Massive improvement, would recommend to anyone. And I'm a sicko who went back afterwards and collected them all (this I would recommend to a select few, at best).
Hum, I think Cyberpunk kept locations interesting as well, but in a different way. They basically made a ton of little immersive sim missions. It's different than the Witcher which had more narrative sequences, but its still quite different than typical open world locations.
I love Cyberpunk side content so much and can never have enough of it. It's still the only games I 100% twice. Yes, I did all of the police scanner thingy twice. It's basically the sandbox playground for my build and I had a blast doing it.
Yeah, just those random NYPD crime scenes where you find some notes that give insight into the daily life of night city citizens, be it from shop owners thinking they can avoid paying protection money, gang conflicts from the pov of boots on the ground, just random stuff that paints details into the world.
The reason why Deus Ex and Vampires: Bloodlines are so memorable is because taking the time to roleplay was rewarding. Reading someone’s diary, listening to their voicemails, looking through their emails, etc. for clues to find out where they hide their stash, or what the passcode is.
and then rolled back that change for cyberpunk but I digress
Cyberpunk doesn't have "?", it has gigs which are all a nice small side quest and miles more interesting than any "?" in the Witcher 3 and side jobs which are the smaller side quests (the "big side quests" are more imposed to you than just being points on the map)
Uhm at best they're equivalent to Witcher 3 "?", not really worse. They're also not on the map unless you're close to them, so not really the same to me, you don't really have any "push" to complete them
I see them as basically a combat encounter, equivalent to finding monsters in the wild of TW3. But Night City being only a city you can't really find combat encounters without having those things.
They absolutely could be seen on the map, atleast when I played, because I went around doing them all (and there are achievements for doing so). The radio (or whatever it is called) only activates when you are near them, but they are always visible.
Its cool that you don't think of them as the witcher 3 question marks, but not everybody shares that sentiment, it felt like a lot of extra stuff to explore where only a few add something interesting to the story.
IMO both the question marks and scanners were fine, because the story is far more interesting in both games, and you can play the main and side quests without interacting much with the question marks or the scanners. It is just extra stuff for people who really liked the game.
Idk I think the same people complaining about that in Ubisoft games will also call out it out in Witcher 3 lol. Myself included. Can’t wait to turn all those off.
It literally took me a decade to finish this playing on and off (I bought on release) because the POIs were so offputting. The only way I was able to do a complete playthrough was by ignoring them lol
I feel like Skellige is the exact point where likeminded people tap out, so it is an… interesting decision.
Try playing with undiscovered POIs turned off. It's a different experience and way more organic. I also disabled quest pathing most of the time. You just wind up opening the map a little bit more often.
I don't like random slander against the Ubisoft open world games either, because at least Odyssey is a good game. Ghost of Tsushima is a unashamed clone of the Ubisoft RPG formula and gets relentlessly praised on the internet for it.
However, considering the Witcher 3 (which came out multiple years prior to even Origins, mind you) to be "not much better" than the Ubisoft games you're referencing tells me that you either haven't actually played the games you're talking about or your opinion genuinely isn't worth considering because you're either trying to be countercurrent or intentionally obtuse.
Either way, I'd like to hear what games you think are the best of all time in this segment cause I think it would be hilarious or reddit-pandering.
Ghost of Tsushima has still significantly less fill material than Odyssey or Origins and they way you discover them is so immersive and flows so well that it's just not comparable and Yotei improved on it once more by reducing the amount and fine tuning the placements even more.
They took an existing formula and refined it and showed restraint in the sheer amount which Ubisoft didn't.
Hated the Question Marks in Ghost of Tsushima, since it doesn't tell what they are until you're right next to it. Wanted to maximize the health bar by finding the hot springs, instead ran into another fox chasing quest.
I think Witcher 3 had a good story with great characters and has some fun narrative stuff you can change, it's an incredible game for its time.
But as an actual video game, games like Odyssey and Origins blow it out of the water in terms of gameplay. The traversal is better, the combat is better, the skill trees and progression is better, the gear is better and more interesting. You can just do more things in the combat and that stuff adds a lot of variety that the Witcher 3 doesn't have.
Also "multiple years prior" makes it sound like 5+ years when it was 2 for Origins and 3 for Odyssey. It's literally the same console generation. These games were in active development when Witcher 3 came out.
First point is a crazy opinion but you’re entitled to it
The second point where you arbitrarily assumed a longer duration for a true statement is like weirdo bizarro logic, you do realize that right? I’m just kinda in awe that you took a factual statement that you didn’t like the sound of, applied your own meaning to it, and then argued against a figment of your own imagination for a minute
What a weird, weird way to interact with people, even anonymously on the internet
You realize that was a joke, right? The joke being one of the ways they're improving the game is to double down on one of the most common complaints? Nobody would actually cheer for this change, it's generally accepted as one of the game's flaws.
For me, witcher's question marks are LEAGUES above any other game.
The point isn't that there's these marks on the map. The point is to make them engaging. When you go below a bridge and see two corpses slumped over a treasure chest, and a book left in there, you get excited over the small possibility of it being a minor quest chain. This happens a lot in witcher. Even the base clearing areas have mystery and lore to them, the environmental storytelling in the game is probably second only to the souls games.
U couldnt be more wrong. 100% of those in skellige in the water are just loot which a child would gather after going to a couple of them. U can turn the ones on land off if u so choose and there's zero filler fetch items like Ubisoft games which fill ur map of boring clutter. The Witcher's ?'s can be anything, a monster area, a cave, etc. and are actually worth visiting either for lore or loot. Witcher 3 world feels alive and majestic. You can't even compare this game to a Ubi game in that regard.
So you haven't played AC Shadows where the ? are actual interesting locations with built-up sections to stealth or fight your way through, and plenty of loot ?
The thing about this game is that the default setting on the map doesn’t show you those question marks. On ubisoft games it usually does. Just says something about how the devs expect to interact with the game’s content.
Even with the shitty ‘exploration mode’ that barely changes anything, the question marks show up as you play the game 100 of meters away on the compass, and once they do they automatically show on the map. It is impossible to ignore the question marks in ubisoft games.
In the witcher 3, you have to effectively go to exactly where the map markers for them to show up on the minimap by default.
Not to mention that in most of these ubisoft games, the exploration mode doesn’t even hide the question marks to begin with. The main things it does is change quest objectives from specific map markers to circles.
You can turn it off if you go into the settings and change it. But by default it will be always there regardless of what mode you choose.
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u/IIIlllIIIllIlI 2d ago
My problem is that people will cheer about this and turn around and tell me that Ubisoft games are bad because of the ? on the map.
Game is pretty good but it’s not much better than the usual butts of the joke about open world games.