I seem to remember in one of the old developer videos (before release) some talk about exploration / additional towns / settlements with added side quests kind of like easter egg towns for gamers who like to explore. Played through twice only "area" I've found anything like that (which the main quests wouldnt take you anyway) would be the swamp area past the Troll in act 1, with really nothing over there to do beside clear a few bandits. Are there such places or is that future DLC?

I'd imagine it got removed, although we can always cross our fingers for DLC. A lot of stuff changed from early builds to late builds - they (a good decision, in my mind) removed a lot of random sex from the earlier version to concentrate on more meaningful stuff, and initially had aard as an AOE that sent enemies ragdolling away.

TW2 is an awesome game , i rarely finished a game more than once , and it's my 5th playthrough at the moment , so that says it all , however the big disappointment i have in TW2 , is that there is no real city

I really hope that in the next witcher , we'll have 2 real cities , at least the size of Vizima like in the first witcher , cause even though Flotsam is truly excellent as a village (best village ever in a video game IMHO , great sense of it being alive ) , it is still not a city , and neither is Vergen

i don't know but recently since Fall out 3 , rpg developpers put a few ruins and 4-5 houses in the middle of nowhere and call it a "city" , but really , one of the Great strength of the Witcher 1 was the immersion in city of Vizima . Just like in Morrowind , Vivec or Balmora was unforgettable , back then it seemed huge and didn't feel empty

I think the problem with big cities is just the ungodly amount of time you would have to spend on it, if you want to avoid the empty/locked houses/just walls syndrome. Sure games like the Elder Scrolls series manage to have quite sizable ones, but apart from the 3-4 important locations and maybe a handful shops, they tend to be quite irrelevant for the game, especially since most RPGs aren't really good at simulating life or allowing your char to really have one apart from the main story. So you spend a lot of time and money on sth. which doesn't really help your story nor makes the game better or increases the time someone spends in the game. The only feasible way I see to really incorporate a big city and justify the ressources spend on it, would be if it is the main focus of the story.

Well said. I rather have a smaller city with lots of things to do. There is Aard ragdolling effect but I have only seen it during the prologue (on the assault prior to fighting Aryan)

Well , it's not like it's impossible to have a large city with lots of things to do :)


For instance in the TW2 , they talk of Novigrad in Redania as "almost the center of the world " , a very large city , sort of Babylon of the northern kingdoms .

imagine if the Witcher 3 is set in such a city . The monsters would be in the sewers and outskirts ( crypts , caves , temples etc ) and most of the interesting roleplaying and quests inside the city

Elder scrolls Morrowind , giving the technical means of the time when computer were much slower , much less disk space and ram etc ... did quite a good job in introducing cities in a video game , i didn't know of an RPG in 3d as much immersive before it came out

I think the devs need to try to modernize game concepts by adding more content and doing things that were never done before . I know game development is expensive and time is limited , but they must create tools to work better and faster , they must innovate if they want to stay on top .

A huge city , credible , populated with lots of NPC , and quests , even if there are many fedex quests , if the city is credible and alive , this alone would sell the game because it has never been attempted yet and immersion is so important in a RPG , well perhaps i'm dreaming :)

While i agree with the whole living breathing cities concepts as some one pointed out there is little reason for developers to spend so much time and money into what can possibly be a litle used acpect of the game world. To design a city to meet this criteria is not hard just time consuming, like Oblivion or even FONV there is alot of fiddley stuff but most folks will not utalize this and in some instances even complain about a cluttered world. There are a few i am sure like me that enjoy the details oriented style of game play but sadly not enough, it seems from what i have read on a few game boards i monitor most folks just want to blow through see what there is to see and move on to the next "shiney".

Asai

CDP already said that they will charge for expansion packs only and all DLC will be for free. I hope you don't ask them to reconsider. :) CDP is not EA.

How right you are. It seems that CDP really goes all out to please their gamers and do tend to give a lot away. Most companies do charge for expansions, and I don't why CDP should be any different. After all, it does cost some money to develope them.

