The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[Paul_cz]

Problem I have now is having tried playing it in 4K and seeing how wondrous it looks, anything less is not to my satisfaction. But my GPU can only handle about 25-35fps at that resolution.

Hence me upgrading from 1070 to 2080Ti earlier this year
4K@60fps a reality.

 

[Paul_cz]

4 years ago, Witcher 3 was released

Time flies, dammit

 

[Paul_cz]

Most of the dialogue is great. A few characters are just badly written/acted though. Ciri for example, and the script for Yennefer is very poor.

This is...total nonsense

sorry

but it is

 

[Paul_cz]

I have to say it does look pretty good....

The trailer completely lacks that slavic distinct atmosphere and looks kinda cheap, but I will not judge the series based on it.

 

[Paul_cz]

That reminds me, another essential little mod for me is one that puts the level requirements on notice boards. Saves the annoyance of picking up a quest from a notice board thinking it sounds interesting only to find it is 30 levels above you, which can be like 80 hours playtime later! (on a tangent, but my why not disable that quest until the player is nearer the level. There is no point doing higher level quests because as discussed before, you won't be able to use any of the loot you get from it)

I had no issue with having higher level quests in my quest log and simply doing them later.

 

[Paul_cz]

I picked up a quest at the Inn at the crossroads at level 5, it was something like level 32...by the time I could do it I couldn't remember a thing about it. The cutscene explaining it was 75 ingame hours earlier, which is around about 2 months earlier.
Man- "can you look for my brother and the people he was escorting , he's gone missing and I'm worried"
Geralt- "yeah sure"
A year later
Geralt "hey, lucky you are still sitting there, I just looked for those people, they are all dead. Give me my reward"
You don't think that could be done better by just disabling the quest until Geralt was, say level 30?

Nah that's a good point. But if the quest simply wasn't there until that level, and with high level you are in completely different area, how do you find out about it unless you randomly go back?
I guess I didn't have a problem with this because I only play one game at a time, and TW3 is the kind of game I dedicate my free time to when playing it, so it was never all that long for me to forget anything.

 

[Paul_cz]

What frames does that produce on witcher 3 fully maxed at 4k?

60-70

 

[Paul_cz]

PC version (because... shiny).

If you have a PC then it would be idiotic to play console version. 60fps, near instant loadings, mods, much better graphics...the experience is vastly better.

 

[Paul_cz]

the 2 main DLCs do you have to beat the main game to get them ? or do they fit in along with some of the main story quests ?

Hearts of Stone can be played before finishing the story when you reach its required level.
But frankly I would recommend finishing the game and then playing the expansions. Blood and Wine is the end, must be played last.

 

[Paul_cz]

Taken as an experience, this game is so overwhelmingly good, and I've just worked out why- I've never felt so .... connected to a game's characters since Planescape Torment.

And now imagine if you had grew up with the Witcher book saga and read it few more times since afterwards

I just wish the netflix TV series hadn't wasted so much of its potential..

 

[Paul_cz]

I've only played Witcher 3 twice. Once at release, I completed it and was amazed, then again after all the DLC came out. I tried to complete everything I could and my savefile in the end was around 190-200 hours. It's the best game I've ever played. I never thought FF7 and Xenogears would be beat, but the Polish devs did it.

I've been itching to play it again but I'm gonna wait until the next-gen update.

lmao are you me? The only thing where I differ from your post is that for me TW3 surpassed not FF7 and Xenogears, but Fallout 2 and Deus Ex

 

[Paul_cz]

cutscenes are just too wordy. I love to read, I am a man of patience

This doesn't square.
But I am glad you enjoyed it overall. Personally I was savouring every dialogue and interaction.
And the expansions are brilliant, both of them. Take a break if you need to, but make sure to play them eventually.

 

[Paul_cz]

It certainly does square if you don't intentionally cut off the part where I explained things further.

Indeed my post was tongue in cheek, although I disagree with your impression in that regard obviously.

 

[Paul_cz]

Controller here.

And the nextgen update looks significantly better than the original game. But people will need to see it side by side to notice, as usual.

 

[Paul_cz]

I want the update to include things I can do after the conclusion to blood and wine. I've got my lovely house, my lodger and I want to be able to interact more! Go off on missions together etc.

Basically more dlc missions!

Yeah that ain't happening

 

[Paul_cz]

Wow. RT is MORE demanding in Witcher 3 than it is in Cyberpunk! If I enable RT, it is basically impossible to get 60fps stable in 1440p, even with DLSS, whereas I can play Cyberpunk with RT Ultra in 1620p and keep 60fps.
It seems like hacking DX12 and RT support into this old version of the engine wasn't exactly easy.

But I gotta say, RTGI does make lighting looks a lot better in those places that are affected by it, e.g.

(non RT):

(RTGI and RT reflections enabled, RTAO and RT Shadows disabled):

 

[Paul_cz]

I’ll be d’loading this as soon as I get in from work! Hope my 3080 will get 60+ with all the bells and whistles on at 1440p with DLSS

Yeah you can forget about that.

I just did a test - run through Novigrad - on settings:

1280x720
DLSS Performance
Everything off / lowest (incl. population density)
RTGI ON
RT Reflections ON
RT Shadows OFF
RT Ambient Occlusion OFF

And result?

In Novigrad on these settings, game drops into low fifties in the “busy” places (like fish market). With 5800X3D and 3080Ti. And this is purely CPU limitation of course. GPU is not running fully utilized.

Basically with RT enabled, 60fps rock stable is impossible. It is more demanding than Cyberpunk. No idea if this is something that can be further optimized.

Might be a dumb question but I've got a GTX 1070 which I know is old now, but should it be able to use RTX in Witcher 3 without any issues? Because I get unplayable lag with it enabled

1070 does not even support RT features. So, play in DX11 mode.

 

[Paul_cz]

If your system isn't that then go back to the legacy version and add mods. It will look & run better.

You do not have to go back to legacy version. DX12 runs fine without RT and DX11 (in the updated version) also runs fine (and still allows ultra plus settings, and has the new features like paralax mapping in Novigrad).

 

[Paul_cz]

So gorgeous. Now if only there were CPUs capable of holding 60 rock stable with RT.

 

[Paul_cz]