How big? Well at Dual Shockers someone did the calculations. Based on information delivered at a GDC talk super. Three times bigger than Skyrim big. That’s pretty big.
To begin with, I’d be taking these numbers with a grain of salt. The calculations were made based on two areas referenced in a talk: one area was said to be 8km by 8km, another 8.5km by 8.5km. When you combine the two, say Dual Shockers, that adds up to an area of 52 square miles, more than three times the 14.8 square miles of Skyrim’s landmass.
I have no doubt these numbers are legit, I just tend to have a little bit of doubt regarding numbers like these and how they actually impact the experience itself. It’s a trick Rockstar pulls with every game it releases. Grand Theft Auto X is at least four times as big as Grand Theft Auto VII and VIII combined! I don’t know if it ever really changes things that much. Because let’s face facts: Skyrim was bloody big. It was as big as it needed to be, and I suspect that The Witcher 3 will also be as big as it needs to be.
And if these numbers have any shred of truth about them, The Witcher 3 is going to be really, really big.
The Witcher 3: Two Areas Are Over 52 Square Miles by Themselves; 3.5 Times Larger than Skyrim’s Map [DualShockers]
Comments
24 responses to “The Witcher 3 Is Going To Be Big… Really, Really Big.”
Witcher 3 will be the ultimate beautiful open world RPG that will mark its spot in the open RPG history. I guarantee it.
I just hope they change the combat systems.
I know some people liked it, but I really hated the combat in the Witcher 2 (despite still enjoying the game).
Even on the medium difficulty it was hard, which is fine, but so much of the combat relies on potions that need to be crafted BEFORE the battle that it meant the game was really, really slow going in parts.
Inch forward, be attacked, get killed by extremely low level monsters, load, inch slightly less forward, pause, brew potion, be attacked, win….. repeat as necessary.
I’m fine with it being hard, but the reliance on having to brew constantly and the inability to do it once combat had started meant I played the game on easy (where the complexities of the combat system could basically be ignored) and it seemed like a bit of a waste.
I never used potions at all and I didn’t have any problems with the game. I think I played it on the standard difficulty too.
I hope they make the combat more fun though. It was good in TW2, but it was just really repetitive. There needed to be more weapon variety or different movesets per weapon like Dark Souls or something.
Dark Souls combat in the Witcher? Are you just actively trying to make me hard?
But that is the core of witcher. The potions. It’s a core mechanics that can be ignored on lower difficulty but needed in higher difficulty. I remember it does state there when you have choosing difficulty that potion utilization will be required.
I know it’s the core of the Witcher (actually I’d argue that it’s the story) but I’m just saying that I didn’t like it.
It was slow and clunky and I wasn’t a fan, that’s all.
I’m not one of those people who are adverse to turn based combat either, the Baldur’s Gate games and in my top-10 all time. I liked the combat in Dragon Age 1 a million times more than the combat in Dragon Age 2.
If they streamlined the system and made potions regenerate automatically, or that they can be picked from a quick menu mid battle or even just allowed you to pause and brew DURING the battle so you didn’t have to die the first time through it would make me very happy.
The propensity of the game to kill you whenever you broke from the pause, brew, fight, pause, brew, fight regime drove me nuts so I set it too easy and enjoyed the story.
I played through the tutorial during the free weekend they did a while back on Steam. I found the combat so clunky that I didn’t even play the actual game.
It’s a shame, because that intro was sweet and the world seemed pretty neat.
That is a shame.
The story is great, it not much of a ‘game’ but it’s still worth playing through on easy and enjoying the story and setting.
I actually agree with you. The Witcher 2 is EASILY my favourite RPG of the past 10 years but yes, the combat and the saving/loading was a weak point. I’d also add there was a lot of emphasis on rolling. Sometimes it just became a roll fest in combat. That being said, again, best RPG of the past 10 years for me. The story carried it and the combat wasn’t bad, it was good, it just had a few short comings.
What? I played through the game on ‘Dark’ difficulty level and I don’t remember using more than a couple of potions throughout the game.
GTA gets away with huge game worlds because its crammed with so much stuff happening. every three steps, there’s a mugging / random encounter / race / whatever.
Red Dead Redemption got away with it as well, but for different reasons – it made just riding through the desert an experience to look forward to. the music / scenery & atmosphere was great.
Oblivion is an example of where open world didn’t work as well as it could, possibly for technical reasons. sure it looked pretty (for the time), but there wasn’t enough stuff to keep the long treks between Bruma and Leyawiin from getting dull.
So yeah…. hopefully W3 gets it right coz I’m completely hyped for that game.
I don’t agree with that.
I always found it REALLY hard to walk between two areas because I kept getting side tracked by cool things to do and places to go along the way.
That said, my experience with Skyrim (well over 100 hours of it) was relatively bug free too…. So I guess I’m in the minority.
All depends on how they use that space. If half of it’s open land then it’s just a massive waste. If there’s actually going to be more people/towns/things to see and do then it will actually be worth making it that big.
I sort of agree and disagree.
It’s sort of like the difference between Morrowind and Skyrim.
Technically Skyrims landmass is SO much bigger, but it was so filled with crap that it never felt like you were actually travelling to somewhere far away or just exploring the vast wilderness. Because of how much stuff was in it and how you could also quick travel everywhere, it feels so much smaller than Morrowind.
And that’s not to say Morrowind was empty either.
It’s not the size that counts, it’s how you use it?
I’m pretty sure they’ll also be aiming to emulate the world from the original books. In them, the war has plenty of thing happening – think WWII’s Eastern Front, destroyed villages, refugees, small scale battles etc.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of solitude, where Geralt is travelling from here to there with no particular destination in mind, just hunting monsters occasionally.
Anyway, cannot wait. PC upgrade is waiting just for this.
Is it going to have as much mundane dialogue as witcher 2?
Grand Theft Auto X, VII and VIII? Does he mean Final Fantasy? or GTA 3,4 and 5?
No, he meant GTA. He was just using those numbers to explain a point.
It’s a little known industry secret that it only takes about a year to make a game like GTA. The tools are that good these days.
Sales are negatively affected when you flood the market with competitors to your own product, though, so they delay them for a few years to allow for the blockbuster launch and long tail.
There are some leaked builds of the next few games around if you look hard enough.
That’s all I ever wanted from a game. Space out the content as much as needed, and no more. With the amount of content they’re talking about being in TW3, I’d expect it to be rather large, indeed.
As big Kev used to always say, ‘I’m excited!”.
rip, you fat mother fucker.
If it’s SO big why didn’t they cut out 10 minutes of the game and sell it separately?
My anticipation and subsequent boner for this game is also big, really, really big.
This is what worries me a little about Arkham Knight. It’s big enough to justify making the Batmobile a core mechanic, but will there be enough detail to make traversal fun? Arkham City felt expansive, but it doesn’t take too long to travel from point A to point Z, so to speak. And meanwhile, there was always something to do along the way.
Traversal is the best thing about Arkham games and I just hope that remains the case for Knight… otherwise, the Batmobile had better fucking rock.
I love it when they compare games with skyrim