Witcher 3 is not an Open World Game

[MasterAub]

The Witcher 3 is NOT open world. Most of the Reviews I saw or red present the game as an open word game. It's simply NOT OPEN WORLD. In Skyrim you can go from Riften to Markath without any loading screen. In the WItcher 3 you can't, you just can't and by the way the zones, at least the two I have visited so far are relatively small. That's also a downside point and it is very frustrating as for me the main reason I bought the game was because of this open world premise with a map 2 or 3 times bigger than Skyrim. Don't get me wrong the game's intrigue, characters, mini game are very well done, not to mention the sheer beauty of it all. However I am 6 hours into the game roughly and I now understand that the game is not Open World as it was announced. An that sucks!

Edited July 6, 2015 by MasterAub

[Lisnpuppy]

I don't think that they are using "open world" in the sense that there is not loading zones. They are using it more in the way that unlike prior Witcher games, which you could only visit a zone when the game allowed it-that you have more freedom to go from zone to zone at will. Perhaps not in the Skyrim sense but certainly more freedom.

[MasterAub]

That's probably what they meant. Still that's a letdown for me. You see OPEN WORLD to me rings bells like GTA, Skyrim, Oblivion, Sleeping Dogs.

And I think they should have explained what they meant a tad better. I would have probably bought the game anyway but I would not have had my excpectation shattered into pieces of sorrow and bitterness LOL

[DoctorKaizeld]

open world means you can explore without restriction. CoD is a closed world every level is independent of each other and are very liner. Skyrim is a sandbox open world where it has massive exterior areas to explore. Witcher is a quest and story focused open world, in other words a liner open world.

 

open world is way to commonly mistaken for games such as Skyrim and GTA and the game companies dont correct this because people will think the way you do and possibly not buy the game if they realized the truth.

 

hope that helps a bit.

[MasterAub]

Yep thanks for the "academic" explanation. That sure could have been of help if the dev explained it the way you just did. Well as mentioned above I would have bought the game anyway just to contribute to cd Project Red's Success.

But the Witcher at least for me isn't the revolutionary Open World Sand Box I thought it would be and for that matter is not the standart by which I will judged every new RPG.

[TheRathalos]

Yeah it isn't strictly an open world but seriouly, Velen is 72 km² large, and Skellige has 64 km² of land (more than 100 km² with water) , for comparison, skyrim is 39 km² and GTA is 81 km² (with water), It is also filled with meaningfull content (not as much as morrowind or skyrim, but close to fallout 3 in term of density of content per km²). It also has no loading screen to enter cities and houses i also am more immersed in TW3 than in any other open world game (even more than morrowind)

It isn't a sandbox game, and it is also the reason why i think its modding community won't be as big as beth's games' . But for me it compares with elder scrolls game for fun and content.

Edited July 6, 2015 by TheRathalos

[MasterAub]

Your response gives me hope. I will go to Velen soon as well as to Skellige so hopefully I'll get to experience this "open world feeling". Thanks for all you responses guys.

[Sekireigan]

Skyrim isn't anymore "open-world" than TW3, since in the former you have loading every time you enter a city or a building. So, by your "no loading" criteria, I think the only "true" open-world game you can find is Minecraft.

[Elenear]

The Witcher 3 is NOT open world. Most of the Reviews I saw or red present the game as an open word game. It's simply NOT OPEN WORLD. In Skyrim you can go from Riften to Markath without any loading screen. In the WItcher 3 you can't, you just can't and by the way the zones, at least the two I have visited so far are relatively small. That's also a downside point and it is very frustrating as for me the main reason I bought the game was because of this open world premise with a map 2 or 3 times bigger than Skyrim. Don't get me wrong the game's intrigue, characters, mini game are very well done, not to mention the sheer beauty of it all. However I am 6 hours into the game roughly and I now understand that the game is not Open World as it was announced. An that sucks!

 

You surely CAN'T go from Riften to Markarth with no loading screens in Skyrim mate. As soon as you approach Riften city gate you get a loading screen to transfer you from Riften space to Skyrim space.

 

Skyrim is not a fully open world in that respect if you take presence of loading screens as a criteria.

 

:EDIT:

 

Ninja'd above!

[Tzirael]

Yeah, it's not open world. It's multiple open world's. :) And the world's are truly open because there are no loading screens within them. If we are going by sizes then Skyrim which is supposed to represent a whole country by itself is smaller than Velen and Novigrad, which are just regions. CDPR wanted to have realistic scale and I believe at one point in their development they had manual travel to Skellige, which took almost an hour of travel by a boat. They decided to drop the idea because it was simply boring. Saying TW3 is not an open world is like saying Skyrim isn't an open world because I can't hop over the boarder to Morrowind or Cyrodil. The games have different scales.

 

Also a lot of people seem to be confusing sandbox with open world, even one of the reviews for the game said the game does a terrible job of being open world, when it's clear the author was talking about sandbox aspect of open world's like Skyrim. This is a narrative-driven open world, not a sandbox open world.