up trailers.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/witcher-3-gets-new-nvidia-pc-drivers/1100-6427421/

Looks great and can't wait to fire it up

Apparently those drivers cripple performance on keppler GPU's though. There is a big thread on neogaf about it as well as gameshardware.de benchmarks about it

Seems like Nvidia has favored Maxwell more and more over Kepler

They've provided some nice comparisons for folks to play with to examine 1) what it looks like on PC and 2) how the settings play out

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide

Of course, GW stuff eats hardware like candy...

I think part of it is that the Maxwell GPUs are said to be 3x more efficient at tessellation and hairworks throws a ton of tessellation on Geralt and monsters.

In their non hairworks benchmarks they have a sub $200 radeon 285 beating a 780 and almost being on par with an original Titan. And the 780ti which used to trade blows with the 970, is 20% slower in W3, and also noticeably slower than a 290.

Well hopefully a new driver will change that.

But with hairworks enabled the 290x can't even handle max settings at 1080p.

I think I might just buy it ignoring the graphics furora, everyone seems to think it's a great game anyway

Nvidia already released their W3 game ready driver, and kepler cards have been falling behind in other games as well.

Also, the whole "Maxwell GPUs are said to be 3x more efficient at tessellation" is in comparison to a GTX 680, not a 780ti. Quote from Nvidia's website:

In games, GeForce GTX 980's upgraded engine powers through tessellation tasks and is up to 3x faster than GeForce GTX 680 at high tessellation factors

A 780ti is pretty darn close to maxwell in tessellation performance

@ferret-gamer said:

@RyviusARC said:

@ferret-gamer said:

@RyviusARC said:

@adamosmaki said:

@xantufrog said:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/witcher-3-gets-new-nvidia-pc-drivers/1100-6427421/

Looks great and can't wait to fire it up

Apparently those drivers cripple performance on keppler GPU's though. There is a big thread on neogaf about it as well as gameshardware.de benchmarks about it

I think part of it is that the Maxwell GPUs are said to be 3x more efficient at tessellation and hairworks throws a ton of tessellation on Geralt and monsters.

In their non hairworks benchmarks they have a sub $200 radeon 285 beating a 780 and almost being on par with an original Titan. And the 780ti which used to trade blows with the 970, is 20% slower in W3, and also noticeably slower than a 290.

Well hopefully a new driver will change that.

But with hairworks enabled the 290x can't even handle max settings at 1080p.

Nvidia already released their W3 game ready driver, and kepler cards have been falling behind in other games as well.

Also, the whole "Maxwell GPUs are said to be 3x more efficient at tessellation" is in comparison to a GTX 680, not a 780ti. Quote from Nvidia's website:

In games, GeForce GTX 980's upgraded engine powers through tessellation tasks and is up to 3x faster than GeForce GTX 680 at high tessellation factors

A 780ti is pretty darn close to maxwell in tessellation performance

Well I guess that sucks for those that spent 700USD+ on a 780ti.

Favored implies they actually put any effort into optimization the driver/game for the 700 series.

Look at these benchmarks.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/The-Witcher-3-PC-237266/Specials/Grafikkarten-Benchmarks-1159196/

The 780 3GB is getting pwned by the 285 2GB, which means this shit performance has nothing to do with memory, but with nvidia not giving a damn about cards that were released 2 years ago or less.

Even with HW being turned off the 780 is losing a a card that cost half the price. AMD is starting to look more attractive for my next GPU purchase. I mean, they have crap drivers but at least their top-end GPUs don't become obsolete after a couple of years.

Remember when the 780ti used to beat the 290X?

Damn, nvidia...

So i'm experiencing a very annoying bug. 10 internet points to whoever can spot it based on this screenshot...

Game is amazing, runnins better than i was expecting and it looks gorgeous. Got most things on high, getting 45fps average, using todays witcher 3 drivers. Dont' have the best setup but its running better than anticipated! (660 ti and an i5 @ 3.6, 8gb ram).

Was expecting medium settings and half or some on low but when I started the game they set me up with most my things at high (tesselation at medium/water at medium). The game looks much better than the videos, I saw many "high" setting videos the last few days and it looks much better in game than alot of those videos. Can't imagine what Ultra looks like and the nvidia bear thingy on hehe.

Remember the secret message they put into the Witcher 2 trailer saying pc RPG's weren't dead and telling the media to "f-off"?

"And I also think the PC controls are not great, to say the least. After playing the tutorial I abandoned the keyboard for a gamepad—clearly the input device the game was designed around. The keyboard controls are unnecessarily convoluted, with “Dodge” for instance requiring you to press Alt and W/A/S/D at the same time. Considering how much you’re dodging, it’s a huge pain."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2923496/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-pc-review-impressions-smoothly-slaying-monsters.html

Yea.

Good thing this game is great so far, because I was extremely disappointed by the graphics (expected GTA 5 quality after seeing the trailers). The PC controls are also just a mess, and I hate freaking gamepads for anything other than sports games. There should NEVER be an rpg released on the PC that is made more for a gamepad than k/m. When I learn the game better and know what I want to will work some remapping in, but the default mapping is horrendous. It seems like it was thrown together last minute with no thought at all.

Reminder to any fanboys out there about to pounce on me....I said the game I great despite these things so relax. I love how the side quests have main story type quality, so far no kill 10 of these and gather 10 of those type things. They even made a quest to find a woman's frying pan in a house interesting. Feels like Sherlock Holmes in Skyrim. Hope that continues.

A question: in Witcher 2 we had tons of choices to make. Is there a save file that Witcher 3 uses? Or was all that just lost?

Yes, you can import your TW2 saves, or if you have lost them you can choose an option to fill in your TW2 decisions at the start of the game. Note: my TW2 saves were not auto-detected, because if you use Steam's cloud-save then they wind up in a place where (at the GoG version of) TW3 does not look. So I googled and found a guide online on what to move in order for my GoG copy of TW3 to detect the save.

Going from TW1 to TW2 allowed to import the weapons and armor and orens , and importing TW2 to TW3 do not have any of the previous items I held in TW2. meh

Another honest question: how good is the W3 really? I'm only asking because the same Kevin gave DA:I a 9, and that was mediocre at best (20 hours of decent campaign and 80 hours of collecting shards). Is TW3 really a 10? Or is this another one of Kevin's exaggerations?

I'm having a lot of fun with the game. I didn't expect myself to like it, but the open world nature and the amount of polish this game has surprised me.

The graphics are also very good, so much so that it crashes my 670 from time to time. 100% gpu usage, rip.

Visually the game is far better than GTA V.

Try turning the FPS cap to unlimited from 60fps if you haven't done so, this fixed the crashing for me with a GTX970.

The recent patch made significant improvements in performance, at least for me. Before the patch, turning on V-Sync caused the FPS to hit middle 40s, not it works great.

Also I used to get mid 50 on high before the patch, now I have stable 60 with a high/ultra combination. And thankfully the stuttering issue with the camera and movement no longer exists. Everything is smooth now.

Edit: Also, for some reason, my average GPU temps went up by like 6 or 7 degrees Celsius. Used to be high 70s. now they reach mid 80s after the patch. Anyone else notice this?

I'm really impressed how fast this game loads. You can fast travel from on side of the map to the other and it takes literally 1 second on an ssd.

I already did that, and the crashing did stop when I turned the fan speed on my gpu to 100%. On automatic it crashes.

I just ordered a 970 anyway, my 670 is just a bit too slow for the game. It's a shame my 2nd 670 died, otherwise I wouldn't have to upgrade.

Thanks for the tip regardless.