So, I know that criticism for this game is susceptible to hyperbole (as is expected of such emotionally charged, high profile legacy games with unattainable expectations). The wave of early negative feedback went viral and triggered a massive emotional response of review bombing. It's one of many reasons why I take most meta reviews (users & critics) with a huge pinch of salt.

That said, in this case, the criticism is 100% justified towards Activision/Blizzard. For their abysmal handling of this public relations debacle and complete lack of accountability. How do massive companies (in entertainment no less) still make such fundamental mistakes as blame shifting and finger pointing with their customer base, in 2020!? Like when Star Wars TLJ had a similar critical response and the apparent PR strategy was insulting the fanbase...

The fact that Blizzard keeps responding in the relative obscurity of their site Forum instead of proper public responses through larger media platforms, reeks of insecurity. Then there's the laughable "we want to preserve the true spirit of Warcraft 3" excuse... which would be akin to "remastering" an old movie on BluRay but keeping the VHS visual fidelity for the same excuse.

I'm no corporate apologist, but normally I can somewhat "justify" certain standards of the AAA game industry — There is no excuse for a total lack of accountability.

Like most I'll try to maintain some cautious optimism. The casting is very distracting for sure.

I certainly hope the final product's visual depiction of Geralt won't look anything like that horrible test footage. If he grew a beard and shaved his temples, Cavill could look solid. I know it's not canon, but I far prefer the Witcher 3's depictions. Also much easier to make a bearded actor and character look alike than without.

I'm not so concerned with Cavill's acting; he and Geralt have about the same emotional range...

But it can be distracting when a heavily typecasted actor plays yet another iconic "hero" character.

As opposed to a less recognizable actor who could more easily be molded into said role.

We also know virtually nothing of how the show is written (for all we know the actual story could be great).

Time will tell.

@alexjames10211: Except this is supposed to be A Song of Ice & Fire,while A Game of Thrones should only be part of the story. Books and show differences aside, the very first scene in both is about the looming threat of the Others and their Wights.

The whole point of the series is to show the futility of The Game of Thrones. The crucial need to end squabbles and unite against the common threat. It's GRRM's brilliance of using entertaining yet complex storytelling as a metaphor to teach perspective on society and conflict. Instead we're focusing on yet another pointless war of succession...

On the character death/near death issue: It's not that we wantour beloved characters to die, but to be kept on our toes. This series managed to subvert tropes by conservatively using near-death hero moments and occasionally kill or irreversibly injure big characters.

That careful balance of death to close calls is how it managed to maintain genuine tension. Now however, well you said it yourself "every single character came within an inch (of being killed)"which is precisely how it became like every other Hollywood cliché with no real tension. Since Season 6, this happens routinely which has wasted all the genuine tension the series had carefully built until that point. Says a lot about D&D.

@sarab60: Don't blame the CGI. This was mismanagement, terrible use of resources throughout. D&D wrote the episode and their meddling always sticks out tonally. In this case, they made the director shoot in pitch black with fast moving shaky camera scenes. Using darkness is fine but you need proper contrasting and meticulous cinematography. This mostly felt like found footage (which reeks of a D&D decision).

Miguel Sapochnik is a great action director, but D&D have a history of meddling -- imposing ridiculous requests onto the experienced director/cinematographer. Battle of the Bastards for instance was full of behind the scenes drama linked to poor management.

They're so obsessed with beating these vain trivial records like highestIMDB rating, most live horses used in a single action sequence, and now, the longest battle sequence. They're like trust fund teenagers put in charge of a massive enterprise, burning cash on the stupidest things and failing to grasp even the most basic of fundamentals.

But yes this episode, season, heck the past 3 seasons have been laughably predictable. The very few "twists" we don't necessarily see coming more than a handful of scenes in advance are only surprising because they lack coherence. Everything is either a massive Hollywood cliché or Narrative Dissonance.

These guys don't do the best job of elaborating on why they feel underwhelmed, but I'm entailed to agree regardless. There's a few reasons I can think of (and it could all change once we actually see hands-on footage).

The biggest reason is just that it suffers from overextended hype fatigue. We waited too long and the Borderlands magic has kind of died out.
(ex: The Last Guardian)

On a related note (and I know not everyone feels the same) it hasn't evolved enough if at all since Borderlands 2 released. This is always tricky. We want a sequel to retain what made the franchise special, but too similar and we end up with franchise fatigue. Many other games have since innovated the gameplay standards. So if Borderlands 3 sits on the laurels of its past success, it will likely disappoint. (ex: Shadow of Mordor's sequel Shadow of War)

@jagdedge124: You're in the minority. Pre-orders alone puts their sales numbers through the roof. What's incredible about Rockstar's two flagship titles (GTA and now RDR) is that they appeal even to franchise gamers who typically spend 90% of their game time playing the same yearly shooter or sports game (COD, FIFA/PEG).

There's some crossover between them and sure there's some massive outliers like Fortnite who come out of nowhere and become "most played game" for an impressive amount of time but those are Free to Play games which has its own demographics and sales model. Anyway the point is that even people who usually play the same game throughout the year tend to buy Rockstar's flagship titles.

@silv3rst0rm: My thoughts exactly when they announced those mechanics. If it isn't already, I would assume it'll be made optional in a future patch, or at least tweaked so to be less intrusive/distracting. Other reviewers have said they loved the mechanics (from everything related to food including decaying meat to weapons decay/maintenance). They said it felt like organically integrated mechanics far more than it felt distracting. Then again, to each their own. Some love micromanagement while some hate it. Some love it at first and grow to hate it over time just as the opposite is true.

@playstationzone: What? I don't mean to insult your syntax (or rather lack thereof) but I can't make sense of what you wrote. It feels like you are missing several words here and there throughout your sentences which makes it near impossible to read. Again, I mean no offence, just trying to understand you.

I really wish they would fix the darn Witcher armour sets colours and textures which became really weird and low quality when the last expansion introduced the underwhelming dye system. It's really broken the aesthetic of Witcher gear, which is so tragic considering how great these sets looked originally.

@magnusopus: That's all well and good, but the hard working people who've actually made this film have already been paid. It's the studio with its 98+% income return entitlement which "loses" hypothetical returns when pirating happens.

Pirated digital media is so misrepresented when sensationalist reports come out trying to say "How much this property has "lost" in piracy" where they report every instance of a download not made from itunes as being both illegal (which is factually wrong since most individual cases are/would never be deemed illegal in a court of law) and considered to directly translate into a missed sale--as if each download would have alternatively translated into an actual sale of product in the event where said download would not have occurred.

Many people can't seem to grasp that concept. A simpler explanation using physical goods as an example is like each year when a major sports championship produces thousands of merchandise with both finalists as the year x's championship winner, only to have half of said merchandise made void when the other team ultimately wins. That merchandise is never made available for purchase (at least not on any official capacity) and is instead donated far away or destroyed. Saying that pirated digital goods represent a 1 for 1 direct monetary loss is as counterfactual as claiming loss of potential sales if the aforementioned obsolete sports merchandise was donated instead of destroyed. Of course you can't prove that every individual who's consumed pirated goods would never have paid for it in the absence of a freebie, but that argument goes both ways and when taking all the variables into account surrounding digital goods; the *actual* value of lost sales becomes so statistically infinitesimal that it all but proves the fallacy in claiming digital piracy tangibly hurts business.