Hey Duders,

I have just finished listening to the last GOTY podcast and at the end the group talked about what to expect from 2015 and Jeff mentioned he thought the The Witcher 3 would be a let down.

I agree.

Everything I have seen of this game looks incredible everything they say makes it look like it will easily top my own game of the year list next year.

So why do I think it will fail? I had a dream.

I had a dream where alot of other stuff happened and in that dream I checked the internet and The Witcher 3 got 5 out of 10 from IGN.

So let this be an official record when everybody next year is talking about how much of a shock it was that I called it.

Considering it will most likely be played only by Vinny, I wouldn't put much stock in Jeff's opinion on whether it will be a letdown or not.

Witcher 3 is getting a lot of hype, but I'd say it's safe to say that it's not being overhyped. I mean, Witcher 2 was a surprise even to Poles - I followed that game and I knew it's going to be pretty good, but I wasn't expecting such a drastic jump in quality from the first one. Dragon Age Inquisition's success may have done that game a real solid, because people won't look to it as the savior of open world cRPGs.

Recent screenshots were ugly looking, nothing like the initial footage shown. In my opinion, The Witcher is overrated. I heard so many good things about the original till I decided to purchase it and found out the combat was braindead LMB clicking, with a bit of timed clicks. Could have fooled me into thinking I was playing a Hatsune Miku game.

And let's not forget the dick-move they pulled by making the cloth map bundled in the limited edition an xbox one exclusive.

If they fix the combat, all is forgiven.

If it's Witcher 2 with a bigger world and a more dynamic story I'll be pretty happy.

@trafalgarlaw: The Witcher 3 is expanding upon The Witcher 2, which features a completely different combat system from Witcher 1. Most of the praise The Witcher received came from 2 anyway.

I hope it's good, i really wanted to like the Witcher 2 i enjoyed it up to the Dwarven stone city at which point the game just lost my interest.

I have a feeling i won't be able to get into this, getting into The Witcher 2 story was quite dependent on playing the first Witcher, and now that i've skipped two i can see me being completely confused if i just jump right into 3.

What worries me is that the game is going completely open world. Witcher 2 had discrete areas that were rather small, but they had a lot going on. I feel like there will either be way too much to do or an empty world. Maybe that's just the open world fatigue talking.

@zombie2011: Eh, I don't agree. Both 1 and 2 are fairly self-contained. The only thing you're missing jumping straight to Witcher 2 that is important is the Wild Hunt, and that is regarded as a side story in 1. 3 will prominently feature Yennefer and Ciri, but they are book characters that get barely a mention in 1 and the deal with them is somewhat explained in 2, but their backstories will be probably properly introduced in the beginning of 3, what with Ciri being the second playable character.

Seriously, if anything, you may suffer from not knowing about book stuff. 3 dives deeper into those than the previous two with making Ciri, Yennefer and Emhyr central characters.

Jeff was negative, no way. You know, he'd totally love an RPG otherwise so I'm going to take his opinion very seriously.

I love Giant Bomb but when it comes to RPGs, it's time to look elsewhere. It's insane to listen to all this GOTY coverage and only have Patrick played through Dragon Age and ... Jeff?? Really? Vinny couldn't even make more progress?

Even fans of The Witcher will tell you the first game is flawed as hell.

The Witcher 2 still looks good now, on PC 3 is going to be a fucking powerhouse.

Also wtf does "overrated" even mean anymore, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. It loses all meaning when you put nothing behind it. No one praised the combat in the first game and while there is still room for improvement in 2 it is serviceable. The Witcher 3 has hype because 2 is a fantastic game with a great story, great setting, and impressive graphics. Its silly to be worried about the game "looking" good when there is so much footage of it looking amazing.

Which is why im using the far more reliable source of my dreams!

I had a dream once that Shin Megami Tensei IV got a 4/10 from Gamespot but I think it got an 8.

Moral of the story - dreams are the worst gaming journalists.

While I don't put much stock in Jeff's opinions on RPGs I do share his "concerns" about the Witcher 3. Delays can be good but delays can also be bad. If they are using this time to polish (get it?) up the game then thats great. There is also a very real possibility that they're using this time to put out fires so it can actually ship this year.

When they announced the Collectors Edition with the statue and all sorts of other dumb nonsense I got a little too excited and pre-ordered it for PC. Now I'm starting to nervously wonder if my machine will be even able to run it..

Overrated seems to mean "I don't like it as much as everyone else does. I'm the right one." Needless to say, I don't like the way people use the word.

In Vinny's defense he just had a girl and bought a house.

@sethphotopoulos: Yeah I get it realistically but I feel like the game kind of got the shaft. No big deal just this is not the site to come to for RPG coverage.