I have a fairly good TV+sound system at home, so I don't ever go to the cinema, except for The IMAX 3D Experience. Then I pay a minimum of $20 for a 90-120min. movie (or $12 for a 40 min. documentary). The Witcher (or some other 'large' games), if you like to explore and do stuff, other than the main story, could keep you busy for tens or hundreds of hours, and the experience it's similar in intensity (or better) with the IMAX one. So yes, comparing, I agree they should charge for the DLC too. Don't get me wrong - I don't want them to do so! :))

And to the point - I found a locked door in TW2. Not sure if I missed a quest or something in my first playthrough, but at the end of the game I wish I could have gone there too. I'm all for large, open worlds, like those in GTA4, Oblivion, Fallout3, even The Witcher 1. I'd gladly pay for some DLCs that would bring some sense of exploration in the pretty closed, narrow world of TW2.

The problem is much of the budget is spent for eye or ear candy and not on the actual game itself. BG series, Morrowind and Fallout 2 for example had hugh maps, hugh cities and 100+ hours of gameplay. They did not have much voice acting and hundreds of hours in art direction.

I guess there is a tradeoff here. Do we want to have all voice acting or do we want more in a game? The budget is limited so the devs have to pick and choose. But one thing is certain. Today's games are much shorter and have much less to do and explore than the games of yesterday. But they on the other hand have tons of voice acting and great graphics.

Edit:
Where I think they could have easily increased game time and exploration is to increase the map. For example on Iroveth's path you have a quest that sends you to the tombs. But you get there in just a couple of minutes. Yes it would just be filler but maybe have some other fake tombs along the way to clear out. So there is more fighting and exploring. You don't need a quest and don't even need some uber loot. Just more of it so it's not like run to point A kill mobs and quest is done. Morrowind have hundreds of random tombs that had no quest related to it but let you explore them. This was optional but added a nice 'feeling' to the game that let you experience exploration. WE2 has none of that.

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You get Aard ragdolling during the Vergen defense as well. I like it it, though :)

As for the OP:
I don't know that a big city is going to do much for this type of game. The largest cities I've seen in a game (maybe I haven't played that many games :) ) are in the original Assassins' Creed .. huge, well detailed cities, yet crappy, repetitive gameplay and monotonous story, unlike Wicther, which has a complex, well-written story behind it.

I guess am not very big on the whole "live life in a video game" thing. Sure, have some animation packages of people doing stuff to resemble normal life... but I don't pretend to live in that world... not saying the OP wants to do so, let me be clear... I have had this discussion on another game's board, and someone referred to his character as "his game incarnation"...

Well, you guys kind of drifted away from my original thought... It wasn't big cities I was expecting, just more of them: nook and cranny villages with fedex/monster quests solely XP. When I first began Troll Trouble my thought was "he'll rebuild it and I'll find a village on the other side" which wasn't the case :-(

While on the subject (of big open world cities), my personal favorite is city of Pripyat in the STALKER series (Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat). It's been awhile I don't think SOC goes into Pripyat. Wish GSC could have merged the work done in Clear Sky with COP. 2 halves of the city but not all of it in the same game. Many buildings arent explorable, but most of the "interesting" ones are. Dissapointing they never baked up a TTL feel, explorable reactor building (unless that was the wish grantor?).
Also must mention I do appreciate Assasins Creed's gigantic cities despite the lack of interior access. Fallout downtown DC is impressive when you connect the 5 or so areas accessable via metro tunnels (load screens). Think Bethesda made a mistake in not making the downtown area more connected above ground. Speculation on Skyrim in this regard (at this point) would be futile- They've said very little aside standard marketing hype and dragons.

Oh yeah, I was kinda expecting him to bloody fix that bridge or at least start working on it but no. Another thriving village would have been too much work but a winding path and couple of elven ruins would have been very nice. And maybe a few ghosts. ;)