Bay 12 Games Forum

Witcher 1 is very hard to enjoy, janky as hell and only some elements really feel worth the pain there.  It uses the Bioware RPG engine which I think is why the combat is so wonky, it's awkwardly stuck between a more active action RPG and the turn-based bioware style.  Witcher 2 is better and Witcher 3 is reasonably satisfying.  One element I liked that doesn't carry over is the way potions were done in Witcher 1, where there's no instant-use potions and you have to fully prepare ahead of time.  It's an interesting idea that feels more suited to a P&P RPG but works decently well.

It's worth mentioning that the pre-release review copies don't include some day one updates that'll be in the game on release, so some percentage of the bugs reviewers are getting should be fixed when we play it.

I expect to enjoy the game.  I know what I like pretty well, so my gut feelings on video games are rarely wrong.  If it's a complete shitshow as far as performance and bugs go, that's a different story, but if that stuff is manageable I'll enjoy it.

Everyone chugged the kool-aid and completely forgot that the Witcher games were all eurojank, with Witcher 3 only really coming into its own with numerous patches and being a complete shitshow at launch.

I preordered it yesterday, just for the preload so I can play it when it comes out.  I expect to enjoy it with caveats, I'm usually good at tolerating jankiness.  Going back and forth on what kind of build I want to play, was going to do a stealthy hacker but a lot of complaints center around wonky stealth aspects, so my other plan is a fast melee and pistol build with high damage.  Wide agreement that enemies become bullet sponges if you don't put a lot of XP into damage, which is something I absolutely can't tolerate in a shooting game, so if I can't do it full stealth I'll have to go combat monster.

Set dressing I think was a given, and I'm fine with it.  As long as the city looks good and feels lively at a glance, I'm not going to piss my pants because I can't actually sit down at the noodle stand, I know some people really want that super-immersive interactive world and that's fine, but it's never been important for me.  For that kind of shit, surface level presentation does me just fine.

If the game is bad, I dunno.  If it's unplayably bad I'll refund and wait to see if it polishes up like Witcher 3 did.  If it seems like it's almost there, I'll probably keep it.  Whatever.  It's a video game.

Hey remember when it was fringe internet weirdos freaking out and stocking up on food and masks while the main media narrative was that you shouldn't wear masks

Certain kinds of electronica I think could work, the crunchier more aggressive stuff like Mega Drive maybe, but even if synthwave wasn't completely done to death and then done some more, it's smooth and nostalgic and that's not the right feel for a scary dystopian future. 

I can't say anything nice about electro-swing so I won't say anything at all.

EDIT:  Checked out what we've gotten of the soundtrack and hey hey guess what, it's dark, crunchy, aggressive electronica.

However the game looks in the trailers, it's still an open world FPS RPG.  I've played quite a few of these and I absolutely hated every single one of them. So my hype is very mild and entirely based around CDPR usually making good games.  If this game is good it will be the first time I enjoyed a game like this.

Mildly surprising though, a recent interview with the composers revealed that the soundtrack includes no synthwave.  A lot of people are upset by this, but not me.  In what should be a surprise to no one, people 56 years in the future aren't still listening to cheap 80s nostalgia made by people born in the mid-90s.

Obviously the tax laws are going to go by mass, they're not that stupid.

But also I'm on an out-of-plane asteroid so I'm not paying taxes and you can't make me.