They may be a little unfortunate in that they're hitting the open world thing just as everyone has finally realised how badly that's been driven into the ground by Ubisoft et al.

Personally, I think they're a developer which still takes enough pride in their work that they might not to fall into the trap of just filling the open world with meaningless, shitty content for the sake of padding the hour count. What will be disappointing is if they resist that temptation and then everyone complains that there isn't enough meaningless, shitty content and the hour count isn't high enough.

I would gladly take 30 hours and a high concentration of high quality content over the now standard open world approach of wasting as much of the player's time as possible. That didn't play to Bioware's strengths in Inquisition and it wouldn't play to CDPR's strengths either. We need to get to a state where it's acceptable to use an open world without assuming it also needs to be a time sink sandbox. Leave the sandboxes to the studios who are strong enough at gameplay to make you want to stay for that reason alone.

Witcher 3 could easily go either way, but I'm optimistic that they can pull this off. I think the step up in production values they took from Witcher 1 to Witcher 2 --without losing what people liked about Witcher 1 in the first place-- is pretty much unprecedented in the modern era. If they can maintain a similar trajectory here without taking their eye off of the ball this will be an incredible game.

I liked The Witcher 2 more than a lot of people did, I think. Mostly for the story and world, and the combat didn't turn me off like most games do. For that reason alone I'm planning on getting 3, and it would have to be pretty rotten to disappoint me, my expectations are not absurdly high. I'll wait until after it comes out to see what people are saying about it, but even if it gets lukewarm reception I'll probably pick it up.

Honestly you missed about as much not playing through 1 as you did not reading any of the novels. Sure, you missed some stuff, but it's not really important and doesn't affect it at all.

I enjoy this site but I personally don't put huge stock in these guys' opinions. I take them for what they are: opinions.

The games I thought would suck this year ended up being quite good ( Shadow of Mordor, DA:I ) and I believed Destiny would be amazing and I practically hated it.

I'm going to take 2015 off from trying to predict how future games will turn out and just wait until I actually play them before forming any type of hypothetical judgement.

CD Projekt Red has pseudo-Valve money coming in from their GoG service, and they're taking their time to make the games they want to see. They're basically using GoG to kickstart their own dream projects. And so far they're learning their lessons and getting better. I don't think Witcher 3 is going to have cross-over appeal to non-RPG gamers like Skyrim or Final Fantasy 7 did, but I think it will do well enough and be well received by those who play it.

Even fans of the series tolerate the original game instead of praise it. Luckily it's not necessary to play the sequel.

Yet Shadow of Mordor grabbed this year's GOTY despite following the Assassin's Creed sandbox template to the letter, including climbing towers, so you know.

If this is like a better Witcher 2 I'll be happy. If No Man's Sky is just walking around, scanning stuff to get things to upgrade my ship so I can travel to the center of the universe I AM TOTALLY ON BOARD WITH THAT AND DON'T REALLY WANT IT TO BE ANYTHING MORE!

@carryboy: First, I wouldn't care if IGN have it a 1 out of 10.

Second, I don't think Witcher 2 was that great. I thought it played real jank (at least on 360), had multiple quest bugs and wasn't anywhere near a technical marvel. Great story and characters, though.

So, on that note, if Witcher 3 is just 2 with better graphics, good story and it actually plays like an open world action RPG should, that's 4 stars from me right there.

But you're right. I don't like all these delays and mystique around this game. It's troubling.

Witcher 2 was my favourite game of last generation, but I've been largely avoiding pre-release coverage of the new game. I'm trying to keep my expectations low and not thinking about what the game must have in order for it to be good. Hopefully when it comes out I'm pleasantly surprised by it!

I would imagine it's in spite of following that template to the letter rather than because of it. Mordor reinvigorated a tired formula with the groundbreaking Nemesis system and vastly superior gameplay to most games using that template, which ain't nothin'. If Ubisoft had thought to do that maybe they could have a GOTY award.

Still, I think it's pretty clear that a backlash is building against this standard Ubisoft open world template and hopefully it's something which CDPR have been mindful of (it wasn't hard to predict) and managed to avoid. If they too have a groundbreaking game mechanic and best-in-class gameplay then they'll probably be ok regardless, but that seems like a longshot.

People arguing over a reviewers opinion...Anyways I knew this game was in trouble after i saw the E3 gameplay. It's not going to be better than Witcher 2 nor a GOTY contender IMO

I'm pretty confident it will be excellent, as much as you can be for any game.

It looks incredibly similar to Witcher 2, and I loved the witcher 2. So it's kinda like Jeff's far cry talk for me: if they go back and make the same game that I love once, it's OK. But man if witcher 4 looks the same again, I'll be pissed.

It will probably still play like the Witcher 2 did so I will tolerate the mediocre combat for the atmosphere, characters, paths, etc. People get so hyped about the series because of the storytelling and the graphics they forget its just not a ton of fun to play. And this isnt a "use more skill" issue its a "once you figure out what works it works on everyone" issue, it gets boring. I'd like to think they fixed it but there's no way of knowing. And the more open world notion could mean the branching paths are less impactful. In the last game, whole areas could never be accessed if you took a certain path. Im curious if they would still do that now.

I think there are legitimate concerns to be made and people quick to character assassinate because they don't want to acknowledge the game could be rough around the edges are just being unreasonable.

The best takeway of Witcher 1 is how you can see CDPR treat an open world when it comes to weather and time changing the attitude and appearance of NPCs and monsters. I'm excited for Witcher 3 based on the story telling alone. There was alot of novel ideas and interesting characters in Witcher 2, and the choices presented where often grey enough that there didn't seem like a good answer, which reinforces the Witcher's path of neutrality.

I have more faith in The Witcher 3 than I do in Bloodborne, but both will probably be pretty good games at worst and fucking incredible at best.

I don't think anyone is forgetting, it's just that RPGs tend to get a pass on mediocre gameplay if the RP part is good enough. It was ever thus.

I'd rather they'd be down about it going into it than pysched.

Because their treatment of Dark Souls 2 (high expectations) vs Mordor (very low expectations) shows how much initial expectations factors into their final opinion.

I'm stupefied that DS 2 didn't make it onto the list over some of what did, especially Destiny a frickin 3 star game.

Personally I think Witcher 3 will probably be pretty good, but we'll see once it releases.

I didn't really understand the skepticism. I never finished Witcher 2 but what I played seemed fantastic. Witcher 3 seems like more of that on a bigger scale. Sounds pretty good to me.

@jimbo: Right. But my first thought when I saw the more open area was "oh another game taking nods from Skyrim". Skyrim was fine when nobody else was doing that. Im a bit worried they're going to take out the big thing about Witcher I like, having your journey be wildly different based on key decisions you make, in order to make a more wide ranged palatable experience for the masses. Much like DA:I. I think that's a concern for longtime fans of the series. That's probably not what Jeff was concerned with, but any delay should raise an eyebrow.

Only ever take jeffs opinion with a pinch of dynamite, like he even gonna play the game. It will be awesome, 9 awesomes out of 10 awesomes so says me.

@humanity: They have stated that the game is feature complete and finished as of right now. The problems that they are having is that they are swimming in bugs which is to be expected in an open world game. If they are taking their time fixing those bugs, then hopefully this game will not have the jank (or as much) when compared to the current crop of games.

I think them saying that was more coming from the perspective of this year having all the majorly hyped games being either busted, complete messes or major letdowns. I don't think it based off anything other than that.

@bargainben: Regarding the combat, they did hire the guy that did the full combat re-balance mod.

It also appears that there isn't any more rolling, which incidentally a lot of action RPGs do incorrectly as in a real sword fight nobody rolls (losing your footing is the worst thing one can do).

He also probably liked Skyrim more, which tells me all I need to know about his thoughts on the Witcher.

I don't see how it can be a letdown for anybody when there's so much visual evidence of what the bulk of the game will be. What the graphics look like, what the general gameplay loop will be in the context of their open world, and (judging from previous Witcher games) the flavour of the story.

I'll have fun with the Witcher 3 but I don't think I'll be surprised either way unless it's broken. What it's doing is not mysterious or untested.

This seems to be coming out of nowhere. Skepticism is healthy and all, but we're getting into paranoia territory after this last fall. CD Project Red has shown a good 45 minutes of game-play streamed live twice by now, and plenty of other 10 minute segments of actual game. It doesn't get better than that in this market, people.

What's more, we're talking about CD Project Red. If any developer deserves our trust and respect, it's those guys, what with the absurd amount of work they've done on their games post-release. For free, as well. It's an incredibly ambitious project, one they're taking their time to ensure is done right. And if, by some chance, despite the delay, the game still isn't in an acceptable state once shipped (which I don't believe would ever happen), then these guys will fix it. That's what they do, goodwill means something to them.

Let's not let Ubisoft and the like sour our respect for the folks who deserve it. And as for Jeff, I love the guy, but.. He isn't basing this on anything. It's conjecture, and given what he knows about RPGs, I wouldn't take that to heart. It'd be different if he'd been at a press event and played the game himself, but that hasn't happened yet.